Part-time instructors show concern over salary, advocate for change

ADJUNCT, Page 1 with the people they have picked to represent us,” he said. However, “they have not been representing us fairly and the evidence is the current situation we’re in.”

Rush cited one example of the “current situation” of adjuncts. One of his adjunct positions is at a community college; his salary when he started there in 1992 was $13,000. During his years there he has taught threequarters of a full-time, tenured faculty’s teaching load, yet he is now making $21,000, giving him a raise of $500 a year.

“If I was paid at a pro-rated share of my tenured colleagues’ rate, I would be making $36,000,” he said. “The concern is that we’re not only being short-changed for our salaries, we’re being short-changed for our future, for our retirement accounts and social security.”

According to Rush, adjunct instructors are also unwilling to compromise with the union because their unfair treatment extends past a smaller salary and no benefits. In one situation, the union claimed responsibility for an improvement made solely by Hoeller.

As part of an adjunct instructors’ contract, their accrued sick leave evaporates at the end of each semester they teach.

Hoeller wrote a bill enabling adjuncts to accrue their sick leave through all of their time teaching, so when they retire they have the option to sell it, an option that is given to full-time faculty.

Because Hoeller is one of the few adjunct instructors in the union, the union took credit for the bill, claiming it was an improvement that had come through because of the union’s involvement.

According to Collins, the fight for equal treatment is about more than money. Adjuncts have no job security because their job is not guaranteed from year to year.

“Job security and pay go hand-in-hand,” he said. “Adjuncts get stuck in a rut because if you speak up for higher pay, you’ll just lose your job.”

Adjunct instructors have seen a “15 percent improvement in the pay gap between adjuncts and fulltime faculty in the past decade and that’s just not enough,” said Rush.

“If that’s the trend, it’ll take us at least 50 to 70 years to close the gap and some of us are too close to the end of our careers to wait for baby steps.”

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