June 21, 2010
SUMMER CAMPAIGN
As Adjuncts at Temple University, we are well on our way to an election that will determine our right to bargain collectively as part of the Temple Association of University Professionals (TAUP). Here's what’s going on over the summer:
- Our card campaign is continuing, even though most adjuncts will not be on campus until the fall. Please encourage your adjunct colleagues to sign a card, and remind them that the whole process is absolutely confidential. You know where to find cards: at www.adjuncts.taup.org or A 231 Barton Hall or from any of us.
- During the summer, we will be busy identifying adjuncts who will be working next fall so that we may speak to them personally about signing an authorization card. If you have time this summer to devote to the information-gathering process, let us know through taupaft@aol.com and we’ll work with you about researching a few departments.
- If you would like to volunteer to speak with other adjuncts, either in your department or outside it, please let us know. We will give you as much preparation and support as you need – one-on-one training, going around with you, talking with you about how to do it. We’ll need lots more people ready in the fall and we need to count on you.
Finally, we are always seeking up-to-date information about the working conditions and policies that affect adjuncts in all schools covered by TAUP. If, at any time, the conditions of your employment as an adjunct change, please contact someone on the AOC or in the TAUP office (see contact information below). We are especially concerned at the moment with the implementation of the revised policy on graduate students, which bars them from working as adjuncts at Temple. The plans to fund those graduate students as full or partial TAs could end up negatively impacting some of those graduate students or other adjuncts. The AOC will be closely monitoring developments over the summer, and will need to know what is happening in departments all over the University.
- Whether you are a graduate student or not, please let us know if anything changes for you between now and the fall semester.
- And if you are a graduate student, simply drop us an e-mail if you get word that you will receive TA funding for the fall. It's important that we know how many of our card signers will be part of the TUGSA bargaining unit next year.
Thanks to all those who have already signed cards -- join them!
April 19, 2010
Message from a Temple Adjunct to the
Adjunct Organizing Committee
I was glad to get the TAUP card. I hope we can manage to negotiate with the university. I've been working at Temple as an adjunct for eleven years. For ten of those years, I taught 5 courses a year. This year, suddenly, without warning or explanation, my courses have been cut to two.
When I asked why, for the first time, I hadn't been assigned any courses this summer, I was told by the person in charge that he decided to give the classes to those who hadn't had a chance to teach them before. Just like that. On his whim. Poof, I had no summer income.
And I wondered, but of course didn't say it, what would happen if full-time or even tenured professors were told they were being replaced by people who hadn't had a chance to teach before.
I know I'm not the only one whose hours have been drastically cut without cause or even warning. So I look forward to joining the efforts of the union. Thanks for your help in having our voices heard and respected.
Name withheld by request
April 6 , 2010
Individual Bargaining and Collective Bargaining
Temple's administration offered adjunct faculty another piece of advice about unionizing this week. They claim that individuals are their own best exclusive representatives.
- Most of us don’t have an opportunity to negotiate anything about our contracts. For most faculty, part-time/adjunct or full-time, our appointment letters are written by the legal staff and signed by an administrator whom we may not have met. Our choice is to sign or to look for another job.
- Who is involved on Temple’s side when they “negotiate” with individual faculty members? Academic administrators, business managers, lawyers, and human resources staff – a veritable collective team. Individuals need such a team to even the playing field. That’s what collective bargaining is for.
The administration suggests that adjuncts should be given the choice of some other union to represent us. Here are facts:
- The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board (PLRB) has had a policy for many years that the part-time/adjunct faculty and the full-time faculty should bargain together in the same unit. The PLRB is opposed to the proliferation of bargaining units.
- The Adjunct Organizing Committee and TAUP also believe that all Temple faculty members should be in the same union. We are stronger when united.
- There is and has been no union other than TAUP that has shown an interest in representing the adjuncts.
- TAUP has a 37-year track record of dealing effectively with Temple management in contract negotiations.
- Adjuncts deserve to have an election to determine their wishes regarding union representation.
Sign your card today!
Regina Bannan
Chair, Adjunct Organizing Committee
Adjunct, CLA/American Studies
( regina.bannan@verizon.net )
&
Art Hochner
President, TAUP
Associate Professor, FoxSBM/Human Resource Mgt.
( ahochner@gmail.com )
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