As you may know, the Temple Association of University
Professionals (TAUP) is currently negotiating with the university
administration for the first labor contract for adjuncts. Although we have been
at the table since last May, negotiations are not going well. It appears the
administration would like to continue to treat adjuncts as an exploitable,
low-wage labor force.
Although Temple’s revenues soared 72 percent from 2006 to
2016, its instructional budget during the same time only increased by 45
percent. The poor treatment of adjuncts is the most glaring example of the
administration’s refusal to invest in the faculty who along with students are
the heart of the university. This is not due to a lack of funds; it’s due to
misplaced priorities.
Adjuncts are crucial to the teaching enterprise of Temple
University, yet we are treated as expendable workers without dignity or
respect. For years, the numbers of adjuncts employed by Temple rose
precipitously. And when TAUP began the effort to organize adjuncts into the
faculty union, the university did everything it could to prevent that from
happening, including testifying before the PA Labor Relations Board that adjuncts
were not real faculty. While adjuncts comprise 51 percent of Temple’s teaching
force, we are paid just 9 percent of total faculty compensation. While we teach
more than a quarter of all undergraduate courses, our wages are less than 4
percent of Temple’s total expenditure for instruction. A typical student pays
around $1,800 to take a 3-credit class, and a typical adjunct is paid $3,900 to
teach that class, so it takes about 2 students to cover the instructional
costs. An adjunct teaching the maximum number of credits at Temple would make
$20,800 per year. That’s 38.5 percent below the cost of living for a single
person with no children in Philadelphia. The math here is crystal clear.
And so, unfortunately, is the morality. I am reminded of
one of Martin Luther King’s favorite phrases. He often said that “the arc of
the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” From my vantage point as an
adjunct I see the arc of Temple’s moral universe bending decisively toward rank
exploitation. I see a ballooning and overcompensated corps of administrators,
and the construction of sparkly new buildings that undercut Temple’s commitment
to teaching as the highest priority.
We should be wary of the notion, though, that the arc of
the moral universe bends towards justice automatically, and we should note that
when King uttered the phrase he was in the forefront of a vast movement toiling
to bend that arc from Jim Crow to a more inclusive, non-racial democracy.
The most important thing we need to know is this: the arc
of Temple’s moral universe will finally bend toward justice when we grab it and
shape it with our bodies and our strength. That’s why we need unions, like the
Temple Association of University Professionals, leading the fight for dignity
and fairness for adjuncts and for all faculty. We are responsible for the
trajectory of the arc; we are responsible for bending that arc towards justice.
It is not going to happen on its own; we see this in the damning statistics
that reveal Temple’s disregard for teachers. The corporate university will not
cease to operate on a market-driven, race-to-the-bottom logic for labor costs
until we use our bodies and our strength to create a Temple University, where
all faculty and all workers are compensated fairly and its highest priorities
are teaching and learning.
Wende Marshall is an adjunct professor teaching in
the Intellectual Heritage Program.
Source: Temple News
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