Always an organizer, sometimes a staffer, often a pain in the ass to someone
by VanessaVaile
This week’s post is from the inimitable Joe Berry, who literally wrote the book on adjunct organizing— Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education.
Joe was instrumental in getting the 1989 Cervisi decision passed, the California code that states contingent faculty have no reasonable assurance of employment, regardless of promised contracts, and are therefore eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. I absolutely benefited from this 20 years later and many more are still benefitting from it almost 30 years later.
Joe’s story spans decades of historically significant organizing and activism. Important for our current movement, Joe writes about the challenges faced by adjunct faculty when they are in “mixed units” of TT/T and NTT faculty. There has been excitement about starting to organize all faculty together. We owe it to ourselves to understand why this may not always be the best way forward.
On a personal…
View original post 3,996 more words
As the Adjunctiverse Turns 