In a dispute that reflects the tension that can exist between the interests of adjuncts and full-time professors in the same union, a part-time instructor of English in Washington state who testified against a bill backed by his faculty union has been asked by two fellow union officers to step down as the group’s secretary.
The instructor, Jack Longmate, who teaches at Olympic College, spoke out last week against a bill being debated in the Washington State Legislature that calls for regular allocations of state funds to support pay increases that reward faculty members at two-year colleges for longevity in the classroom, earning an advanced degree, and other achievements. The money is available only through special appropriations now.
Among the ways the bill falls short, Mr. Longmate said, is that it doesn’t explicitly establish a system for part-timers to receive such increases.
Mr. Longmate, a veteran activist for adjunct professors, told the lawmakers of his membership in Olympic College’s Association for Higher Education but said he was not speaking on behalf of the union, which represents both full-time and part-time faculty members at the college. His opposition to the bill, he said, was as a member of the Washington Part-Time Faculty Association, a group that lobbies for legislation to improve adjuncts’ working conditions.
‘A Separatist Position’
Chip Barker, a full-time psychology professor and chief negotiator for the Olympic College union, said in an e-mail to Mr. Longmate and the union’s members on Friday that he respects Mr. Longmate’s right to “take a separatist position on policy,” but that it was wrong to “be dishonest by using your position with the union to seek a platform for expression of those ideas.” Mr. Barker wrote that if Mr. Longmate didn’t resign as secretary of the union, which is affiliated with the National Education Association, he would call for a no-confidence vote.
The union’s president, Ted Baldwin, a full-time professor of chemistry, also wrote an e-mail to members, saying he thought Mr. Longmate should resign if he “wants to continue to take positions that undercut the position of the union.”
Mr. Longmate, who said he was exercising his First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of assembly, said he didn’t plan to step down.
The dispute within the Olympic College union underscores the divisions that can occur within mixed unions across the country, where the interests of adjuncts typically differ from the interests of full-time professors. In such cases, some adjuncts have long argued that the interests of part-time faculty get short shrift because their tenured and tenure-track colleagues tend to be the most active and most powerful union members.
At the same time, various efforts in recent years by part-time faculty members to form a national independent adjunct union have not been successful.
In an e-mail to the union’s members, Mr. Longmate said that his testimony was “aimed at the best interests of our state’s faculty” and that he’s open to talking about a way to amend the state bill so that it meets the needs of adjuncts, too.
