AFT Higher Ed Issues Conference:

Getting results -- Leaders work on strengthening union; advancing the academy

The AFT is hoping to put more money in locals’ coffers for political action and organizing campaigns — two of the proactive tactics discussed during the AFT Higher Education Issues Conference last month in Chicago.

In his keynote address to the more than 250 higher education advocates, AFT Secretary-Treasurer Edward McElroy said political action and tightening the bond between professional organizations are “central to strengthening our union and advancing the academy.” Unions must devote more resources to political action, he added.

McElroy stressed that anti-union factions are spending seemingly unlimited amounts of money on “high-profile referenda, high-profile public campaigns.” He cited well-crafted TV advertisements in Oklahoma that effectively persuaded voters to support the state’s right-to-work proposition.

“We have to combat these bold-faced lies and we need the resources to do that,” McElroy said.

In an attempt to increase locals’ resources, the AFT Executive Council in February backed a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow locals to apply for a cut in per-capita payments to $1 a month for each part-timer earning $10,000 or less a year. Locals would have to reapply for the dues reduction every two years.

“If the constitutional amendment is adopted, it will mean more resources that the local can retain to do its work,” McElroy said.

A second amendment to come before delegates to the AFT’s July convention would increase dues by $1 a member; a large chunk of that money would be returned to locals to support their organizing and bargaining efforts.

“We can stand up and fight or lie down and let them run over us,” McElroy said. “I know that no one believes we’ll lie down. … Education is worth the fight.”

The AFT also hopes to get results at the polls. The national federation this fall is looking to build on the slight Democratic margin in the U.S. Senate. At the same time, the AFT is eyeing 55 “marginal” seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 36 gubernatorial races, 21 of which are expected to be hotly contested, according to AFT chief of staff Ron Krouse.

“We need to leave a winning structure for the 2004 presidential election,” Krouse said. “Defeat is not an option for us.”

In his overview to participants, UUP President William Scheuerman said the three-day conference is “about pushing back the problems that are afflicting higher education and getting results.” He called for an aggressive agenda to beat back the anti-union initiatives and to tackle the “destructive trends” in higher education. Atop the list of trends: the academic personnel crisis; the attack on shared governance; and the growth of distance education schemes that are not “anchored to the fundamentals” of good education.

Conference workshops — ranging from developing strong media relations and strengthening the faculty voice to building the full-time faculty corps and advancing part-time/adjunct rights — focused on strategies to overcome these challenges.

UUP Treasurer Rowena Blackman-Stroud moderated a panel on graduate employees as unionists and professionals, while statewide Executive Board member Patricia Bentley of SUNY Plattsburgh outlined UUP’s successful legislative activities. Thomas Kriger, UUP director of research/legislation, discussed the latest developments with “corporatized” distance education.

“The most destructive trend of all, in my view, is the personnel crisis in higher education,” said Scheuerman, an AFT vice president. “We see it in the loss of full-time, tenure-track jobs, coupled with the overuse and exploitation of part-time faculty, graduate student faculty and, increasingly, full-time, non-tenured faculty.”

The AFT Higher Education Program and Policy Council, chaired by Scheuerman, drafted a statement on “Standards of Good Practice in the Employment of Part-time/Adjunct Faculty: A Blueprint for Raising Standards and Ensuring Financial and Professional Equity,” which was further fashioned during the conference. The final blueprint will be released at AFT’s July convention.

“Part-timers are terribly mistreated in terms of salary, benefits and the most basic kind of professional treatment,” McElroy said. “That’s what the draft standards are about.”

— Karen L. Mattison