Adjunct Voices: Safety is Not a Top Priority

Photo from texaslonestaronline.org

Safety is Not a Top Priority

by: Anonymous 

I’ve been a LSCS employee for about five years. I remember being so excited when I first received a job offer. I did not attend Lone Star as a college student, but I often utilized one of their campus libraries as a studying sanctuary while I earned my bachelor’s degree. The design of the library, the landscaping, and the organization of the campus made me fall in love with Lone Star. I genuinely enjoyed my study trips to the campus because it meant studying in such a beautiful place. So, years later, when I graduated from my university, I was excited to work in the environment I loved greatly.

However, after working for LSCS for the last five-ish years, I can say without a doubt that the beauty of Lone Star campuses is only skin deep. In my position, I deal with students every single day, several times a day, and there is no such thing as a “usual day.” Monday might be nice and easy, Tuesday might be a complete disaster, and Wednesday might be so hectic, I sneak off to the restroom and cry. Over the last years, I’ve had students intimidate me by getting right in my face, use deep, harsh tones, curse at me, threaten to hurt me, accuse me of not wanting to help them, and most recently – I had one who scared me so much, I was terrified of returning to work the following day. I’ve expressed my safety concerns to my supervisors every time I have any, but the result is always the same: nothing.

The process of reporting an incident involves the same steps each time: have an in-person conversation followed by an email following up with details, so there is a written record of the incident. Then, the supervisor(s) will email a response, claiming he or she is always concerned for employee safety. Until I see actual proof of this statement, I refuse to believe it.

Students who have been my biggest concerns are still on campus. Their behavior is unchanged and their attitudes have worsened since they are aware of my reports thanks to the supervisors. Some, but not all of these students, have learning accommodations, and when this is the case, I am always told to “be more understanding” and “have more patience.” I was even told this about the student who terrified me so much, I considered quitting because I feared being physically hurt by this student. When I described the incident to a supervisor, she said, without knowledge of any accommodations records, “Perhaps the student has accommodations.” After a light investigation, it was found this student did not have accommodations. The solution for this incident was that I try to be more understanding of all students, regardless of accommodations or no accommodations.

LSCS has safety workshops for employees, such as what to do in the event of an active shooter, a lockdown, a fire, a natural disaster, etc. and while these workshops give useful information, they’re not much helpful beyond just giving information. For example, in the event of an active shooter, hiding is an option for an employee, but if the shooter enters the employee’s hiding place and the employee is armed, the employee is advised NOT to shoot back due LSCS not wanting to deal with lawsuits. An employee can use other tools such a textbook or chair for defensive, but not a personal firearm or other personal weapon. In other words, employees are expected to simply die for a college that does not value them in the first place.

Yet, each time I express a concern, I am faced with the same routine. 1. Speak to a supervisor, 2. Send a follow up email, and 3. Wonder why I brought up the incident at all. Nothing is ever done and protection seems to be for the students only. I can’t say why this is because I don’t know the exact reason, but it might have something to do with keeping tuition money flowing to the college. Who knows? While I used to be ecstatic to be a LSCS employee, my perspective on LSCS has changed dramatically after witnessing the lack of addressing employee safety concerns. I admit that I tend to “half ass” my duties now because I just don’t care anymore. I can’t have enthusiasm for a place which dismisses all my safety concerns. Perhaps LSCS should be more understanding of their employees.

