Adjunct Faculty Protest Low Wages, Deliver Petition to University President

By Mike Byrne

Fordham Faculty United (FFU), a campus organization comprised of Fordham adjuncts, held a protest on the steps of Dealy Hall last Thursday in hopes of presenting a petition outlining their complaints to Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the university.

The protest drew between 40 and 50 students and faculty on Thursday afternoon. Some of them had signed a petition, which has 394 online supporters as of Tuesday night, containing three demands of the administration: “That Fordham live up to the pronouncement of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops,” “that Fordham follow Georgetown University’s lead and adopt the Jesuit Just Employment Policy” and “that a public meeting with the president, the provost, and a panel of adjuncts and contingent faculty be convened to discuss the implementation of this policy.”

The United States Conference of Bishops references an obligation to ensure workers’ rights, “If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected — the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions, to private property and to economic initiative.”

Bob Howe, the senior vice president of communications at Fordham, commented on the university’s reasoning for hiring adjuncts. “Fordham employs adjuncts to offer students instruction from professionals working in fields related to the students course of study, and to provide flexibility in course scheduling, release time for tenure and tenure-track faculty, and more varied curriculum offerings,” Howe said.

According to the Office of the President, McShane had a prior commitment and was unable to meet with the group, so Alan Trevithick and Hannah Jopling — both adjuncts — instead delivered the petition to the University’s General Counsel, Elaine Crosson.

Fordham administration has promised to respond to the petition, according to Trevithick.

The Voices of the Protesters

There were 803 adjunct instructors at Fordham in the Spring 2016 semester, according to information provided by Associate Chief Academic Officer Jonathan Crystal. The Fordham Fact Book 2015 reports there were 737 full-time (non-adjunct) faculty members in the fall 2014 semester, the latest numbers made available to The Fordham Ram. According to these numbers, adjuncts make up 52 percent of the instruction staff.

Kathryn Krasinski, an adjunct instructor of anthropology who has been teaching at Fordham for six years, finds the number alarming.

“When half of the faculty are adjuncts, it shows that Fordham does not value teachers or the information and skills students are learning in the class,” Krasinski said.

Adjunct Instructor of anthropology Alan Trevithick, who has been teaching at Fordham for 12 years, spoke to the group of protesters. “We’re asking to be recognized,” he said. “We’re half of the faculty here. We’re doing half of the teaching for (the students). It’s not a fact that people know very much so we need to be recognized, and we need to somehow impress it upon Fordham’s administration.”

Fordham adjunct faculty members are paid a minimum of $4,000 and a maximum of $5,500 per course and are allowed to teach a maximum of two courses per semester.

Chris Brandt, adjunct instructor of creative writing, also spoke at the protest. “We are given no benefits — no health plan, no retirement benefits and we cannot even file for unemployment insurance, since we are contract employees, with no guarantee that we will continue to be employed from one semester to the next,” Brandt said. “We are all forced to have supplementary jobs, some of us teaching at as many as four different schools. What this means of course is that no matter how conscientious we are, it is physically impossible for us to give our full attention to our Fordham students. This is in direct contradiction to Fordham’s ‘commitment to high standards of academic excellence.’” Brandt has taught at Fordham for 12 years.

Andrew Thompson, an adjunct instructor of sociology in his third year of teaching at Fordham, commented on Fordham’s Jesuit identity in relation to the adjuncts’ protest.

“I think the more you make [Jesuit ideals] a part of your branding, the more you should expect people will raise questions when you don’t live up to those pronouncements,” Thompson said.

Fordham pays adjuncts for nine hours a week per course, and courses last 15 weeks. This means the hourly rate for adjuncts ranges from $29.63 and $40.74. According to a 2015-2016 New York University collective bargaining agreement published on the university’s website, NYU adjuncts teaching Degree Courses are paid $128 an hour. A New York Times article from 2004 reported that adjuncts unionized in 2002 and were granted “health benefits, pension contributions and some job security, as well as wage increases.”

“The university has committed to pay scales that are unfeasible when evaluated from the standpoint of the cost of living,” Thompson said.

Thompson thinks that one day adjunct professors will realize that they are only being paid for nine hours of work, even though they put in more. Thompson says that after realizing this, adjuncts will stop working after their nine hours per week are completed, and in the end the courses will suffer.

“And that will strictly be because we followed the rule that the university laid out,” he said. “It’s a strategy that’s likely to bite them in the ass in the end.”

The American Association of University Professors reported the average salary for a full professor at Fordham is $162,200. There is no public information that differentiates between what full professors are paid for the five courses they teach and other administrative and research responsibilities they have. Fordham did publish a document titled, “Salary and Benefit Provisions for Active Faculty,” that details how the university pays faculty members for summer courses. According to the formula the document provides, full professors are paid $12,165 for a three-credit course. This is 2.21 – 3.05 times the amount that adjunct instructors are paid per course during the academic year.

Thompson commented that by looking at the university as a corporation, the administrative stance makes sense.

“They don’t feel like they owe anything to contingent workers,” Thompson said.

Krasinski told The Fordham Ram that adjuncts deserve better compensation for the work they do. “Fordham should pay its full-time faculty well with raises, so I do not necessarily take issue with pay differences between faculty who have served the university longer,” Krasinski said. “However, preparing and updating courses, lecturing, responding to inquiries, and grading requires much more time than is compensated by adjunct contracts,”

Becca Erwin, FCRH ’18, a member of Fordham Students United, also spoke to the group in support of FFU’s message. “As students who pay tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend Fordham University, we expect to receive a world-class education,” said Erwin. “But if your professors are struggling to make ends meet and are running after class to their two or three other jobs…they just can’t pour their heart and soul into their work and students can’t get the education they expect. We think that is a failure of Fordham to commit to the Jesuit moral code,” Erwin said.

Hannah Jopling, an adjunct instructor of anthropology who has been teaching at Fordham for 12 years, said that FFU has been primarily headed by adjuncts in the sociology and anthropology department, but their message has gained a lot of momentum since they started reaching out to adjuncts in other departments. Jopling said that Fordham students, both undergraduate and graduate, have also shown solidarity with the movement. One of the biggest challenges in organizing, according to Jopling, is trying to find statistics about adjuncts at Fordham. “There is a general frustration that there isn’t enough transparency,” Jopling said.