Part-time professors thought they scored a precedent-setting win at Emerson College, but after more than two years things haven’t turned out that way
Article: Seeking ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’By SCOTT SMALLWOOD
Emerson College was supposed to be the first domino. When part-time-faculty activists won a union election there in 2001, leaders of academic labor around the country took notice. The victory, they hoped, would lead to a wave of organizing at Boston’s numerous colleges, allowing thousands of part-time professors to bargain for better treatment.
That hasn’t happened.
Instead, on a gray, rainy day at the end of last month, the leaders of the Affiliated Faculty of Emerson College were still fighting for a contract. A small crowd, maybe 75 people, has gathered at a rally, hoping to put pressure on the college to reach an agreement with the union.
In April 2001, the part-timers voted overwhelmingly117 to 37 -- to organize a union and affiliate with the American Association of University Professors. But two and a half years later, they still don’t have a contract. The delay, even some union leaders acknowledge, has drained some of the spirit from the academic-labor movement in the city.
It’s a reminder of what a long road union organizing and contract negotiating can be, and how important both sides believe every precedent is. The remaining issues -- the university is pushing for a broad no-strike clause and a policy that would pay part-timers less for teaching very small classes -- show that contract negotiations are not just about money, but about power as well.
The administration says the union has exaggerated the importance of the unresolved issues. The union is frustrated that administrators do not come to the bargaining sessions any longer, leaving the job to the college’s lawyer.
The lack of progress “is an indication of how tough the battle is,” says Gary Zabel, a part-time professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a labor activist in the city. “Administrations have come to rely overwhelmingly on poorly paid adjunct faculty. They’re going to fight this for the same reason that growers in California fought against farmworkers. Universities have no higher moral ground.”
Chants and Speeches
Emerson, a college of arts and communication, has 2,700 undergraduates and 650 graduate students. The 220 part-time professors outnumber the full-timers two to one. With no real campus, the college is housed in several buildings near Boston’s theater district.
The protest in late October -- part of Campus Equity Week, a series of events to highlight academic-labor issues across North America -- began on the edge of Boston Common, across the street from some Emerson buildings.
Like any labor rally, it started with chants: “What do we want?” Rich Moser, of the AAUP, said into a malfunctioning megaphone. The crowd answered, meekly, “Academic freedom.”
And there were the signs: “Slow Justice Is No Justice” and the less catchy “Uphold AAUP Principles.” Students, some with cameras, roamed the proceedings. David Rosen, a college spokesman, was there, snapping pictures as well.
Later he called it “not much of a turnout,” pointing out that many of the people were not even from Emerson.
But for labor activists, that’s the point. Part-time professors, graduate students, and even the lucky tenured full-time professors believe that they gain strength by sticking together.
The protesters included professors who had traveled from Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., a student from nearby Northeastern University, and a part-timer at Suffolk University, also in downtown Boston, where an organizing campaign may get started.
“We are watching you over at Suffolk,” says the adjunct, Robert Rosenfeld, who has taught philosophy there for 13 years. “You’re going to help raise the standards of part-time faculty in Boston. Keep fighting.”
Justin Ruben, a former Yale University graduate student who is now an organizer for the graduate-student union there, spoke about the importance of academic work, offering some of the most spirited oratory of the brief rally.
“We can make that work better,” he told the crowd. “We can stay the conscience of our society. This administration is fighting so hard because of what you mean to people like us. Because by staying together -- graduate students, postdocs, adjuncts, all of us -- then we can take this educational system back.”
As the speeches wound down, dusk fell, orange-tinged clouds floated overhead, and the crowd chanted: “The campus, united, will never be defeated.”
‘Setting a Precedent’
Salaries and benefits are often the most contentious aspects of contract negotiations, but at Emerson the two sides have already reached a financial deal, which has gone into effect. The college established a new salary schedule for part-timers, and agreed to pay 50 percent of the health-insurance premium for some experienced part-time professors -- about 40 of the 220 members of the union get the new health benefit.
The new salary system is a complicated matrix in which pay varies by department and is based on how many courses a professor has taught as a part-timer at Emerson. For example, Leslie Brokaw, a part-time professor in the writing-and-literature program, teaches two or three courses a year.
Before the new contract, she earned $3,200 for each four-credit course. Now she makes $3,900. “My raise of $700 was probably typical,” says Ms. Brokaw, who serves on the union’s negotiating committee.
So if the union and the college have already agreed on the meaty salary issues, what’s holding up a deal?
“This is the first contract,” says Mr. Rosen, the college spokesman, “so every issue is being addressed for the first time, and every one is setting a precedent. So both sides are being as careful as they can be.”
The labor negotiators, however, say the administrators are dragging their feet. “They’re not negotiating with us on these issues,” says David Daniel, president of the union, who has been a part-time professor of writing for 13 years. “They’re not enormous issues, but they’re not even trying to negotiate.” It’s not about money, he says: “This is about control.”
Mr. Moser, of the national AAUP, agrees. “None of these things are truly money things,” he says. “It’s all just bad attitude and power politics.”
The two sides remain at odds over three issues. First, as is standard in many union contracts, the college is seeking to prohibit the professors from striking. But union leaders say the college’s proposal is overly broad and would unfairly restrict adjuncts’ free-speech rights.
Under the college’s proposal, the part-timers would have to agree to much more than simply not striking or picketing. They “will not refuse to cross any picket line established by any labor organization, nor will they engage in any sympathy action, including striking, picketing, handbilling or leafleting, with or in support of any labor organization,” it says.