AFT Comments to LSCS Board of Trustees -- August 2018

AFT Presentation to the Board of Trustees – August, 2018

John Burgdhuff, Faculty

Good evening. I am John Burghduff representing the American Federation of Teachers. It has been three months since I last spoke to you. Last month was your annual summer break. On the afternoon of the June meeting, I was in Rosenberg with a delegation of faculty and administrators from CyFair meeting with our counterparts in the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District. We were meeting to plan Lone Star’s newest dual credit collaboration extending our college’s outreach to high school students in western Fort Bend County. It is a great opportunity for them but too far away for me to get to The Woodlands in time to speak. Tonight you have before you the final vote on Lone Star College’s budget for the coming fiscal year. With the losses we have had to overcome from Harvey, especially at Kingwood, the union recognizes that this has to have been one of the most difficult budgets the college has had to develop. In the face of many obstacles, we are very glad to see the college’s commitment to hire additional full time faculty. Improving the percentage of classes taught by fulltime faculty improves our students’ access to professors who can devote their full time and efforts to Lone Star College and its programs. We are also glad to see money set aside to resolve lingering discrepancies in classification and compensation among our staff that have been hurtful to employee morale. In addition, we acknowledge the 2% pay increase for most college employees. 2% matches the cost of living adjustment the Social Security administration has selected for its beneficiaries for 2018. Although these rates of increase are consistent with one another, as a labor union we need to point out some concerns. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the consumer price index has risen 2.9% in the 12 months ending in June. Also, according to the human resources professional group World at Work, as reported by the Society for Human Resource Management, the projected median increase in salary across all sectors and job types in 2018 is expected to be 3%. So, while we recognize the challenges our current budget situation poses, we must attest that Lone Star employee pay for the coming year will fall behind both inflation and median salaries across the economy. We also must note our concern that, for the second year in a row, salaries for adjunct instructors will not be increased at all. Adjunct faculty continue to account for well over half of all classes taught at Lone Star College and yet many of them have to work multiple jobs to eek out a minimal living with no benefits. Adjunct pay at Lone Star has now fallen below our largest neighboring community college systems. An adjunct teaching a standard three hour lecture class with us earns $2004 over a semester. The same adjunct teaching the same class would earn $2010 at Houston Community College and $2016 at San Jacinto College.5 Although the differences are small, being behind at all is out of place in a system that, by all accounts, is in much better overall financial health than almost all other colleges. Again, the union both recognizes and appreciates the special challenges this budget year presents and expresses our sincere hope that the concerns we raise need to be addressed in future budgets. We also wish to remind the Board of our presentation at the May meeting in which we showed that, at the cost of three grande lattes per month to a typical homeowner, Lone Star’s property tax rate could be brought up to the state average and generate an additional $123 million. We ask the Board to consider whether, even now, additional revenues like these could be brought to bear this year to minimize the salary concerns we raise. Finally, the Board will be considering tonight a renewed contract for our chancellor. The proposed salary for the coming year is not published in the official agenda so we do not know what is being considered. The union believes that all employees deserve to be fairly compensated for the work they do and that includes the chancellor. Stating the proposed salary in the agenda would have leant greater transparency that would inspire greater trust. We hope that, in the spirit of solidarity, whatever salary is approved should be consistent with the percentage salary increases of all other employees. Thank you for your kind consideration.

Your Union is Your Strength in a Hostile Environment

Everyone Knows This ...

With so many laws and civil rights provisions protecting employees on paper, the average employee probably thinks that their rights are protected, and that, if there is injustice (such as being fired for no reason at all), there will be some recourse, either within the college or in the court. However, a New York Times column advises a otherwise.

New York Times, August 3, 2018

An anonymous writer asks, “I have a new boss who is very unfair and abrasive to everyone. Hypothetically, would he be allowed to fire me just because he doesn’t like me? And if he did, what could I do legally and procedurally to fight back?”

Rob Walker, the writer of the column The Workologist, answers, “As a legal matter, unless you have an employee contract that says otherwise, he could absolutely fire you because he doesn’t like you…And again, as a legal matter, there’s probably nothing you could do about it.”

One might think that protected categories, such as discrimination on the basis of gender, race, or disability, would be clear violations and easy to pursue. However, we should not be too rosy about this prospect either. First, claims on protected categories are very difficult to prove. No one says in public, 'I am now firing you because you are Muslim.' Discriminatory actions are usually hidden under other pretexts.

