Adjunct organizing – the “metro strategy”

The casualization of academic labor in the US has reached extreme proportions. Adjuncts now constitute around 3/4 of teachers. The situation for the adjuncts themselves is of course bad: bad obviously for their ability to make a living and plan a life, bad for their health, bad for their psychological well-being and dignity (and that’s leaving aside the stress from the burden of student loans), bad for their work as teachers and mentors to their students, bad for their capacity to engage in scholarship, bad for their relationships in academe,… It’s also bad for students, of course. And bad for academic freedom and the future of scholars in politics.

Fortunately, a new organizing strategy by the SEIU might prove effective. These two articles describe adjuncts’ working conditions and the “metro strategy” of organizing adjuncts – otherwise isolated in temporary positions across various campuses – in entire urban areas:

• “Adjunct Faculty, Now in the Majority, Organize Citywide”

• “Mad Professors”

Promising news at long last.