I know.  I should wait for the book, perhaps even the movie, but the article in last week's Inside Higher Ed about the new book coming out on academic staffing just keeps lingering in the back of my mind.  The new book Off-Track Profs: Nontenured Teachers in Higher Education by John C. Cross and Edie N. Goldenberg is an in-depth look at the issue of contingency in "elite" colleges.  Now it could just be the way the IHE article portrays the work, but I must say I am left with a number of questions.

So much happens during legislative sessions in the states each year that it is easy to miss important developments if you don't know where to look.  That is the case with the recent legislative session in the Old Line State.

Despite its "blue state" image, Maryland does not have what we would consider very progressive laws when it comes to collective bargaining rights for higher education faculty.  Community college faculty can gain the right to organize, but only through a complicated process in which Senators and Representatives of a  particular county can petition the full legislature for collective bargaining rights for community college faculty within their county or district.  And in the University system there is currently no legislation that enables collective bargaining for faculty.

But AFT Maryland has been working to change that and in this last legislative session they were able to get the legislature to take the first step in that direction on behalf of contingent faculty and graduate employees.

Deep inside the "Joint Chairmen's Report on the State Operating Budget and the State Capital Budget and Related Recommendations" on pages 167-8, you will see that the University of Maryland system has been charged with forming a working group including various stakeholders to study and report on "the status of graduate assistants and adjunct faculty in Maryland's state public higher education institutions."

"Examining the growth and use of contingent faculty and graduate employees in Maryland is long overdue" said Lorretta Johnson, AFT Executive Vice President and former president of AFT Maryland under whose watch this process was started.   "We know that these employees have been growing in number and doing more and more of the teaching in Maryland and yet their compensation and treatment is simply not commensurate with their professional responsibilities."

Central Michigan University graduate assistants (GAs) have voted 152-21 to be represented by the Graduate Student Union. The unit of 450 teaching and administrative assistants is affiliated with AFT Michigan and the AFT and the AFL-CIO. They teach, grade, tutor, and perform administrative duties on the university's Mt. Pleasant campus. 

By the time they cast their ballots on May 4th and 5th in an election supervised by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, the GAs had heard from many across the campus and the state, including legislators and the governor. In the end, the strength of the vote was a repudiation of the strong-arm tactics of the administration, which raised the heat in the final days of the organizing drive by sending a letter urging the GAs to vote no on the question of union representation.

In that April 21 letter, CMU interim dean of the College of Graduate Studies Roger Coles wrote to all CMU graduate assistants telling them that the university was opposed to the GAs having a union. The opposition, he wrote, is "based on the firm belief that a union of GAs is contrary not only to the best interests of our students, but also to the best interests of our University as well."

As it happened, the Michigan AFL-CIO was holding its biannual meeting the following day. Delegates were appalled to hear of CMU's interference, says AFT Michigan president David Hecker. "That message, coming from a taxpayer-subsidized university that gets the rest of its money from tuition paid by working class families, is abhorrent," says Hecker.

Twice during the day-long event, he says, delegates went to their phones and called the CMU provost's office to say, ‘if this is the position of CMU, we can't see sending our kids and grandkids there.'

Hecker says the president also was urged to retract the letter but refused.

Then, on April 30, the CMU grad assistants heard words of encouragement from the state capital. Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm wrote to urge the GAs to vote and expressed her view of the integral role unions play in the nation, state and on university campuses. "No one can make this decision for you and no one should be allowed to intimidate you as you exercise this fundamental right," she said.

The same day, members of both the Michigan Senate and House Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittees sent a letter to thank the GAs "for all you do" and to "offer our support for your efforts to unionize." Alluding to their role in "determining state funding for Michigan's 15 public universities," they noted their belief that the AFT-affiliated graduate assistant unions at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University and Western Michigan University have enhanced "quality by working to not only improve pay and working conditions, but by giving graduate assistants a collective voice at the university."

In the end, however, it was how the grad assistants weighed in that counted. By voting for the union, they affirmed their right to negotiate health insurance, salary, tuition waivers, and other conditions of employment with the university administration. Overall, however, the central issue for the GSU was recognition: &...

When the ballots were counted this past Friday, it was clear that graduate employees at Florida State University wanted a union.  By an overwhelming vote of 448-140, FSU grads voted in favor of the United Faculty of Florida being their sole representative for the purposes of collective bargaining.  The new union, the FSU Graduate Assistants United, will represent 2,800 graduate employees.

Key issues during the campaign were concerns about increasing workloads; substandard, inadequate pay; expensive health insurance that employees had to purchase and a lack of input on any of those working conditions.

"We teach a majority of the classes at FSU," said FSU-GAU Co-President Danielle Holbrook. "We are the largest group of employees on campus but we have been working without job security or health insurance. Our workloads have been increasing while our salary remains the same, which means in this economy we're being paid less each year. Without our labor, the university could not function, but we've had no legal voice in how we are treated, so we organized a union and are ready to negotiate with the university." 