I remember working somewhere where the new employees were being given a tour by the team. I had to go to the bathroom (I was pregnant). While in the bathroom, I heard the man giving the tour say to the other new employees (also all men) that these women employees were trouble because they got pregnant, couldn’t work, and took frequent breaks to go breastfeed. These same men had taken several breaks to go off and smoke on the balcony (not that smoking is a gender-based activity; that isn’t my point). But women who were actually singled out in that organization for going home to nurse were disciplined for taking too long a break, and it would have been difficult to prove that this was a discriminatory measure.

A casual look at cases in the Office of Civil Rights, for example, shows that most cases are dismissed, specifically because a claim cannot be proved. If a case is not outright dismissed, then at least it is such a long drawn out process that an employee might be out the door and living in a trailer for years before his/her case comes to light. The same is true for any legal process – time is not on the worker’s side.

This brings us to the good stuff. Rob Walker says that aggrieved employee should address how an action specifically violates a company policy or the employee contract. Employees should very quickly become conversant with all company policy. In bringing a complaint, the employee must articulate how they are valuable to the organization and express the complaint in terms of how it affects the organization, an argument that Walker calls the bottom-line argument. 

Your union is your strength

A new movie, Sorry to Bother You, [go see it!] shows that even the lowliest workers in the worst employment situations do not have to live in misery. Workers must understand the value of their work to the employer (No employer is giving you a job out of kindness. Without your labor, there will be no company). Workers must unionize and they must organize for collective demands. Perhaps in a state like Texas, this is complicated by the right to work law, which effectively stops strikes, but still, law or no law, when employees band together and demand their rights the organization has to respond. Sorry to Bother You shows that this is not easy or straightforward. Workers have to take personal risks and they have to expect retaliation. But in the long run, it is the only way for workers to ensure not only that they are treated fairly now but that their rights won’t continue to dwindle.

Without unions and organization, without push-back from workers, more rights will be taken away.  We are so afraid to be visible, to take action and become visible to the powers that be, and yet, most firings and other mistreatment of employees happen under the cover of invisibility. Visibility might be an employee’s best safeguard when workers are organized. The teacher’s strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado, and Arizona show what is possible through unionization, collective bargaining, and disruption. Precisely when labor rights are the lowest and jobs are most vulnerable are the conditions ripest for unions, organizing, and push-back.

There are other practices that could keep one safe. Have everything in writing. Save everything. Even if someone says something verbally, put it in writing, stating in an email: "You had said that you are giving the job to B because he is a guy and we need more guys. Is that correct?” The other very important strategy would be to act immediately if something strange has happened. I, like most people, try to shut out something that seems unfair or strange. But every time I have done that, the incident has come back to haunt me through some backdoor machination. So it is important to immediately put the incident in writing and send off in an email to concerned parties, and to even get witness accounts immediately and put those in writing. One more strategy would be to take note of all violations of policy and contract regularly. If your boss is building a file on you to construct an alternate version of you, you should be building a file as well to track your version of reality.  

In another recent movie, The Young Karl Marx, a prophetic critique of capitalist society at its earliest point, when monarchy has just been overturned, Karl Marx is a struggling journalist who gets fired from job after job because of his political work. By the end of the movie, Marx, together with Engels, addresses the league of the just and challenges their slogan “all men are brothers.” Engels asks, “Are the bourgeois and the worker brothers? No, they are not: making the point that the capitalist is not.”

Your boss is not your friend. Your employer is not your keeper. But as long as there is labor, labor can organize.

Your union is your strength.

Bullshit Jobs -- Book Reviews

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, by Graeber

David Graeber is a London-based anthropologist and anarchist activist, perhaps best known for his 2011 volume Debt: The First 5000 Years. He is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. His activism includes protests against the 3rd Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, and the 2002 World Economic Forum in New York City. Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is sometimes credited with having coined the slogan, "We are the 99 percent."

His new book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory sees bullshit throughout in modern economy, including government and education. As he says:

I think this system creates absurd forms of resentment where people actually resent people who have real jobs. You see this [...] with all the austerity programs after the financial crash. There is all this talk about tightening belts, except for the guys who caused the crash. They still get their bonuses, but the ambulance drivers and the nurses and the teachers have all got to sacrifice.

