For decades, part-time faculty at the nation’s colleges and universities have used legislation, litigation and negotiation in their struggle for fair wages and benefits. They’ve made their case in state legislatures, before the courts and at the bargaining table. Some have been won; many have been lost.

But nowhere have there been more gains than in New York, where UUP has achieved unprecedented benefits for the part-time employees it represents. Specific gains were outlined in the 2001 AFT report “Marching Toward Equity: Curbing the Exploitation and Overuse of Part-time and Non-tenured Faculty,” in which it was reported that UUP’s 1999-2003 contract “resulted in one of the most comprehensive packages of part-time pay and benefits in the country so far.”

“UUP has worked long and hard to make inroads for part-timers,” said UUP President Phillip Smith. “The gains we’ve made have taken years to achieve. It has been an uphill battle for UUP—both at the bargaining table and in campus labor/management meetings—but one we’ll keep on fighting. Our part-time colleagues have been exploited long enough.”

Slowly but surely, UUP contracts over the years have grown to include provisions for part-time faculty that, in many areas, mirror those for full-time faculty, including year-round health insurance, contractual salary increases, lump sum payments, opportunities for professional development, and dental, vision and prescription drug coverage. A detailed fact sheet on contractual benefits can be found on the UUP Web site at www.uupinfo.org. Click on Benefits and scroll down to Part-timers.

Since 2001, UUP chapters have taken a stand during Campus Equity Week (CEW), an international initiative designed to educate the public, college communities and policymakers on issues of fairness and equity for part-time faculty in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. UUP views CEW as one important way to raise awareness about the inequitable employment practices faced by part-timers and to highlight the quality of contributions they make on SUNY campuses (see related story, page 11).

UUP’s new Task Force on Contingent Employees is another way the union is working for its members.

In March, President Smith charged the committee to define “contingent” from the perspective of UUP and SUNY, and to identify the various relationships among contingent workers. The nine-member task force will recommend actions, policies and procedures to address the concerns of SUNY’s contingent faculty, such as part-timers who want full-time work and full-timers who want a tenure-track position or the opportunity for permanent appointment.

“This is another important step in our journey for parity for all academic and professional members,” Smith said. “The task force report will give UUP the ammunition is needs to shoot holes in any arguments made by SUNY and the state.”

The union’s Part-time Concerns Committee, co-chaired by Jill Hanifan of Albany and Carolyn Kube of Stony Brook HSC, has also created a Web site that includes a password-protected link for committee members to exchange ideas. To log on to the public site, go to www.uupinfo.org, click on Committees on the left side of the home page and then scroll down to Part-time Concerns Committee.

And there’s a new national organization dedicated to achieving professional equity and advancing academic freedom for contingent faculty across the country.

Called the New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct & Contingent Equity, the group’s board of directors includes UUP members Peter D.G. Brown of New Paltz, Ross Borden of Cortland and Anne Weigard of Cortland, who serves as secretary for New Faculty Majority.

Go to www.newfacultymajority.info to learn more.

– Karen L. Mattison