Power Despite Precarity

Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement in Higher Education

Joe Berry, Helena Worthen (Autoren)

Buch | Softcover

320 Seiten

2021
Pluto Press (Verlag)
978-0-7453-4552-9 (ISBN)

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A key organizing tool for casualized higher education faculty from longtime movement activists

Higher education is the site of an ongoing conflict. At the heart of this struggle are the precariously employed faculty ‘contingents’ who work without basic job security, living wages or benefits. Yet they have the incentive and, if organized, the power to shape the future of higher education.

Power Despite Precarity is part history, part handbook and a wholly indispensable resource in this fight. Joe Berry and Helena Worthen outline the four historical periods that led to major transitions in the worklives of faculty of this sector. They then take a deep dive into the 30-year-long struggle by California State University lecturers to negotiate what is recognized as the best contract for contingents in the US.

The authors ask: what is the role of universities in society? Whose interests should they serve? What are the necessary conditions for the exercise of academic freedom? Providing strategic insight for activists at every organizing level, they also tackle 'troublesome questions’ around legality, union politics, academic freedom and how to recognize friends (and foes) in the struggle.

Joe Berry is a founder of the Chicago Coalition of Academic Labor and a long-time leader of the international COCAL and New Faculty Majority. He has served on many national contingent faculty committees. He is the author of Reclaiming the Ivory Tower: Organizing Adjuncts to Change Higher Education (Monthly Review Press, 2005). Helena Worthen is a novelist, union activist and retired contingent faculty worker. Her book, What Did You Learn at Work Today? The Forbidden Lessons of Labor Education (Hardball, 2013) won the 2014 Best Book award from the United Association for Labor Education.

Photographs

Series Preface

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction

PART I - THE CASE OF THE LECTURERS IN THE CSU SYSTEM

1. Student Strikes and Union Battles

2. Layoffs and Hard Years for Organizing

3. Revolution in the Union

4. “They have nothing to teach us”

PART II - HIGHER ED WAS NEVER A LEVEL TERRAIN OF STRUGGLE

5. Four Transitions and How Casualization Served Managers

PART III - WHAT WE WANT AND WHAT THE CFA GOT

6. Blue Sky #1 Organizing and Economics

7. Blue Sky #2 Job Security, Academic Freedom and the Common Good

8. Beyond the Sausage-making: A Close Look at the CFA-CSU Contract

PART IV - THE DIFFICULTY OF THINKING STRATEGICALLY

9. Strategies Emerging From Practice

10. The Contingent Faculty Movement as a Social Movement

PART V - SEVEN TROUBLESOME QUESTIONS

11. What Gets People Moving?

12. Who is the Enemy? Who are Our Allies?

13. What is “Professionalism” for Us?

14. How Does It Feel?

15. Is this legal?

16. What About Leftists?

17. How Do We Deal With Union Politics?

PART VI - USING THE POWER WE HAVE

18. Hopes and Dangers

Essential Terms

John Hess: A Life in the Movement

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	16.08.2021
Reihe/Serie	Wildcat
Zusatzinfo	33 Halftones, black and white
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	135 x 215 mm
Gewicht	324 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Familie / Erziehung
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Erwachsenenbildung
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Mikrosoziologie
ISBN-10	0-7453-4552-2 / 0745345522
ISBN-13	978-0-7453-4552-9 / 9780745345529
Zustand	Neuware