Note, too, his criticism of federal student debt and bullshit education:

A lot of these student work jobs have us doing some sort of bullshit task like scanning IDs, or monitoring empty rooms, or cleaning already-clean tables. . . . I’m not altogether familiar with how the whole thing works, but a lot of this work is funded by the Feds and tied to our student loans. It’s part of a whole federal system designed to assign students a lot of debt—thereby promising to coerce them into labor in the future, as student debts are so hard to get rid of—accompanied by a bullshit education program designed to train and prepare us for our future bullshit jobs.

Additional reviews:

• "Bullshit jobs: why they exist and why you might have one" at Vox
• "Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber review – the myth of capitalist efficiency" at the Guardian
• "The Bullshitn-Job Boom" at the New Yorker

Library availability:

The Lone Star College Library does not own a copy [no comment], but Montgomery County Public Library has a copy for transfer to college libraries.

AFT Comments to LSCS Board of Trustees -- May 2018

AFT Comments to LSCS Board of Trustees -- May 2018

John Burghduff, LSC Faculty

May, 2018 – Tax Rates


Good evening. I am John Burghduff representing the American Federation of Teachers

At the April Board of Trustees meeting faculty senate president Dr. Anthony Carrera from Kingwood finished his speech to the Board by affirming his support for taxes.  Board Member Dr. Kyle Scott followed up by asking him, and all of us really, what he believed was the correct balance between taxes and tuition in funding Lone Star College.

This is a difficult philosophical question that has a very real impact on Lone Star students and district citizens.  As everyone here tonight knows, the three main pillars of community college funding in Texas are state allocations, local taxes and student tuition.  The state expects Texas public colleges and universities to increase the number of degrees granted by 1.7% per year to reach a goal of 550,000 college degrees in 2030.  However, every session, the legislature cuts the percentage of higher education costs the state will cover.  Unless there are dramatic changes in state leadership, that trend is going to continue.

Therefore, unfortunately, the ever-increasing costs of educating more of our fellow Texans fall at the feet of our local tax payers and our students to ever higher degrees.  Dr. Carrera confessed that he did not know what the proper balance was between local taxes and tuition. We, in the AFT don’t know the answer to that question either.  However, we have some thoughts to consider regarding one of those sources.

According to the Texas Association of Community Colleges, Lone Star College’s property tax rate of 10.72 cents per $100 of valuation places us 44th among the 50 reporting community college systems.  For years, we have taken our low tax rate as something to boast about and we have systematically lowered that tax rate many times.

Fiscal responsibility is obviously a great virtue but, over the years, that frugalness has hurt us.  For example, before Dr. Head became chancellor, Lone Star had fallen to second from the bottom among Texas community colleges on percentage of classes covered by full time faculty.  Fixing that one problem is very, very expensive.  Now, facing the enormous physical damage from Hurricane Harvey and the drop in enrollment that has followed, we are faced with the prospect of cutting class sections for fall even while we need to grow.

Across the state, the average tax rate is about 18.06 cents per $100 valuation.  This is approximately what our neighbors at San Jacinto College levy.  If Lone Star charged the state average tax rate, our property tax revenues would increase by over $123 million dollars.  What would the impact on a typical tax payer be?  For a house valued at $200,000, property taxes would increase by just over $12 per month.  In terms my freshmen students could relate to better, that’s three grande lattes per month at Starbucks.

Is that too much to ask? What if we only raised the tax rate to the “roll back” rate?  This is the rate above which citizens could petition for a tax roll back election.  According to the Lone Star College website, that rate would be 11.37 cents per $100 valuation.  That increase would cost the home owner described previously only about $1 extra per month and would bring the college an extra $11 million dollars per year.  This rate would still put us substantially below the rates levied by our friends in the Dallas, Alamo, Tarrant County and El Paso community college systems.

