Faculty Forum: Nontraditional=Unpaid
By Karen Thompson
Faculty Forum Guidelines When I read a recent report on federal employment—The Blended Workforce: Maximizing Agility Through Nonstandard Work Arrangements—I knew things had gotten way out of control. The problems I’d been warning folks about for years were suddenly emerging as recommendations for the government. Published last spring by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, the report suggests that “greater managerial flexibility might be possible by beefing up the number of part-time, seasonal, contract, and on-call jobs” among federal employees so as to develop a “motivated and productive workforce” by dangling the (unlikely?) possibility of a full-time job in front of workers.
This scene is one that most of us in higher education recognize: overuse (read “exploit”) part-time and adjunct colleagues by misleading them into believing that they might land a full-time position. And who recommended this bright idea to the federal government? Two of our own report-generating professors—James R. Thompson and Sharon H. Mastracci of the University of Illinois–Chicago—advocate this “blended workforce” to deal with “budget cuts or times of high demand.” Academics providing employment models for the government? Not exactly. These two attribute their report’s ideas to a British business guru, Charles Handy, about whom I recall warning colleagues years ago.
Handy’s “shamrock” model “for the future” sent chills down my spine when I read about it in 1993. In his vision, administrators, as the “professional core,” are the first leaf of the shamrock; tenured faculty “subcontractors,” as “experts,” are the second leaf; and “independents” (part-time faculty, adjuncts) are the third. I suggested cynically in an essay I wrote at the time that graduate student employees could be seen as the stem that feeds all the leaves—although we know now that they are most likely to wind up with the “independents” or contingents.
As I tried to make my way through Thompson and Mastracci’s report, I gasped at the thought that Handy’s backward approach—now billed as the “core-ring model”—might be considered visionary by academic planners and government labor force managers. It didn’t help that the report is part of a “Human Capital Management Series”; if the students are consumers, it must follow that the faculty are capital.
The parallels to the academy are striking. I’ve already mentioned the lure of the full-time position. But there is also a section on “rehiring annuitants,” reminding us of faculty retirees staying on as part-time or adjunct professors to keep a hand in; when the authors write of these nonstandard work arrangements as a “means to obtain skills on demand,” doesn’t it sound like that old excuse that adjuncts bring real-world expertise into the classroom? And, of course, there’s the proliferation of familiar terms: nonstandard, temporary, or contract employees; contingent workers; short-term hires; independent contractors; on-call workers; and so on.
But it’s all for the best, the authors say: the system provides “a family-friendly workplace” and promotes “work-life balance” for all those folks who want to work in part-time and irregular positions. The scheme also comes with a built-in “screening and recruitment tool” so managers can try before they buy. My personal favorite is the argument that nonstandard employment is “a means to expand the labor pool by addressing demographic trends”—such a nice way of saying that some people might choose to serve in the reserve labor force, limiting their pay and benefits so that costs can be cut.
Take a look for yourself. Most likely I missed some balancing remarks. The authors do acknowledge that, legally, “the line is still somewhat fuzzy” between contract workers and regular employees in terms of their rights. But that doesn’t make them hesitate to recommend “nonstandard employment.” The report advises employers to take many of the steps we’ve taken in addressing the problem of contingent positions in higher education: “improve collection of data,” “solicit proposals,” “collaborate with agencies,” “develop policies,” and so on.
In the end, the report is an academic justification for bringing contingency to government workers, who have long been part of the best model for secure and stable employment. We in academia can be proud that we produced the research and testing grounds for what will finally be a general transformation of the workforce—from settled employment to contracting, from permanent to temporary work, and from stability to transience—in everything from education to government.
Will we, as academic and world citizens just watch it all happen? Instead, maybe we need a nontraditional response to nontraditional work—and maybe we should set a better example in higher education.
Karen Thompson is a longtime part-time lecturer in the English department at Rutgers University. As a member of AAUP committees, she helped draft the Association’s 2003 statement on contingent faculty and its 1993 statement on the status of non-tenure-track faculty.
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