Universities and colleges across North Carolina are currently endorsing employment policies regarding part-time faculty that are both unethical and illegal. Disregarding the fair labor practices that have been outlined by the United States Department of Labor regarding contingent workers, the administrators of higher education have fabricated a system that hides their blatant exploitation of part-time faculty. To save money, university and colleges are willing to circumvent the laws and basic rights of employees by intentionally mislabeling them “part-time,” and they have gotten away with it for years.

My position at Western Carolina University is a perfect example of such exploitation. My job is considered “part-time,” though my workload matches that of many full-time faculty members. My contract states that I am a “70 percent” employee, which justifies their classification of this as a part-time position. However, I am asked to participate in extracurricular activities with students, attend professional workshops, meetings, and Saturday departmental grading sessions, which in addition to planning, facilitating, and evaluating a full-time load of teaching, amounts to over 50-60 hours of work a week. The term “part-time” work is a misnomer, and it is deliberate. Essentially, it is a lie.

Conversely, the terminology regarding “part-time” pay and benefits is right on target. Part-time faculty salaries in the English Department at Western are low, and at $18,000 are well below the national average for full-time lecturers, which is over $35,000. Unlike other state employees, part-time faculty salaries do not increase with the cost of living. Furthermore, part-time faculty receive no state health insurance (and cannot afford to purchase it privately), no retirement benefits, no job security, no chance at promotion, and do not even enjoy the simple benefits of full-time employees like being able to take free classes for professional development at the institution where they teach.

The low salary and lack of benefits ironically serve to feed this very system of exploitation. To make ends meet, I and others at Western have to supplement our teaching load by picking up classes at the surrounding community colleges, and they further participate in this massive abuse of labor, as Chris Cox, head of the general education program at Southwestern Community College, acknowledges in his April 22 column in the Asheville Citizen-Times.

SCC pays even lower wages than Western, right around $1,000 per class, and therefore teachers have to try to teach as many classes as possible to pay the bills. Like other community colleges, SCC only pays in terms of “contact” hours, the actual hours spent in the classroom, knowing well that a teacher’s work preparing, grading, and conferencing outside of a classroom far exceeds the specified contact hours. “Part-time” faculty often wind up teaching eight classes per semester - a load that is as much or more than a full-time faculty member would teach in an entire year.

Why would state institutions deliberately condone and advocate the use of practices that violate the fair employment standards established by the U.S. Department of Labor? To save a buck and because they can.

In fact, they have found the practice so advantageous to their budgets that they are using more and more part-time labor to teach classes. Part-time lecturers teach 75 percent of first-year composition classes at Western and make up 50 percent of faculty in the English Department. At community colleges like Haywood and Southwestern, those numbers are even higher, and the exploitation is even more severe.

Part-time laborers are not hired to manage temporary, unexpected fluctuations in enrollment; they are wrongly used as permanent solutions to the need for full-time workers. Because Western anticipates a growing first-year class in fall 2001, three new part-time positions in the English Department have been created. As full-time faculty retire or enter phase-retirement, more part-time positions are created to fill the void. Full-time faculty positions are replaced by twice as many part-time faculty - for the same price. While some might argue that part-time teachers need to quit whining and find full-time teaching positions, the reality is that, because of the over-reliance on part-time labor, full-time openings are practically nonexistent.

The effects of this rampant exploitation of labor are devastating to faculty, students and, in consequence, to the universities and colleges themselves. When teachers teach a full load during the day, add supplemental classes at night, and then stagger home at 9 or 10 o’clock at night to grade, extremely low employee morale is inevitable. Students ultimately feel the stress and frustration of their teachers, and their learning suffers in turn. Colleges and universities, in cutting corners, are slashing away at the very essence of their purpose - education.

The abuse of labor by institutions of higher learning parallels a growing trend in all levels of business across the country. However, many part-time laborers have fought and won against such unfair practices. Laborers incorrectly labeled as part-time workers at Microsoft won a $97 million class-action lawsuit against the software manufacturer for denying them full-time benefits for full-time work. Just because a company terms a worker as “temporary” and “part-time” doesn’t mean those labels will hold up in court. Perhaps a class-action lawsuit is necessary for colleges and universities to realize that their actions are wrong. Perhaps a strike would be even more effective.

Attempts to organize labor unions and question existing practice by part-time college faculty have been suppressed in Western North Carolina. One colleague of mine at Western tried to organize faculty members at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in 1998 and was quickly silenced. When news of the part-time labor newsletter The Adjunct Alliance made the cover of Mountain Xpress that summer, its organizers were told by their department head to “think of their careers.” Because of the structure administrators have established, they need not fire part-timers who speak out against exploitation; they simply need not renew the semester-to-semester contracts. While I personally feel supported by my department at Western to address this issue, I know that not all part-time workers enjoy this right.

Community colleges and local universities must reevaluate their stances on part-time labor. If administrators do not wake up to the fact that discontent and rebellion are growing, a lawsuit or strike could cost more than what they are saving by exploiting their teachers.

(Godfrey teaches English at Western Carolina University. She can be reached at godfrey@wcu.edu)

 

Back to Top
The Smoky Mountain News