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Sometimes the loudest voice of all is the one that makes hardly a sound. Like the rustle of ballots piling up for the Henry Ford Community College Adjunct Faculty Organization (AFO) when the Michigan Employment Relations Commission counted them up May 7. The vote was 334 to 41 out of a unit of 580 faculty.
The AFO began organizing less than a year ago, dismayed by impossibly low pay scales that maxed out at $1,700 a course, lack of job security and health insurance, and no access to office space for preparation work or to meet with students. The adjuncts sought help from AFT Michigan, the state affiliate of the full-time faculty local at Henry Ford.
"The only way to get salaries that at least match other area colleges is through collective bargaining," says AFT Michigan president David Hecker, who is also an AFT vice president.
Even though Dearborn is a union town and the instructional faculty have been unionized for more than 40 years, the administration fought the adjuncts, says Mary Beck, AFO interim president. First, the college intimidated the part-time staff, sending out a letter sprinkled with veiled threats. Then, during unit determination negotiations after cards were filed for an election, the college attempted to whittle down who would be eligible to vote and be part of the unit.
John McDonald, HFCC Federation of Teachers president, sent a letter to all college staff, making a strong statement of support for the adjuncts and enumerating the benefits a union would bring to its members as well as to the college and community.
The college's initial posture, advanced by a "reactionary" attorney, was "a missed opportunity to build good will among adjunct supporters," observes McDonald. In response, both full-time and adjunct faculty activists lobbied the board of trustees to allow for a fair unit definition.
With the help of AFT Michigan staff, the AFO organizing committee was able to quickly learn the basics of organizing. "It's a science," says Beck. "We met one-on-one with adjuncts, listened to their concerns, established a relationship. Adjuncts feel they have a voice."
The final and most potent weapon in AFO's arsenal, however, proved to be students, says Beck. "Students love a good cause!" They circulated a petition and collecting more than 1,000 signatures in less than two weeks. The college agreed to a broad unit definition if the AFO would agree to leave students out of it. The unit includes all adjunct faculty teaching credit-awarding classes, as well as those doing non-credit instructional work as part-time librarians, counselors, English Language Institute and learning lab instructors, job placement officers and cooperative education specialists.
Now, as AFO surveys its members about bargaining priorities and prepares to negotiate a first contract, those supportive students "are our ace in the hole," says Beck.
In recent years, the AFT has set an organizing goal of bringing in more of the unorganized working in proximity to existing locals. Contingent employees fall into this category and in AFT Higher Education especially, that has meant part-time/adjunct faculty and academic staff, full-time temporary instructors and graduate employees. In the past 24 months, 18 elections have taken place involving higher education workers. Of those, 12 were for units of adjunct/part-time faculty. The others were professionals, librarians and full-time faculty.
AFT Michigan has shown its commitment to organizing part-timers with new locals of adjuncts at Wayne State University and now at HFCC. It also represents adjuncts at Wayne County Community College, the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. Nationally, AFT represents 165,000 faculty, professional staff and graduate employees, including 60,000 contingent faculty members.
May 7, 2008