The next paragraph defines “labor organization” as any group that represents employees of the college or “any other employer.”
Mr. Moser says he has never seen such broad no-strike language. It could be interpreted to mean that part-timers at Emerson could be fired for participating in a labor rally for graduate students at Yale University, or for handing out brochures during a janitors’ strike in Boston, he says: “Some people call it the ‘no-bad-thoughts clause.’”
Mr. Rosen, the only administrator designated to speak about the negotiations, declines to discuss the details of the remaining contract issues. However, he does say they have been “miscast” by the union. The no-strike clause, for instance, has been portrayed as a free-speech issue, but the college is simply seeking the strongest possible no-strike clause, he says.
The second issue is the college’s proposal to pay part-time faculty members less money for courses that enroll fewer than 10 students. For instance, under the plan, if seven students enrolled in a given course, the professor who teaches it would be paid 70 percent of the regular salary. Part-timers argue that such a clause is unfair, and that professors’ pay should not be based on the number of students in class.
Mr. Rosen says the college has always reserved the right to cancel a class with fewer than 10 students. He adds that the contract would codify an existing policy under which classes with low enrollment can be transformed into “directed studies” courses -- a kind of independent study -- in which the professor would be paid the lower rate on the basis of the actual number of students.
The part-timers say that they have never heard of such a policy, and that it is not how the college functions now. Ms. Brokaw says she has taught classes with fewer than 10 students and never had her pay prorated.
She finds the proposal especially galling because the college promotes itself, in part, on the virtue of small classes. She recalls teaching graduate courses that limit enrollment to 12 students. “Then one student didn’t show up, one dropped the class, a third blew off the course, and suddenly I was at 9,” she says. “The idea that at that point I would take a pay cut is ridiculous.”
The third major issue left on the bargaining table is who will pay the union’s expenses. The college wants only union members to pay dues. But the union is seeking an “agency shop,” in which even members of the bargaining unit who are not members of the union must pay a percentage of their salary -- generally smaller than full union dues -- to help support the union.
Union leaders maintain that Emerson is paying its lawyers to fight so hard on these issues -- even the ones that wouldn’t cost the college much, if anything -- because of the precedents that will be set not only at Emerson but for dozens of nearby colleges as well. The union could gain momentum among part-timers because many of them teach at multiple colleges in the Boston area. Emerson officials have “spent much more on lawyers than they’ve given to us,” says Mr. Daniel, the union president.
Part-timers point out that the college’s tax returns show legal expenses in the 2001 and 2002 fiscal years of $424,000 and $439,700, respectively. In comparison, in the previous three years the college spent an average of $216,000 on legal fees.
Mr. Rosen declines to specify how much Emerson has paid its lawyers for union-related costs, saying that the college is not required to categorize the costs. But it would be irresponsible to suggest that all of that additional money was spent on the union fight, he says, citing the legal costs associated with real-estate deals during the past decade that have relocated Emerson from the Back Bay section of Boston to the theater district.
Playing Tough
Professors at Emerson believe that the administration is planning to be tough with all of its unions. Full-time faculty members at the college, unlike the vast majority of professors at other private institutions, are also unionized. They are members of a separate AAUP unit that was created before the 1980 U.S. Supreme Court case involving Yeshiva University, in which the court ruled that professors at private colleges had managerial roles and were therefore not covered by the National Labor Relations Act.
Part-timers point out that the full-timers’ union does not have such a strict no-strike clause, has no prorated pay for small classes, and does collect “agency fees,” in lieu of dues, from professors who don’t join the union.
But the full-timers may not have all of those things for long. Some professors say the administration is seeking to decertify the union -- a move that many private colleges made after the Yeshiva decision, but which Emerson has refrained from making.
The college has no such plan, says Mr. Rosen. In a letter to the full-time professors in September, President Jacqueline Liebergott wrote, “Although we know that we could withdraw recognition from [the full-time faculty union], and we think that we would win the legal fight that would follow, legal fights benefit lawyers and almost no one else.”
She went on to say, however, that “for the faculty to conduct itself sometimes as management and sometimes as labor compromises its critical role.” She offered the full-timers a choice: If they continue the “traditional union-versus-management relationship,” the college will seek to eliminate from the contract the faculty’s right to participate in management. Or they can form a new type of pact with the college, which would “enhance” the faculty’s role in governance but acknowledge that the AAUP unit is not a union under federal labor law.
Eiki Satake, a professor of mathematics and president of the full-time-faculty union, says he found the president’s letter to be “extremely offensive, very indefensible, and extremely inappropriate.”
“They are not ready to negotiate with our union in good faith,” he says.
Mr. Moser, of the AAUP, acknowledges that getting a contract for the part-timers at Emerson has taken longer than union leaders hoped. But not all of the momentum has been lost, he says, noting that several groups are planning to begin union-organizing campaigns at both public and private colleges in the Boston area. “Through mutual agreement,” he says, “we decided to wrap up this first contract at Emerson first.”
Since 1998, adjuncts have made tremendous headway on the labor front, Mr. Moser says. Emerson represesents a real victory: the first part-time union created at a private institution in Boston in the past 20 years. Perhaps that will indeed start a chain reaction of unionization at private colleges. “But,” he says, “it’s been a slog.”
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 50, Issue 13, Page A8
