Today I got a paycut.
No discussion, no warning, and no recourse. By "restructuring" the payment plan for "simplicity" they have cut my pay by about 12% while making the dates of payment almost completely random. Some months I'll get a large amount; other months I might get a couple hundred. It makes no sense to me.
I have no union. I have no tenure. I am adjunct, singular, "self-employed." The IRS thinks that I am a company called "Teaching."
Even with this cut, I still have it good. That is, I have enough. I pay rent and even send the odd check to my student loans. Not a regular check, mind, but I won't be dealing with this by eating less. I will probably need to cancel the vacation in July.
Still, it makes me sit back and wonder. What the hell has happened with my life? How is it that I am as old as I am, as established as I am in my field, published and presented, yet in moment, I can suddenly earn 12% less without any consideration?
What's more, as part of the restructuring, we won't get a paycheck until the drop deadline passes. In other words, if I grade honestly and scare a few snowflakes into dropping, the lower student count will be reflected in my paycheck.
Even if I try my best to remain honest in my grading, my colleagues won't. The University will "please" its customers, and no one will learn a thing.
Because I am freaking the frack out, I cannot come up with anything witty to say. So, CMers: What would you say or do? To whom? and how?
You won't get paid until after the drop date?! I'm speechless. What should you do? I don't know. I'm starting to think that there has to be some ground-swelling of all of us who teach at the post secondary level. We need to make it clear that this continual dumbing down to satisfy the customers is NOT okay. A degree is meaning less and less and has less and less to do with education. If we all grumble in solitude, afraid to lose our jobs or otherwise "get in trouble," nothing will improve.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had a good answer here. All I can say is that I hear the aesthetics field (aka "waxing") is quite lucrative, and I'm thinking of getting certified to do that. It's a growth industry.
ReplyDeleteWow. Just wow.
ReplyDelete"If we all grumble in solitude, afraid to lose our jobs or otherwise "get in trouble," nothing will improve. "
ReplyDeletePrecisely. This is why you need a union. This is precisely the problem that only collective action can address.
O fuck fuck fuck I am so sorry. For the way they are treating you, hand out As at the beginning of the class for everything. Then fail 'em right and left after the drop. You don't owe anyone anything. I am sick of "it's not the students' fault." Yes it is -- it is their and their parents' fault for not rising en masse and protesting this country's complete divestment from education, K-16.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, check out the devastating news about Penn State.
Document this as best possible and send it to your local newspaper and to the Chronicle of Higher Education. One might hope that the administration of your institution is subject to embarassment....
ReplyDeleteYou were planning a vacation before today? Your life can't be so bad. Haven't you heard that 10% of people are unemployed?
ReplyDeleteWhen the university I was working for pulled repeated crap like this on me, I went out and found myself a new job. I know, that's easier said than done, especially these days, but someone needs to send these bastards a message that this isn't OK.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, you have my sympathy. I'm in Wisconsin, where the Repugnican governor is cutting a billion dollars out of the education budget, and trying to take away collective bargaining rights (which faculty just got about a year and a half ago). My pay is cut 12% too. The faculty on my campus are about to join the American Federation of Teachers, for all the good it will probably do us.
ReplyDeleteI'm with issyvvoo and Frod. If you are at all mobile, find another job. NOW. Any school that is going to make your pay contingent on how many students you have after the drop date is not a place you want to be.
I get my first paycheck a month after the semester starts, which is about two weeks past the drop deadline. I account for it, but it makes me furious.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, at my school we're getting pay cuts too--in the form of increased pension contributions that we must pay, while the state pays a lower share. All the while, enrollment is surging beyond belief.
I'm just a student, but reading this material so often leaves me wondering, why haven't adjuncts formed any meaningful union? I'm sorry if it is a naive question...but there are (sadly) so many of you and you're among the brightest people out there...so why haven't you all unionized?
