This in today via email from Geoff “Sir Spamalot” Larcom:
EMU, part-time lecturers union reach tentative agreement on four-year contract
Eastern Michigan University has reached a tentative agreement on a four-year contract with the Eastern Michigan University Federation of Teachers Part-time Lecturers Unit.
The agreement, which runs from 2013-2017, includes per credit raises of $15 in the first year and $20 for each of the following three years.
Thus, the per credit, contact or equivalent hour rates will be:
2013-2014: $1140
2014-2015: $1160
2015-2016: $1180
2016-2017: $1200Other salary categories get equivalent raises.
Union members still must vote on whether to ratify the agreement, which then must be approved by the EMU Board of Regents.
“We want to thank the EMU bargaining team for all of the hard work they put into negotiating this contract,” said Sonya Alvarado, president of the part-time lecturers union. “Our union views this contract as a strong commitment to part-time lecturers by the university.”
Kim Schatzel, EMU provost and vice president for academic and student affairs, said, “This agreement, once again, signals a strong commitment to collaboration on both sides, all aimed at providing a superior educational experience for our wonderful students.”
The agreement covers approximately 800 instructional staff, field instructors and library staff teaching at least one credit hour or the equivalent non-credit instructional workload.
The unit does not include faculty members represented by the EMU-American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and lecturers in the full-time lecturers union, the EMU Federation of Teachers Local 1902 (EMU-FT).
I don’t know what was at stake here or how the negotiations went or anything, but this doesn’t seem like that great of a deal to me, to be honest, and it speaks to one of the reasons why there are so many part-time instructors.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
(As you said, you don’t know…)
Okay, educate me. What am I missing? Is this a good deal from the point of view of the part-timers?
Steve, there are always more details to any contract than what goes into the EMU press release. I am surprised that you would make any attempt at evaluating a tentative deal on that basis. Surely, you wouldn’t have decided whether or not to vote for the recent AAUP contract just on the basis of whatever EMU put in their press release about that deal, would you? (I hope not.)
Briefly, though, I would draw your attention to two items for consideration.
1. This contract – which is only the second in the rather young history of the part time lecturers at EMU having union representation – represents the first time at EMU that part time lecturers will EVER receive year-on-year raises. In the first contract, there were no annual raises, and prior to the existence of a part-time contract (before 2011) there was no way to collectively negotiate raises at all. In fact, many part timers (prior to first contract) were being paid at rates per credit hour that had not changed since the 1980s. So, the very existence of annual raises in per-credit pay is a big step.
2. You surmise that the pay scale is the cause of the large # of part timers at EMU. I suggest you have your cause/effect mechanism wrong, here, and also that you may have missed the general trend toward adjunct/part time labor in higher ed threat really took off in the late 90s/early 2000s. The higher ed labor market is quite different today than it was just 10 or 15 years ago. In fact, there are so many part timers at EMU (as is the case in higher ed in general), because Colleges and Universities have largely stopped hiring full timers, either on or off the tenure track. There are exceptions, but the fact is that more than half of new hires in academia in the US last year were part time. EMU is neither unique, nor exempt, from this trend. The reasons why we see an expansion of part-time hires and a decline in full-time hires are complex, and I don’t it is either accurate or fair to suggest that it has much to do with whether one union’s pay scale is grand, or modest. It really has more to do with the structure of higher ed these days.
At any rate, I think it might be appropriate to let part timers decide for themselves what they think about this contract (ratification voting occurs this week), before you weigh in with your views, particularly since you acknowledge that you don’t have a lot of the facts and you are basing your analysis on a very general PR blurb put out by the University.
Thanks for your comments, Licorice. A couple of thoughts:
* I’m glad to hear that there is some clarity in this contract with modest increases in pay per credit hour. I am a little surprised to see that it’s a “flat rate” though; for some reason, I was under the impression that some part-timers were paid more for more “in-demand” fields. I guess that is wrong. And frankly, I still think it’s too low, but there might not have been a lot of room for the part-timers to negotiate that up a lot higher.
* I’ve been involved in higher ed (as a grad student, part-timer, and tenure-track faculty) going on 25 years now, so yes, I am vaguely aware of the trends in higher education. I think this is a bit of a “the chicken or the egg” argument: while you said “there are so many part timers because colleges have largely stopped hiring full timers,” what I would say is universities aren’t hiring as many full-timers anymore because they are hiring so many part-timers. And the reason why universities hire part-timers is very simple: money. Part-timers are dramatically less expensive than full-timers, particularly tenure-track faculty. Part-timers get paid less per credit hour, they don’t earn benefits (insurance, retirement, etc.), and, unlike tenured faculty, they can be not rehired when they aren’t needed anymore.
There are some other factors too that get buried in the details of academia. For example, it feels to me like faculty have a higher administrative burden now than they did when I started down this path back in 1996. This is so-called “administrative creep.” But generally speaking, I think the reason for hiring part-timers is not complex at all.
Mind you, I don’t think this is a good trend– I’d much rather see universities investing in tenure-track faculty. And I don’t blame the part-timers for this– either the people for wanting the work or the union for organizing on their behalf.
* I don’t know if I would describe my one sentence response to the EMU press release as an “analysis,” and part of the point of bringing it up at all was to promote discussion. But if the part-timers union wanted to share more of an analysis of the contract, I would be happy to post it here and/or show them how to set up a web site. I don’t see any reason why the part-timers have to rely on the administration’s press releases.
Nice comments, Licorice. I should say that while such news releases are most often clearly aimed to convey or emphasize good news about Eastern, they are also intended to be timely, clear and accurate.
Also, I rather like the name “Sir Spamalot,” which I invented for myself after students created a meme that noted the horror of repeated sends from me showing up in their inbox.
Geoff, I hope you didn’t think I was criticizing you, or the release you sent out. That was not my intent at all. I simply wanted to point out to Steve that the release, itself, is not meant to convey detailed information, and therefore is probably not a great basis on which to evaluate the finer points of an entire contract. I apologize if anything I wrote came across as criticism of EMU’s press release.
Steve, to be clear, I am not speaking for the lecturers’ union. I am aware that there is information available for the membership though, and that members who have questions can get answers in a variety of ways (which were communicated by the union to members) prior to the close of voting. I doubt anyone expects any part time lecturers to rely on EMU’s press release for detailed information. So while I’m sure your offer is appreciated, it seems to me that the union has got it covered.
With that, I’m signing off for now.
Teaching at WCC might be more lucrative.
By the way, there’s an interesting site called The Adjunct Project– see http://www.adjunctproject.com/ They had a spreadsheet that included information on part-timer pay for thousands of different schools all over the U.S., and now they are tied in some fashion with the Chronicle. According to them, the pay at EMU is $3,035-$4,000 a course, while the pay at WCC is $2,526-$2,570. At U of M in Ann Arbor, it’s $5,500-$8,600.
GSIs make more at U of M than adjuncts at EMU.