adjunct « UMass Lowell Union of Adjunct Faculty

Service Employees International Union launched its Adjunct Action campaign less than two years ago, with an ambitious goal: take SEIU's metro-wide adjunct organizing effort in Washington, D.C. — which took years to establish — national, and fast. Drives were soon happening from Boston to San Francisco, leading to a dozen new unions.

Now Adjunct Action is touting its first successful contract negotiation, and adjuncts at Tufts University outside Boston are saying it could serve a model for the many contract negotiations happening elsewhere.

Highlights include significant pay increases, longer-term contracts and — perhaps most meaningfully — the right to be interviewed for full-time positions in one’s department.

Tufts adjuncts tout pay and job security gains in first union contract @insidehighered.

Shoving workers into the precariat like this is the manifestation of corporate greed. That’s clear because some retailers and restaurants including Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Modell’s Sporting Goods stores in Manhattan make profits while treating workers fairly. In many of these cases, the workers are represented by unions that bargain for better conditions. That includes schedules posted weeks in advance, full-time work, vacation and sick pay and health insurance coverage.

Collective bargaining gives union workers more power to resist attempts by corporations to impose insecurity.

Precarious Academic Workers Are Pushing Back Against the Tenuous Track – Working In These Times.

What would academe look like without adjuncts? That question could be answered, at least for a day, on the first-ever National Adjunct Walkout Day, planned for Feb. 25, 2015. The protest to highlight adjuncts’ relatively low wages and working conditions – despite the fact that they make up the majority of instructors – is gaining traction on social media, including on Facebook and on Twitter at #NAWD.

via National Adjunct Walkout Day Planned @insidehighered.