We live in a time when, for some political demographics, the reaction to any hint of a tax increase is a knee-jerk no.  Yet most of the citizens of our district recognize the incredible value Lone Star College brings to their families and their communities.  We believe that they can be convinced that it would be worth $1 a month or maybe even a latte . . . or two or three.

---

More information on the Board of Trustees, including meeting dates, are found here.

Go to Jail: Community College Students and the Broken Bail System

Photo by Robert Hickerson on Unsplash

In community colleges in Houston, we rarely discuss the intersection of student lives with the criminal court practices in Harris County. Yet, our students often disappear during the semester, only to return and report that they had been arrested; students have to miss class for court appearance; students who are not physically in jail might have to show up to court for roll call, a lengthy process that takes hours out of a person’s day, or report to parole officers after serving their time, even as they strive to get degrees and rebuild their lives. Why does this affect our students particularly? Because harsh and discriminatory courts in Harris County can haul a poor person in for a minor offense and, if they fail to pay bail, hold that person in pre-trial detention for months, without sight of a trial. Further, many of our students are negatively affected because a family member is enmeshed in the jail system, leaving these students additionally burdened with child care, paying new bills, and increased anxiety.

The Lone Star College System is silent not only on the realities of students involved in the Harris and Montgomery county jail systems, but the ugly realities of the bail system. The bail reform movement has been addressed recently, and the November election might change Harris County policies that especially negatively impact our community neighbors, our students, and their families.

With less than hundred days to early voting, as volunteers are frantically phone banking and block walking for their candidates, one particular group is out in front of the jail on San Jacinto Street, speaking to visitors who’ve come to see their loved ones. Visitors walk up to the jail from the road in groups of two or three, whole families, mothers with small children. A volunteer walks up with a clipboard:

“Do you want to end cash bail?”
Immediately, the visitors stop. Eyes light up in concentration.
“What’s this about? Tell me more.”

The simple option is an important question for our elections and reaffirms the American Federation of Teachers statement on criminal justice and public safety:

RESOLVED, that the AFT and its affiliates will support and encourage policies aimed at reforming monetary bail requirements that lead to the unjust imprisonment of underprivileged offenders who can’t afford payment; and
RESOLVED, that the AFT will work with all constituencies to reclaim the promise of racial equity and justice in all our communities.

Franklin Bynum, currently running for judge in Harris County Criminal Court 8, sees the issues as simple: Bynum wants to stop jailing people before trial who can’t afford to pay to get out. The rich can pay bail and get out. But the poor cannot pay bail, and they languish in jail, sometimes for months, before their trial. Bynum is calling for due process regardless of income. Harris County is especially egregious in its discriminatory court practices, holding people without trial. In 2017, a federal judge ordered the courts to let people go if they cannot hold trial immediately. Republican judges in Harris County are suing to continue the practice of jailing the poor.

Visitors to jail often have a lot to report themselves. Reporting to roll call means standing in crowded hallways for hours waiting for a trial date. Not showing up exactly on time might mean being arrested on the spot. One mother with small children reports she had posted bail for her husband, but he was hauled back in after failing to show up for roll call once. This is before facing trial. This person has not been proved guilty yet. Another visitor reports that one hallway in the women’s jail is swarming with gnats. They didn’t have water for five days, so they closed down visiting, lest people find out the conditions inside the jail. If we asked our students and gave them the power to speak on our campuses, we might hear similar stories.

A fair court means that every person should be assumed innocent before they are proven guilty in a court by a judge or a jury of peers. Bynum wants to release people pending their trial and give them a fair chance to fight their case. A twisted consequence of holding people before trial (because they cannot afford to pay bail!) is that desperate people routinely plead guilty simply to get out and get on with their lives. Public defenders encourage them to do so. Pleas are treated like a foregone conclusion, and the court becomes extremely hostile when someone refuses to enter into a plea. There is no presumption of innocence, at least for the poor. Bynum also calls for more diversion programs, like the one that District Attorney Kim Ogg has started in Harris County.

As AFT members, we should see that this approach would immediately impact our students and their families: people will no longer be forced to enter into plea bargains for minor offenses.

