Organizing the Academic Precariat in the United States

• Published in: Global labour journal Vol. 9; no. 1; p. 76
• Main Authors: Atkins, Celeste, Esparza, Louis E., Milkman, Ruth, Moran, Catherine L
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hamilton McMaster University Library Press 01-01-2018
• Subjects: Academic freedom; Colleges & universities; Community colleges; Decentralization; Employment security; Governance; Higher education; Insecure; Job security; Masks; Private sector; Tenure; Unionization; Working conditions; United States > US
• ISSN: 1918-6711; 1918-6711
• DOI: 10.15173/glj.v9i1.3385

Faculty labour in the US is increasingly “contingent”, as tenure-track and tenured positions are rapidly being replaced by “adjuncts”, “lecturers”, “instructors” and other faculty who lack traditional protections of academic freedom and job security. In light of this, contingent faculty have been actively organising themselves into unions on many campuses. Unionisation efforts for nontenure-track faculty have often been highly successful, yet significant hurdles remain. Although it is common to refer to all faculty outside the tenure-system faculty as “contingent”, this umbrella term masks enormous variation in pay, benefits, working conditions, job security and inclusion in governance. The diverse range of institutional types within the US higher education system (community colleges, four-year public universities, for-profit colleges, private liberal arts colleges and elite research universities, to name a few), and its unusual degree of decentralisation, add further complexity to our understanding of precarious American academiclabour.