The labor dispute between part-time staff, and why you should care
Many have to take second jobs
On Wednesday students and faculty organized a rally on campus to bring more attention to the struggle of part-time and full-time contingent faculty.
Faculty members at Ithaca College have been engaged in negotiations for the school’s first ever collective bargaining agreement over the contracts for part-time educators.
Contingent faculty members have expressed concerns about their compensation, job security, and the difficulty of getting promotions. This event comes on the heels of a recent effort by the student group “IC Students for Labor Action” to spread the stories of these faculty members.
Image: IC Students for Labor Action
The Facebook group has released the photo album “Stories of Contingent Faculty” which depicts frustrated and tired professors standing in front of whiteboards and chalkboards with their grievances spelled out. One such image displays a faculty member holding a small white card while she stands in front of a chalkboard that says: “I am an IC contingent faculty member. I am on Medicaid”
The teachers in the album say they have to work second jobs doing manual labor, that they make less than their graders, and that they aren’t even sure what their employment status will be with the school at the end of this year.
A large rally at Ithaca College to support part-time and full-time contingent faculty members. Photo Credit: Jade Cardichon
This tension has been building for months, and the rally is only the most recent and public development in a struggle between faculty and administration which has been heating up for nearly a year. Over a month before the photo album was shared by IC Students for Labor action, the Ithacan put together an informative short video that captures the sentiments of contingent faculty members as well.
Professors cite that the current policies create the feeling of “a lack of stability.” Tom Schneller, a professor in the School of Music, stated that “it doesn’t matter how long you are at an institution. If you are a part-time faculty member, [or] if you are contingent, you are expendable”.
Ithaca College released this statement the day before the rally on Tuesday. The statement claims that the school would prefer to only discuss at the bargaining table, however because the issues raised by faculty “are part of the public discourse, we feel an obligation to provide additional context and to correct critical inaccuracies.”
The letter was written on behalf of the Ithaca College Collective Bargaining Committee. The committee also provided a “resource page” which they believe “includes deeper explanations” into the decision making processes.
On this resource page the school’s bargaining committee claims that the current compensation for part-time faculty “is well above the hourly living wage for Tompkins County”, and that after comparing the wages at IC to other institutions the committee has found that “Ithaca College’s part-time, per-course faculty also are paid as much or more than their counterparts at those institutions.”
This is hard to accept when faculty members say they are living on social welfare programs like Medicaid, or are working manual labor jobs on the side.
Students and Faculty of Ithaca College gathering to support the Contingent Faculty Union. Photo Credit: Jade Cardichon
In May part-time contingent faculty members formed a union with SEIU (Service Employees International Union) to negotiate their contracts as part of this groundbreaking collective bargaining effort. A large portion of full-time contingent faculty members have also expressed interesting in collaborating with SEIU.
According to the information released by Ithaca College’s Collective Bargaining Committee on Tuesday, the union “wants Ithaca College to be at the forefront of a nationwide change” and to pave the way for other institutions by adopting “a completely new compensation model.”
Image: IC Students for Labor Action
While faculty members hold rallies and form unions to negotiate contracts which will allow them to have better job security and live above the poverty level, the college has no problem finding $65.5 Million to build the enormous A&E Center or pay the salary of the college’s president Tom Rochon which is equivalent to nearly 4 full-time professors at IC.
This discussion raises questions about what is considered valuable by Ithaca College in comparison with the value system of the greater community. Part-time and full-time educators are perhaps the most vital component of an educational institution. Every piece of information I’ve learned as a student has been a result of hard working professors. It has been a tumultuous year at Ithaca College, and perhaps these events mark yet another example of divergence for the vision and future of the school between the administration and the rest of the college.
Feature image: Jade Cardichon