This is a story of two worlds, two realities on one campus.

An opinion piece in a local newspaper, The Yakima Herald published Sept 11, 2008, reported on our outgoing university president's new “president emerita” status, an outgoing pay of $160,000 plus a $3,500 monthly housing stipend. The reporting somehow left readers with an impression that faculty automatically gain emeritus status when they retire and that such status comes with a nice paycheck. However, those of us here on the factory floor/classroom have lives quite different than our CEOs/administration. And actually, emeritus status is granted by the board of trustees—we contingent faculty usually just don't get rehired—and it only means free parking if you are lucky. After all, our parking fees are now $200/year. (Yes, we pay to park at our place of employment.)

Now, back in the mid-1990s, our local AFT union managed to gain retirement benefits for contingent faculty who worked half time or more. It seems the school was breaking state law in denying retirement. It is a one-time buy-in situation, and the university puts in matching funds, but it is the same plan as the one offered to the tenure stream faculty. So, once it became available, we all herded in as many people as we could find and signed up. Now the original group is 50 or over and wondering where they are going to be in a few years. (The stock market is not really looking too good at the moment.) Since retirement benefits came late (no one offered back retirement funds) and we enter the official workforce often later than average due to graduate school work (TA teaching), there is not much there. When you contribute a little of not very much, the matching funds don't take you very far.

One colleague, in meeting with the nice helpful representative from TIAA-CREF, summed up the situation very well. When asked what her retirement plans were, she said, “I plan to drop dead while teaching in front of my students.” Now, there's a plan. Think the newspapers will cover the event?