On what I
learned about a troubling aspect of my lifelong profession from my couple of
summers working as a temp.
For a
young man looking for summer jobs before and during his first couple years in
college, temping is a pretty attractive option:
moving from one position to another, getting lots of experiences without getting
bored, meeting different people and being part of different communities,
utilizing various skills that might come in handy later in life (I still
remember the two straight days I spent transcribing hundreds of hours of
recorded interviews; my words per minute definitely went up as a result). And
of course I understood and still understand why temps make sense for the
employers—in some cases I was subbing for an employee on maternity leave or the
like, in others I was completing a brief project that wouldn’t necessitate a
full-time hire, in others I was helping with a temporary increase in work (such
as for the company that needed to refile a bunch of numerically ordered folders
after a move), and so on. Sure, my
temp jobs paid close to minimum wage and came with no benefits, but I was
19 and 20, and they fit the bill.
In the two
decades since my temp experiences, the industry has expanded, becoming an
integral and complicated part of many American professions. Ironically (for my
own personal trajectory, that is), in no field is that more true, nor more
problematic, than for higher education. The common and ever-expanding use of
adjunct faculty members by colleges and universities—there’s a reason why
adjuncts and other contingent faculty members have come to be known as, indeed
to call themselves, the New
Faculty Majority—is frighteningly similar to much of what I wrote in the
previous paragraph: very low wages, no benefits, unstable and frequenly changing
situations. All of those realities are complicated and yet also amplified by
the fact that most adjunct faculty members have the same degrees and
qualifications as their full-time and tenure-track peers, and if anything have
tended to gain significantly more and more varied experience as a result of
their work. Which is to say, while temping is at least ostensibly a job
opportunity for younger and less-experienced workers—or was when I temped,
anyway—adjuncting is far less about any difference in the people being employed
and instead, far more simply and far more troublingly, purely a cost-cutting
and flexibility-enhancing measure for institutions, a way to get equivalent
teaching and work for far less money.
Those
aspects of adjunct labor are frustratingly entrenched and constant, and will be
difficult to change (although that’s a fight worth fighting to be sure). But
there’s another problematic element to the profession that would, I believe, be
easier to change, and here a different lesson from my temping days could be
applied. Despite my temporary status in those jobs, I was consistently—indeed,
in every case, as I remember—welcomed into the workplace community, made to
feel (by my bosses, my coworkers, everybody) an equal part of that community. Yet
far too often, and at every academic institution around which I’ve worked (both
as a grad student, as an adjunct myself at two universities, and now as a
tenured faculty member), adjuncts occupy a significantly separate space,
literally and in virtually every other way. This has never been the fault of
any individual faculty members or departments, but instead has just seemed to
be the way various factors—locations of work space, schedules, types of
courses, and so on—have come together to create these entirely disparate
faculty communities. Yet whatever the reason, the fact is that it has
consistently happened—and that it is crucial, I believe, for all academics and
institutions to recognize it and to push back, by acknowledging that adjunct
faculty members are not in any way temporary and by welcoming them into our
communities, departments, conversations, and work in every possible sense and
way.
Next
summer job connection tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
6/27 Memory Day nominees: A rare but
well-deserved three-way tie between three passionate and inspiring activists, writers, and 20th century American women: Emma
Goldman, Helen Keller, and Lucille
Clifton.
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