But, once more, CCAC has highlighted the working conditions of temporary faculty; at APSCUF, these same concerns have been front-and-center in our current, two-year-long struggle for a contract. First, PASSHE management wanted to increase temporary work hours without additional compensation (they already only pay partial premiums on health care for those between 6 and 12 hours of workload per semester). Then, after much discussion at the table and with various outside groups, the State System decided in early October to switch their proposal from increased workload to a pay cut of 35 percent! The outcry at this has moved the Chancellor’s team to a new tact: part-time temporaries get no pay increases at all over the course of this contract; the cynical among us suspect many full-timers will, like the CCAC adjuncts, be shifted to part-time to save money.

These days temporary faculty make up about one-third of APSCUF’s faculty bargaining unit. Nationally, contingent, adjunct, or temporary faculty (by whatever name smells as sweet) are now the faculty majority.

It is outrageous for management to treat such a huge portion of our colleagues as itinerant workers, like administrators are C. Montgomery Burns and the highly educated, highly skilled faculty are expendable like Homer Simpson in the nuclear power plant. Our temporary faculty colleagues deserve better.

-Steve