Hamline puts posturing before progress in contract talks, adjuncts say

January 29, 2019 by

Imagine paying $40,000 per year to attend a university, asking a faculty member for a letter of recommendation, and finding out the letter will come not from a “.edu” address associated with the school, but from an AOL account the professor maintains to write restaurant reviews and buy vintage concert posters online.

It’s just one example, adjunct faculty members say, of the retrograde positions Hamline University and its high-priced lawyers have staked out in negotiations that, despite 14 meetings since last June, have made no progress toward a new union contract.

“All we are trying to do is make reasonable improvements to the contract that help us be better teachers,” said Richard Wiebe, an adjunct instructor of creative writing and digital arts. “We haven’t even gotten to the point of (discussing) economics yet, and every ask we’ve made has been denied by administration on the other end of the table.

“These are things that don’t cost the university anything, so we’re kind of at a loss.”

The frustration boiled over in a press release issued last week by Minnesota Academics United, the SEIU-backed union that represents faculty members at Hamline, Augsburg and other local campuses.

The release blasted Hamline’s approach to bargaining a new contract, accusing school administrators of trying to weaken adjunct faculty members’ union and marginalize their status on campus.

They also blasted university leaders for bringing attorneys from the law firm Dorsey and Whitney into negotiations. The legal fees “almost certainly” have cost Hamline more “than the total cost of the first year of the union’s proposals,” the release said.

David Weiss, a co-steward of the faculty members’ bargaining unit, said union members had hoped talks would be collaborative and positive.

“We were sorely mistaken,” Weiss said. “Far from working with us in a collaborative spirit, Hamline is choosing to become a ‘gated’ academic community, trying to weaken our contract and union – as well as our relationships with students and fulltime faculty colleagues.”

Hamline relies on adjunct faculty to fill roughly half its teaching positions. Adjunct instructors’ workloads fluctuate at the school’s discretion, with few guarantees beyond the end of a given semester.

The intermittent nature of adjunct employment would become even more pronounced under contract language proposed by the university, union members said. One proposal would eliminate standing arrangements that protect adjunct instructors from having to reapply for teaching jobs each semester. Another would block their access to university email accounts, library services and online records in between teaching assignments.

The changes, faculty members warn, would impede their own scholarship and cut them off from students, who often look to instructors for academic assistance or networking support after a semester ends.

The school also rejected the union’s proposal that adjunct faculty members be allowed to carry over earned sick and safe time from one academic year to the next, Wiebe said. Some instructors have been teaching at Hamline for 17 years without accruing a single day of sick leave.

“It’s something we thought it would be reasonable to ask for,” Wiebe said. “We’re trying to work with an unconventional model, being on the academic calendar, but nevertheless ensure some continuity and security for ourselves and our families.”

Hamline’s previous contract with adjunct faculty members, finalized in Feburary 2016 after a first-of-its-kind organizing drive in Minnesota, expired in September. Anthropology instructor Marcia Regan, who has been teaching at Hamline since 2004, said progress on a new agreement won’t come until administrators put posturing aside.

“We know, as dedicated professionals who teach because we believe in the Hamline students, that our long-term connection to Hamline makes us better teachers and deepens our ties to the Hamline community,” Regan said. “The administration refuses to recognize that value, and this has really undercut our best efforts to reach an agreement.”

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Hamline adjunct faculty members vote to join union

June 20, 2014 by

In the first union-organizing election among faculty members at a private college in Minnesota, adjunct instructors at Hamline University in St. Paul voted to join Local 284 of the Service Employees International Union.

Eligible faculty members at Hamline cast their ballots by mail earlier this month. A vote tally took place this morning at the Minneapolis office of the National Labor Relations Board, with 72 percent voting in favor of forming the union.

The victory at Hamline is a shot of momentum for the SEIU’s Adjunct Action organizing campaign both nationally and locally. In voting to form a union, Hamline faculty members joined instructors at Northeastern University, Georgetown University and a growing number of institutions across the U.S.

Closer to home, St. Paul is becoming a hotbed of adjunct union activity. In addition to the 83 Hamline instructors who joined SEIU today, about 300 adjunct instructors at St. Thomas University are scheduled to vote by mail in an organizing election next month.

Contingent faculty members at Macalester College petitioned the NLRB for an election in May, but they have since pulled that petition. No election is scheduled, although organizing continues.

Jhon Wlaschin, an adjunct psychology instructor at both Hamline and St. Thomas who has been active in both organizing drives, said the overwhelming victory at Hamline is proof of a strong appetite for collective bargaining among part-time faculty members.

“It’s confirmation that there’s a lot of other people in my situation, that are trying to earn a living teaching and finding it very difficult, finding that being an adjunct is kind of an isolating lifestyle,” Wlaschin said. “We don’t really know each other, we don’t feel like we have any voice, like we don’t have any future.

“Now we can join together, get to know each other, hear each other’s issues, work together to maybe make teaching a viable living and career in higher education. That’s all very exciting and encouraging.”

Economics 101

While Hamline, like most colleges across the country, has steadily increased its reliance on non-tenured teaching staff, adjunct faculty members at the school have not seen a pay raise in 10 years, adjunct English instructor Jennifer Beckham said. The “vast majority” of adjunct instructors, she said, earn $4,000 per course and do not qualify for benefits like health insurance or a retirement plan.

“I’ve asked for a raise,” Beckham, who has taught at Hamline the last nine years, remembered. “I was told that they don’t do raises, that nobody would receive a raise and as long as there was parity with other institutions in the area, there would not be raises.”

Even those instructors who teach courses at multiple institutions report struggling to afford basic necessities like rent and health insurance, Beckham added. Many instructors are paying off loans they took out in order to gain the degrees necessary to teach at a post-secondary institution.

“I have multiple advanced degrees,” Beckham said. “Most adjuncts have a Ph.D. I think most people, by the time they have the qualifications to do the work we do, are at a stage where you need to be having some kind of stability.

“Many adjuncts delay starting families because the work we do does not sustain our families. Many people won’t be able to retire.”

A new model

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. Wlaschin knows that from experience.

Before becoming a psychology professor, Wlaschin said, he worked in the film industry in New York. Jobs were temporary, and he bounced from employer to employer as work on one film ended and another began. But because Wlaschin was a member of the Stagehands union, his employers paid into a health and welfare fund maintained by the union.

“It would be great to have a citywide contract, like what we had in the film union,” Wlaschin said. “A union might advocate for a kind of agreement among the different universities to contribute to greater benefits like health care or maybe even a 401k.

“If Hamline or St. Thomas wants to keep adjuncts as part-time workers, it’s still within our rights to try to cobble together a full-time living.”

A citywide contract will require a lot more organizing, Wlaschin and other adjunct instructors acknowledged. But today’s election results were a step in the right direction.

“As adjuncts, we shoulder a huge economic burden in higher education institutions,” Beckham said. “Pushing for our teaching to be valued more, I think, is a small step, but if this is a step back toward more emphasis on teaching and education, then that’s a good thing.”

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