Adjunct Professors Rally For Better Pay
On Aug. 28, the Whittier Student-Worker Alliance (WSWA) announced on Instagram that they would be holding a rally outside of the Human Resources office in the Campus Courtyard on Aug. 30 in conjunction with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 721. The rally is in support of the adjunct professors at Whittier College as they negotiate their contracts with the College through SEIU.
As of Aug. 30, the contracts for adjunct professors dictate that they be paid $1,550 per course that they teach in a school year — which may vary from semester to semester — as they work their way to a tenure position i.e. a full-time position with the College. Because adjunct professors are contracted from a year-to-year basis, their employment year-to-year is not guaranteed, meaning that adjunct professors experience little to no job security whilst employed at the College.
According to adjunct professor of anthropology Dia Flores Vechayiem, meetings between adjuncts and SEIU Local 721 began back in May 2023, at which time adjuncts voiced their concerns — per unit wage raises, professional development wage raises, timely reappointment notifications, etc. — to the union. Whittier College was not contacted until July, when the union adjuncts had organized and compiled a list of demands and needs that they were ready to present to the College. “July, we started having joint bargaining sessions with the College,” Flores-Vechayiem shared. “We went to the table to tell them, ‘This is what we have, this is what we want,’ as we tried to negotiate our terms.” Vechayiem also noted that the College had set forth Sept. 4 as a deadline for the bargaining to be resolved and an agreement to be situated.
On Aug. 29, prior to the rally, WSWA posted an update on their Instagram story: “The adjunct’s union [SEIU] has made a tentative agreement with the college that meets their demands! Our rally tomorrow [Aug. 30] will be a celebration of this victory…”
With this tentative agreement, the College has agreed to grant adjuncts a 29 percent wage increase, meaning that an adjunct professor will be paid $2,000 per course they teach rather than $1,550. Additionally, the union also fought for and won the right for adjuncts to be notified by the College about canceled classes and compensation for said classes, and the administrative decision to discontinue the adjunct’s time at Whittier College with ample time for the adjunct to find a new assignment. In the past, adjuncts would not receive any sort of notification from the College about their reappointment until mid-Summer.
If the tentative agreement goes into effect, then the College will be required to provide reappointment letters by June for the Fall semester, and November for the Spring semester. Vechayiem also noted that SEIU bargained for a cancellation fee of $500 in the event of a last-minute class cancellation in order to compensate the adjunct for any time they may have spent preparing a lesson-plan.
The College also agreed to notify adjuncts by a certain date if the adjunct was going to be receiving a new class out of the blue. This development was especially appealing to adjunct professor of Spanish Fatima Garcia, who emphasized how quickly the turn-around was expected to be: “[We’d do it] over a few days. Which puts a lot of stress on us because a lot of us…work on multiple campuses, so we already have classes, we already have our schedule, and all of a sudden we get added more to our load. So it’s a lot of stress.”
Another concern that the adjuncts bargained for was higher professional development wages. According to Vechayiem, the original wage was “relatively low, $250. Now, I believe we got numbers up to $700. So we’ve also bargained for professional development for adjunct faculty so we can represent Whittier at conferences and we won’t have to scrape by. Before we were literally scraping by.”
Furthermore, the adjunct union negotiated with the College the issue of tenureship. Prior to these negotiations, as full-time jobs became available, rather than looking internally to the adjunct professors all vying for the job security that tenured position would ensure, the College looked externally, shocking adjuncts. Now, with this tentative agreement, the College has agreed to first notify adjuncts of any available full-time positions before turning their sights externally.
Because of the swift turn-around from negotiations to tentative agreement, the combined powers of WSWA and SEIU transformed the originally planned protestation rally into a victory rally. Despite the small turnout of students, SEIU union leaders, and adjunct professors, loudly and proudly celebrated the win. They marched around the perimeter of the Campus Courtyard in the heat, wielding signs that read, for example, “Whittier Students Stand With Adjuncts,” all whilst chanting call and response slogans like, “When adjuncts are under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight Back!” and, “Who’s got the power? We got the power! What kind of power? Union power!”
This kind of display of student power and unity isn’t an unfamiliar one. Spring 2023 saw a month-long strike, spanning from late March until late April, from the CI workers as they fought for a long overdue wage raise. With the strike, the College saw a massive influx of student protest power, all of which was coordinated by WSWA chair Aidan Moore and co-chair Arlo Tinsman-Kongshaug, both fourth-years.
Originally formed during the Fall semester of 2022, WSWA was founded with the intention of directly aiding the CI workers as they fought for their rights. On switching their focus to the adjunct professors, Moore stated that, “When I got here at the start of term, we were pretty much just looking forward to the CI workers and their further negotiations over pensions in October. The adjuncts sort of came out of nowhere […] First weekend I was back here, I got a text from their union rep. asking for a rally on Wednesday. So I put together a rally and that’s pretty much what happened.”
Which is not to say that the CI workers and their struggles have been forgotten, but the decision to pivot for the foreseeable future was an easy one, given how similar the adjuncts’ demands were to what the CI workers were demanding: higher wages to support themselves as the cost of living continues to rise not just in California, but all across the United States, fair and respectful treatment from the College administration, etc.
Many people have their fingers crossed that the College will not backtrack on this tentative agreement. “I think at this point in negotiations,” Moore muses, “I’m fairly confident that the College isn’t going to go back. From what I understand, they have been pretty respectful throughout this negotiation process and have been negotiating in good faith.”
Vechayiem added, “My hope is that the college and the union ratifies the contract quickly so that we can get that 29 percent wage increase into effect by this Fall […] So we’re just making sure we crossed our t’s, dotted our i’s, making sure […] we get that 29 percent because that is the main victory we’re celebrating today.”
In spite of the heat and the smaller turnout, adjunct professor of Education Kathy Villalon was still incredibly grateful for student support and the effort that the members of WSWA put into planning the victory rally: “We care for our students. We look out for them and they look out for us.” Garcia added, “To see that they support us and that they care about us, that really warms my heart.”
In light of unions all over the nation striking for their basic human rights, this win for the adjuncts is not a small one. It also does not mean that the fight is over. A victory for one is a victory for all.
Photo courtesy of SEIU.
