Recent years have seen a wave of adjunct-faculty union organizing, particularly in the private sector. These bargaining units typically are adjunct-exclusive, in large part because of the US Supreme Court’s 1980 NLRB vs. Yeshiva University ruling, which held that private-sector tenure and tenure-track faculty are managerial. However, unionization for both full- and part-time faculty has long had legal support in the public sector (with state-level variation). Although this has led to some adjunct-exclusive bargaining units (e.g., some state community colleges in New York), in two of the largest systems in the country—the City University of New York (CUNY) and California State University (CSU)—adjunct faculty are in the same units with their tenured colleagues.
The CSU and CUNY systems both have approximately 25 campuses, and both faculty unions were taken over by progressive leadership at approximately the same time (1999 and 2000, respectively). Yet, CSU adjunct faculty (called “Lecturers”) have a version of pay parity as well as broad-based job security, whereas those at CUNY make only $3,200 per course to start and only 2,200 of more than 10,000 adjunct faculty have job security. This difference is stark. What factors explain the divergent outcomes for adjunct faculty in the CSU and CUNY systems? This article presents the following five hypotheses:
1. Right to Strike. Unlike in the private sector, public-sector labor law is governed at the state level. New York State has long had extraordinarily onerous penalties for public-sector strikes, whereas California’s 1978 legislation permits them. The Professional Staff Congress (PSC)—which is the American Federation of Teachers union local representing CUNY faculty and professional staff—has twice threatened to strike, once in 1973 and again in 2016. Conversely, the California Faculty Association (CFA)—California State’s faculty union—has led true work stoppages and threatened them more legitimately at other times.
2. State-Level Politics. Although both New York and California are large progressive states with substantial tax bases, their political compositions vary significantly. The New York State Senate has long been controlled by the Republican Party. In 2010, when its grip had slipped, a group of rogue Democrats began to caucus with Republicans—a practice that finally ended in 2018 when progressives defeated six of the eight aisle-crossers. Meanwhile, recent Democratic supermajorities in both chambers of the California legislature increased taxes, generating more revenue for agency funding. Between 2013 and 2018, California increased spending on higher education by 52.5%—the highest increase in the country—whereas New York spent only 14.6% more in the same period (Seltzer Reference Seltzer2018). In addition, CUNY faculty salaries have never recovered from cuts foisted on the system during the financial crisis of the 1970s.
3. Contingency. In 1969, an arbitrator handling a case about reappointment rights ruled in favor of CUNY adjunct faculty—in essence, upholding a system of just-cause termination. However, when the PSC—formed from a merger of two unions—ratified its first contract in 1973, this practice was abandoned (Tirelli Reference Tirelli2007). Meanwhile, a similarly positive ruling from a California arbitrator in 1985 defined the contractual language of “careful consideration” for reappointment to the benefit of adjunct faculty. This second ruling came after the establishment of the broad “wall-to-wall” union model that prevails today at CSU, and it remains intact.
4. The First Contract. When the first union contract was settled for California State faculty, three of the five Lecturer lines had the same pay scale as their tenure and tenure-track counterparts. In large part, this was the result of the state education code, which—even without a union contract—was supposed to place all faculty on the same salary schedule (Hoffman and Hess Reference Hoffman, Hess and Keith2014). In New York, meanwhile, neither the first PSC-negotiated contract in 1973 nor the contract for adjunct faculty that preceded it had these provisions. Following decades of “adjunctification,” such a demand is more difficult to win today.
5. Subjective Factors. The history of adjunct disenfranchisement in the PSC is extreme. Until new leadership won office in 2000, the union took the truly exceptional stance of declining to collect adjunct “agency fees.” In effect, this created a so-called right-to-work environment for part-time faculty. These conditions led to a failed union decertification attempt in 1986 as well as an intensely anti-union culture among some activist adjuncts that persists to this day. In the CFA, by contrast, adjunct activists had greater success in transforming feelings of disrespect into motivation to organize.
It is likely that all five hypotheses have some power in explaining the divergent outcomes for contingent faculty in the CSU and CUNY systems. Moreover, because history is made by the decisions of individuals and organizations in interaction, at some level all of the factors are—as the fifth hypothesis is named—“subjective.”
Today, in bargaining units both old and new, adjunct faculty are making history—albeit not under circumstances of their choosing. The first step is always organizing: finding leaders and transforming disrespect, oppression, and exploitation into collective motivation to organize. The program in each workplace and union will vary; however, especially for those in the public sector, engaging in and—as happened in New York in 2018—changing state-level politics are vital to raising pay for adjunct faculty. Some unions in New York are considering an effort to legalize public-sector strikes, as has long been the case in California. Regardless of the legal terrain, organized adjunct faculty should assess and build their capacity to withhold their labor, which is evermore essential to universities both public and private.