ReplyDeleteAbove all though, I'm so sorry for your troubles and I hope that a better moment arrives soon.
Academic Monkey, I'm sorry to hear this. I'm not surprised, but I am nonetheless sorry to hear it. I can't understand why teaching has become so incredibly devalued. And the fact that institutions want advanced degrees, publication records, and service til you're bleeding out the fucking ears, all for pay around the poverty line, well, I just shake my head. I encourage everyone...think of what else you can do...you'll probably be paid better.
ReplyDeleteAmy: Adjucts have to re-apply for their jobs every single term. Union organizing would be noticed. The school can simply not hire you for any reason it likes - it's under no obligation to keep you on staff, and cannot be prosecuted for wrongful dismissal - you simply came to the end of your contract and were not re-hired.
ReplyDeleteAdd to this the fact that adjuncts are not treated as part of the community and often made to feel they have no vested interest in the place. Add to this that they are overworked. Add to this that many of them are working the jobs in what they hope are temporary positions as they apply for permanent positions. Add to this that some of them are graduate students.
I would feel uncomfortable starting a union, and I have tenure-track job. Maybe once I have tenure...
Our adjuncts are unionized. Most adjuncts in Canada are unionized. It's not at all impossible to do. I know you're living in a Rethuglican country that hates unions, but surely even so there are laws against firing people for unionizing? It would be hard to show that a new hire had not been rehired for trying to organize a union, but it would be easy to show that someone who's been teaching there for years with high student evaluations and no problems had failed to be rehired for that reason.
ReplyDeleteMy advice would be, get a good labour lawyer, get some advice, and start a card drive. This is obscene.
@Monkey: That's awful. I'm so sorry. Like No Cookies, I'm probably going to get a pay cut in the form of decreased pension contributions (accompanied by much verbal legerdemain claiming it isn't really a cut). There's a lot of benefit-cutting going around for those of us who are lucky enough to have benefits (to my shame, even my church is doing this to its employees; I've protested, but to no avail, and I have to admit that their benefits were very generous -- e.g. coverage of out-of-pocket health expenses as well as a very generous proportion of the insurance premium. Still, a pay cut is a pay cut, and it shouldn't be called by any other name). Since adjuncts don't have benefits, the slight-of-hand has to take a different form, so I guess that "revising the pay schedule" is it. Whatever they call it, it sucks. A
ReplyDelete@Amy: as others have pointed out, union organizing can backfire for adjuncts. For instance, at one university I know of, formation of an adjuncts' union resulted in the creation of more high-teaching-load/crap pay full-time jobs, since the union only covered part-timers. And then there are the right-to-work states, where organizing is basically futile. And I don't even know how the folks at online-only universities would begin to organize.
Another piece of the puzzle that has me worried: even if all of us who have been teaching for a couple of decades at too-low pay quit within the next few years, we'd probably just be replaced by 20-somethings who sat out the recession in grad school, and are now willing to live in mom and dad's basement "for a year or two" while "getting their foot in the door" of university teaching. It will probably take them about a decade to realize they're headed down a dead-end street. On the other hand, maybe their famous entitlement will lead them to quit, or squawk, sooner than we did/do?
@F&T: I just googled "Penn State cuts" (funny how I could figure out almost immediately what word to add to narrow down the results). Oh, dear.
ReplyDeleteI work in a right-to-work state. WE can't be fired for organizing, but we CAN be "not rehired" for organizing. The school doesn't have to give any reason for why it's not rehiring us. They can not rehire me because they don't like my haircut, my shoes, or my politics.
ReplyDeleteThe sad thing is that aside from its shitty labor policies, I actually quite like where I live.
We don't have a union but we do have a faculty association which does fairly well by us in terms of pay and benefits. What it doesn't do is fight to let us hold students to higher standards, both by raising entrance requirements and by giving appropriate grades. Why not? If that were to happen, at least half of us would be out of a job because we would not have enough students to fill the college.
ReplyDelete