AAA business meeting resolution on part-time academic labor

[Nathaniel Dumas]

Thanks for this note Lavanya. One of the issues that came up in the Ford Panel that I organized is actually the problem of incorporating so many different labor positions under the category (very similar to the problems associated with the category 'people of color') , as each of them have very different levels of investment when it comes to institutions and the people who construct those institutions through those practices. For instance, graduate assistants still have access many times to health care as part of their packages, whereas part-time adjuncts usually do not, depending on the hours they have been assigned. Moreover, with the coming of Obamacare, many contingent faculty have actually seen their hours recalculated by their institutions so that institutions can avoid paying insurance benefits for them in the coming year. Plus the stigma of being contingent as a graduate student is not necessarily the same as contingent faculty once you are a PhD recipient, which has consequences for discrimination in many competitions for fellowships and tenure track jobs, where many of us are competing with current assistant professors and newly-minted PhDs not 'tainted' with the stigma of contingent faculty and time-since-degree, as noted in the Colorado case a few years ago. Another interesting issue is that there are many travel grants available to students for conference travel via the AAAs, whereas many contingent faculty do not have this, and it may be worthwhile for the AAA to consider increasing the number of travel grants to the annual meeting for contingent faculty, many of who cannot afford to attend the meetings and end up slipping into invisibility. The Society for the Anthropology of North America has only one grant for contingent faculty travel, and I'm wondering if this may be something for the SLA to consider offering as contingent faculty positions continue to rise.) Just something to keep in mind for those who are attending the session, as this issue is really complicated and is connected to so many more aspects of the academic system (including academic freedom, which many contingent faculty DO NOT have) and knowledge production than is often discussed in debates that focus exclusively on equal pay and benefits, noted in the research produced by the Delphi Project.

Best,
Nate

On Nov 13, 2013, at 4:48 PM, Lavanya Murali Proctor wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I posted this as a comment to the Savage Minds blog, but I thought I'd mention it in this thread as well. The Committee on Labor Relations is also sponsoring a workshop on contingent faculty, "The AAA and Labor Issues: Initiatives, Goals and Dialogue." There will be time set aside for audience contributions. It is on Thursday, November 21, from 12:15-1:30 in the Waldorf Room at the Chicago Hilton.
> 
> Here's the event description:
> "The Committee on Labor Relations invites you to join anthropologists active in contingent faculty struggles, labor committee members who will report on their newly expanding charge, graduate students concerned about the academic job situation, and others interested in developing a stronger labor agenda within the AAA."
> 
> I'd also like to mention that the CLR's concern, as I understand it, is with contingent faculty broadly defined, including part-time/adjuncts, full time non-TT, grad assistants, and postdocs.
> 
> Best,
> Lavanya
> 
> -----------
> Lavanya Murali Proctor
> twitter.com/anthrocharya
> 
> 
> On 11/13/13 9:08 AM, Laura Ahearn wrote:
>> Dear All,
>> 
>> Here are a couple of charts from AAUP depicting the dramatic changes in faculty labor that make the resolution so important:
>> 
>> http://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Faculty_Trends_0.pdf
>> 
>> Laura
>> 
>> *****************************
>> Laura M. Ahearn
>> Associate Professor, Rutgers University
>> Department of Anthropology
>> Series Editor, Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Language
>> (703) 241-4127
>> Twitter: @AhearnLaura
>> http://www.anthro.rutgers.edu/fac/department-undergrad-a-grad-faculty/laura-ahearn
>> 
>> 

Nathaniel Dumas, PhD
Research Associate, Department of Anthropology
University of California, Santa Cruz
nadumas at ucsc.edu