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Adjunct professors are now part of the Fight for 15 campaign that began with fast-food workers' strikes more than two years ago, in which they demanded a $15 minimum wage. Wednesday, Cleveland will be one of the 200 cities nationally where low-wage workers, including home care workers and adjunct professors, will demand higher wages. Nearly 40 percent of part-time faculty in Ohio are living at or below poverty, according to union that has organized adjuncts.
(Associated Press file photo)
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Name some low-wage positions, and these are apt to appear on most lists: Fast-food worker, retail worker and home health aide.
But here is another that should come to mind -- adjunct professor. Despite being in a profession that almost always requires a masters degree, and sometimes a doctorate, nearly 40 percent of part-time faculty in Ohio are living at or near poverty, according to the Service Employees International Union, which is organizing adjuncts throughout the country.
On Wednesday, adjuncts will join other low-wage workers in 200 cities nationwide rallying for higher wages. The demonstrations - and one-day strikes by low-wage workers in some cities, but not Cleveland -- are part of the Fight for 15 campaign that has been pushing for a minimum wage of $15. The federal hourly minimum wage is currently $7.25. Ohio's is $8.10.
"We identify with other low-wage workers who have been coming out for the Fight for 15," said David Wilder, an art and art history adjunct who teaches at Cuyahoga Community College and John Carroll University, who intends to rally Wednesday. "We feel as though we are in the same situation. That might strike the public as an odd thing, but there are connections."
Chief among them is being underpaid, he and many adjuncts say. Adjuncts nationally make about $2,700 per class per semester, according to SEIU. Most adjuncts attempting to make a living from the work, teach three to four classes per semester. When one factors in grading papers, and other non-teaching duties required, few adjuncts make $15 an hour and many barely make the current minimum wage, said Wilder, who is co-chairman of the Ohio Part-time Faculty Association. The adjuncts are fighting to make $15,000 per class.
"There are places that are charging $25,000, $35,000, $40,000 or more a year in tuition, and the adjuncts there are still making $2,700," said Brian Johnson, a Cleveland State University adjunct, who holds a PhD in 20th Century American literature.
Adjuncts throughout Northeast Ohio will assemble in Parking Lot 1 on Tri-C's Metro Campus about 4 p.m. At about the same time, home care workers will be assembling at the SEIU District 1199 union hall on East 30th Street. Both groups will march to 1937 Euclid Ave. at Cleveland State University for a 5 p.m. rally.
Cleveland State University officials did not want to comment on the rally, saying they were not familiar with the scheduled event.
Like adjuncts, SEIU has organized home care workers. The union is also behind the one-day, fast-food strikes that have gone on throughout the country for more than two years.
As the labor market continues to reflect a growing service economy, organizing efforts will focus in that area, said Harriet Applegate, who heads the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor.
"I think the lifeblood of the labor movement is organizing the unorganized in the low-wage sector," she said. "Their jobs can't be offshored."
Including those of home care workers, who belong to one of the fastest-growing occupations in the nation; and make a median hourly wage of about $9.60, according to Labor Department data.
The demand for adjuncts has increased as many colleges and universities have phased out full-time tenure track positions in favor of part-time faculty, according to SEIU. Today at most universities, 75 percent of the teaching positions are non-tenure slots, frequently more than half of which are held by adjuncts, the union and local adjuncts say.
"They (tenure track positions) are jobs that haven't been sent overseas," said Johnson, who intends to be at the rally. "They have just disappeared."
Some in higher education say the 75 percent figure is too high. In Ohio, only at public community and technical colleges are three-quarters of the faculty part-timers, said the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio, citing U.S. Department of Education data. The AICUO said on the main campuses of public schools, only about 27 percent of faculty are part-time, and at four-year private schools, about 46 percent.
When Johnson entered the profession in 2000, he said his colleagues told him he had made a good career choice.
"'You should have no problem getting a job,' they would say," he said. "It was supposedly the 'Golden Age.' Everyone was retiring."
But as tenured professors retired, they were increasingly replaced by adjuncts, Johnson said. He said tenure track positions are becoming so rare, that he remembers applying for one opening for which there were 800 candidates. He said education has suffered by not having the stability and consistency a tenured professorship frequently brings. The often over-worked and underpaid adjuncts replacing them, have also suffered, according to SEIU.
Many part-time professors are living in poverty, according to a fact sheet the union compiled based on various analyses of government data.
According to the fact sheet:
- In Ohio, 37 percent of part-time faculty members live at or below poverty. Nationally, the figure is 31 percent. Only 5 percent of full-time faculty in Ohio live at or below poverty. Nationally, the figure is also 5 percent.
- Nationally, $468 million is spent providing public assistance, including Medicaid and Food Stamps, for families of part-time faculty.
- One in 5 families of part-time faculty members receive Earned Income Tax Credit payments, a program for low-income earners.
After reviewing the fact sheet, AICUO offered this statement: "We cannot identify data to support the claims that SEIU makes."
Neither Johnson nor Wilder said they could survive on their earnings from teaching. Wilder, who has three masters degrees, has to work as a banquet server at a hotel despite teaching four classes a semester and additional courses in the summer.
Johnson, who teaches three classes, also does grant writing and makes model train scenery, which he sells on eBay.
"The funny thing is that when I do it full-time, it tends to pay more than teaching," he said of his handiwork.
Wednesday's demonstrations and strikes are expected to be the largest low-wage workers' action, according to Fight for 15, which is part of SEIU. The action will not only include fast-food workers, home care workers and adjuncts, but airport, retail and childcare workers. Also, students are expected to hold demonstrations on 170 campuses throughout the country.
"Fast-food workers touched a nerve when they went on strike two and a half years ago," wrote Kendall Fells, national organizing director of Fight for 15, in an email. "Their calls for $15 and union rights resonated with thousands of workers in other jobs who are paid wages that are too low survive. That's why the Fight for $15 has spread across the country and across industries--because workers are hungry for economic justice."
He said organizers chose Tax Day or 4/15 - which sounds like "for 15" dollars - on purpose. Fells noted that many low-wage workers, just like many adjuncts, are forced to rely on public assistance programs because they can't afford to take care of their families.
"Low wages in the U.S. cost taxpayers more than $150 billion a year," he said. "Workers are striking to put an end to a system in which billion-dollar companies make their profits by keeping their employees in poverty."
Both Johnson and Wilder are hoping that Wednesday's rally will give momentum to their efforts at getting raises and benefits for adjuncts. Johnson is on a committee at lobbying the CSU administration to improve the condition of these part-time workers. At John Carroll, Wilder is helping with the organizing effort to have SEIU represent adjuncts.
Both are buoyed by what the low-wage workers' movement claims as recent victories: Walmart raising its minimum wage to $10 by next year and McDonald's raising its minimum wage to $9.90 at its corporate-run restaurants this summer.
Also, SEIU has organized adjuncts at 24 colleges and universities nationally, but none in Ohio. Georgetown, Boston and Howard universities are among the schools that have voted in unions. Among the gains at some schools have been pay raises for some workers totaling 22 percent over three years and adjuncts being guaranteed up to three years employment. Schools customarily only guarantee work on a semester-by-semester basis.
Wilder said some have asked him over the years, why -- especially as an educated man -- he hasn't tried to get a better paying job.
His response is that adjunct shouldn't be low-wage workers.
"This question of finding another job may be valid if there's no work there," he said. "But there is real work there. We are doing the work of educating. We need some justice."