Professors in the gig economy: unionizing adjunct faculty in America
"One of the most significant trends in American higher education over the last decade has been the shift in faculty employment from tenured to contingent. Now upwards of 75 percent of faculty jobs are non-tenure track (it had been 25 percent two decades ago.) One of the results of this shift--along with the related degradation of pay, benefits, and working conditions--has been a new push to unionize adjuncts. This book is the first ever to look at this trend. This edited volume brings together scholars who have been involved with these efforts at colleges and universities. They address the context and cause of these efforts. They look at various efforts across the industry to collectively bargain, and they consider the results of those efforts. Finally, the authors consider the impact of those unionization efforts on campus and on the teaching and learning that happens there. Adjunct Higher Ed brings research and case studies to bear on the cost and benefit questions of contingent labor on campus"--