Our school may be climbing in the rankings, but the real marker of education quality – the resources provided to our educators – reveals the opposite.
Over 1,400 professors at Northeastern are adjunct, non-tenure track, and contingent faculty – that’s seven out of ten of your professors. Northeastern’s increasingly “corporatized” education model is leaving hundreds of professors with job insecurity, a hectic working environment, and unlivable wages. This undeniably impacts the quality of our learning experience. Students are standing in support with our adjunct faculty, who are organizing for union representation, and call on Northeastern’s administration to cease using anti-union tactics.
An adjunct’s working conditions are a student’s learning conditions, and we believe everyone deserves better. Our professors, many still deep in student debt, are barely making enough to get by. Adjunct professors get paid as little as $2,200.00 per semester-long course, never knowing whether they’ll get rehired, and they often get less than a week’s notice about which classes they’ll be teaching. Many have to take on additional teaching jobs at other universities, and have no offices to meet with students, which creates a chaotic working – and learning – environment. They receive no benefits or sick days, little job security, and low pay. Some have to rely on EBT cards (government welfare for food and financial benefits) and subsidized housing.
Tired of these conditions, Northeastern’s adjunct faculty started their campaign to unionize earlier this year, and the administration has wasted no time in hiring a notorious anti-union law firm, Jackson Lewis LLP. Already, faculty have been called into captive audience meetings and fed anti-union messaging. Our professors have a right to organize without intimidation or harassment in the workplace, and the administration’s decision to enlist the services of Jackson Lewis, using our tuition money, is in violation of the University’s responsibility to remain neutral. The Progressive Student Alliance calls on the administration to drop Jackson Lewis and stop discouraging our professors from organizing for better workplace conditions.
There is no doubt that adjunct faculty deserve a liveable wage, and that Northeastern can afford to pay it. Consider the constant investments in superfluous (but visually impressive) campus upgrades. Consider, also, that Northeastern’s recently launched fundraising project, the Empower Campaign, requests financial “support from faculty and staff” – including adjunct professors. The claim that Empower is a campaign “about people empowering people” seems audacious when Northeastern’s commitment to providing adequate working conditions is clearly not a priority.
As our adjunct faculty joins other educators across the country in the struggle for collective bargaining rights and better working conditions, we the students are voicing our support for a model of education that is not based on exploitation. And if Northeastern truly wants to “continue a legacy of innovation, entrepreneurship, and service to society” in our community, it can start by staying neutral during the union drive.
Students interested in taking their education into their own hands, who want to stand in solidarity with their educators who are fighting for respect and liveable wages, and who want to urge the Northeastern faculty to stay neutral during this campaign, can join the Progressive Student Alliance, which meets each Tuesday at 7:15 p.m. in 346 Curry.
–The Progressive Student at Northeastern.
