To help faculty understand their rights and guide them with practical advice about how to continue to exercise their academic freedom, the AFT has joined with the American Association of University Professors to create a guide (link is external) for locals to use to educate their members. Informed by faculty experience, it is designed to prepare academics for the possibility of increased attacks on campus. See http://022380.pa.aft.org/files/academic_freedom_faqs_2016_election.pdf

click on the REGISTER HERE link in the left frame.  You need your AFT member # on the AFT member card, NOT your BCCC employee #.

For membership # help, see https://www.aft.org/members/help.cfm or  E-Mail: Membership Department or Phone: 888/238-5646.

Adjuncts Living in Fear:

The cover story of the Dec. 18 issue of the San Diego Reader unveils “academe’s dirty little secret” about the academic staffing crisis. The exploitation of contingent faculty is no secret to AFT members, of course, but the article about the self-censoring pragmatism of highly educated professionals working with no job guarantees from semester to semester is a disturbing read.

Check out the story here

The increasing exploitation of contingent faculty members is one dimension of an employment strategy sometimes called the "two-tiered" or "multitiered" labor system.

This new labor system is firmly established in higher education and constitutes a threat to the teaching profession. If left unchecked, it will undermine the university's status as an institution of higher learning because the overuse of adjuncts and their lowly status and compensation institutionalize disincentives to quality education, threaten academic freedom and shared governance, and disqualify the campus as an exemplar of