The graduate employees in the FSU-GAU will be joining graduate employees represented by United Faculty of Florida (UFF) at the University of Florida, University of South Florida, and Florida A&M and become the19^th graduate employee union affiliated with AFT.  UFF represents the faculty at 12 universities and nine colleges in Florida and is affiliated the Florida Education Association/NEA/AFT.

Central Michigan University graduate assistants (GAs) filed for a union representation election with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission on Jan. 28. The unit of 550 graduate assistants is organized as the Graduate Student Union and includes teaching assistants, instructors, research assistants and office/administrative assistants. They are seeking to negotiation with CMU over health insurance, tuition waivers, hours and working conditions.

GAs often collaborate with professors and have many of the same responsibilities as junior faculty members, say the grad assistants. Still, their stipends are so minimal that they leave some forced to rely on food stamps. In addition to salary concerns, health insurance is another worry, since CMU provides no health benefits.

"On my parents' insurance I got along fine, but now I am too old to qualify," says Alyssa Warsha, a school psychology graduate assistant. "I purchased the CMU health insurance plan, but my estimated costs this year will be more than $6,000. That's almost half of my yearly earnings."

The Graduate Student Union is affiliated with AFT Michigan, as are four other graduate employee unions in the state-at Michigan State University, the University of  Michigan, Western Michigan University and Wayne State University. These unions secured health benefits in their first contracts and all have better policies on tuition waivers, as well.

"It's about being competitive," says Scott Dunn, a teaching assistant in Mathematics. "Even though our programs are strong, a lot of the best minds will opt to go to Western MSU and U of M simply for fair benefits. Through the union, we're looking to make CMU more marketable."

Finally, a chair of the National Labor Relations Board that understands the Board's job is to make sure that workers have a voice at work as well as the boss.  Wilma Liebman, who was appointed by President Obama to chair the NLRB, understands the damage that the Bush NLRB has done as she sat on the board as a member through those eight long years.  

And Liebman's commitment to fair working conditions includes understanding how higher education has been impacted under the current board.  For example, Liebman was part of the well-reasoned dissent in the NLRB v. Brown University decision that took away the protections of the Act from graduate employees in private universities. As AFT President Weingarten stated, "She is well-prepared and highly qualified to lead a reconstituted and revitalized NLRB. We look forward to working with her in the years ahead."

The Chroni News Blog is reporting that the contract faculty and graduate employees at York University in Toronto, Ontario are on the picket line. According to the press release from CUPE 3903, the union representing the workers at York, the "membership overwhelmingly supported the unanimous decision of the bargaining team and the union executive to reject the university's final offer."

"It's clear that the university administration is pushing us to go out on strike. Over the last three years, our members have had to work harder with less job security and fewer resources," said union Chairperson Christina Rousseau.

You can keep track of the goings-on north of the border over at the CUPE 3903 Strike Site, where you can find contact information to show your support and then jump over and join the 3903 Facebook group.

From where I sit, it is overcast outside today and the news from the Internets this Monday morning is not much different. Here is a sample.

• The University of South Carolina graduate employees are throwing down, well at least in that academic sort of a way. They put together a report showing how poorly they are paid and sent a letter to the administration and the trustees. USC has done the responsible thing:  they formed a committee for further investigation!
• Polk Community College, like other colleges and universities in Florida, is trying to weather the fiscal crisis in that state. As a result, they are watching enrollment closely before addressing personnel costs including raises for faculty to make them more competitive and addressing the increasing reliance on underpaid contingent faculty.
• And Marc has a not-so-happy 4^th of July post over at HTUW.

Somebody have some better news out there? Anybody?

A few items of interest out there that have been on hold while the contract settlements have been rolling in.

• The Chroni News Blog reports that Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's plans for higher education seems to at least acknowledge that the current model of academic staffing is a problem.
• Marc Bousquet has the most entertaining report on Nassau Community College Trustees/FBI/Adjunct Union dust-up (and an interesting suggestion . . . and a follow up to that suggestion).
• The Indiana Supreme Court handed down a ruling that appears to be a victory for (some) contingent faculty on the unemployment insurance front.
• Inside Higher Ed has a report from within the bowels of the Career College Association meeting about recruiting students that I don't even know where to begin discussing, but the whole premise of the discussion is worrisome to me. 
• And lastly, Artemis talks to/about herself and tries to work through some issues about academic labor and graduate school over at Word Presser.

What else?

Over at Inside Higher Ed today, there is a piece on a new report from the American Sociology Association indicating that there may in fact be enough jobs out there for new PhD students in sociology. There are a few qualifications that the authors offer up, but at first blush I have the same question I always have when these reports come out. Is it fair to compare one year's openings vs. one year's reported PhD completions? 

Such comparisons seem to overlook the fact that over the last couple of decades we have been stacking up folks with PhDs in contingent faculty positions, and perhaps a few of them might be seeking jobs as well, no? Then again, I am not a sociologist, so perhaps my methodology is wrong. Any sociologists out there who can give us some insight here?