From Justine Hecht and Joe Ramsey
Contingency Contract Language and Strategy Exchange
On June 11, 2024 Higher Education Labor United’s Contingency Task Force (CTF) joined with HELU member organization, the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), alongside MTA’s Higher Education for All campaign, to co-host a “Contingency Contract Language Exchange and Strategy Session.” Over 60 adjunct and contingent faculty organizers came from colleges and universities across the country for an engaged two hours of reflections on recent contract struggles and strategies.
The event featured a panel of leading adjunct faculty organizers from Rutgers Adjunct Union (Bryan Sacks), Clark College in Washington State (Sydney Brahmavar), and UMass Amherst’s MSP/MTA (Clare Hammonds). Each speaker highlighted some of their bargaining gains for contingent faculty (from near 50% adjunct faculty pay raises at Rutgers, major progress toward pay parity at Clark, and paid sabbaticals for NTT faculty at UMass Amherst!), as well as the strategies (up to and including striking) used to win those victories–and also what is now needed to defend them from resistant higher ed administrators.
“This contingency contract language workshop was a great opportunity to share and collaborate together. It was inspiring to hear folks share their contract language that they won, the organizing plans that they enacted, and contract provisions that they hope to win,” said Stephanie Marcotte, MTA Political and Community Organizer.
Attendees participated in one of 5 breakout sessions focused on specific areas of contract provisions: Wages and Workload, Benefits, Job Security, Academic Freedom and the broader question of how to organize towards Faculty Equality. The featured gains stand out as models of what can be done when contingent faculty, who are 75% of the higher ed academic workforce, have an activist union representing them. Many contingents, however, are still poorly organized or represented or work in states where higher ed does not have collective bargaining at all. All the more reason, therefore, for holding these national organizing zoom meetings.
HELU’s Contingency Task Force meets every other Saturday. We are planning our next collaborative event, organized with the Debt Collective, for July 31, “Breaking the Chains of Contingent Labor and Debt.”