In a series of recent tweets, criminal defense lawyer Bynum explains the discriminatory practice of pre-trial detention, holding people behind bars for months before they ever see trial. Effectively, this makes the police officer making the arrest the de facto decision maker on whether someone is guilty or not, rather than the court and the jury.
a href="https://twitter.com/franklinbynum">

Saw a map of marijuana arrests in Harris County, with an overlay of wealth and race. So obvious what neighborhoods are targeted. And because the system is a plea system, there is no real opportunity to challenge it.

— Franklin Bynum 🌹 (@franklinbynum) May 27, 2018

— Franklin Bynum (@franklinbynum) May 27, 2018

The message for union, faculty, and administrators: make the courts fair again.
We urge the college administration to support calls for bail reform, bringing the unfairness of pretrial detention and cash bail more into public focus, so that students can talk about their own experiences on our campuses.

Update on DACA August 2018

On Friday, 3 August 2018, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia affirmed its prior ruling that the Department of Homeland Security violated the Administrative Procedure Act by rescinding the DACA program (from September 2017). This court had previous required the Homeland explain the cancellation of DACA and had given the Administration multiple opportunities to justify their policy. Yesterday's court decision demonstrated the Administration does not have a legal stand to cancel DACA.

This decision clarified that new eligible students may apply for new DACA status.

Creative Commons Flickr @NOWCastSA

To be clear, U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., said he would stay Friday’s order, however, until August 23 to give the Administration time to decide whether to appeal.

For more information, see United We Dream (a collaboration with American Federation of Teachers) press release and resources for DACA applications.

“This represents a powerful victory against attempts to dehumanize immigrants who are law-abiding and productive residents of the United States and who were long ago brought to this country as children through no fault of their own,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson.

The NAACP, the United Commercial Food Workers, and the American Federation of Teachers cojoined to appeal. We rely on the NAACP for updates here, as the AFT website is not updated.

Texas Appeal

Two other federal courts in California and New York had previously ordered that DACA remain in place while litigation challenging Trump’s decision to end it continued. Those rulings only required the government to process DACA renewals, not new applications.

Another lawsuit in a Texas federal court is seeking to end DACA. A court in Texas will hear the state’s request for an injunction blocking DACA on August 8, 2018. Although it is unlikely, there is a slim possibility that the Texas court would issue a ruling that same day. It is more likely that we’ll hear the court’s decision after August 8. More info at the Texas Tribune.

Read the Decision

As union members and as citizens, we should become more familiar with a legal decision. The D.C. Court's decision is straightforward and interestingly rationalized on the both fallacious arguments of the Administration. The decision can be read here. 

Texas Community Colleges and Free Speech Rights

National Threats of Academic Freedom

The current issue of Radical Teacher includes a strong article by historian Erika Kitzmiller, "Educating Educators in the Age of Trump," where Kitzmiller addresses an interview with a reporter from the conservative Campus Review after the 2016 election. The reporter attempted to interrogate Kitzmiller if her university course, "Education  in  the Age of Trump" (she later renamed the course as "Education in a Polarized and Unequal Society") might “alienate students who may have supported the current U.S. President.”

We pause here on what happened next: the "reporter" never waited for Kitzmiller to reply to an email and merely waited one hour, with no one-on-on conversation, before the Review posted an article about the course with no feedback or clarification by Kitzmiller. The audience of the Campus Review then relies wholly on the prejudices of the conservative writer. As academics, we would criticize how any real journalist might discuss complex ideas such as "education" and the claims and texts of Trump and his organization in the months through the 2015-2016 campaign. Kitzmiller argues that national "journalists" who criticize higher education are merely searching for incidents that they can "claim to be incidents of  liberal  bias,  political  indoctrination,  and  restrictions  on free  speech  in  American  college  classrooms" (Kitzmiller).

This, as a call from the far-right such as General Attorney Sessions that "some schools are doing everything they can to create a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes."

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

We want to restate the American Federation Teachers' resolution (2012), "Condemning Attempts to Constrain Free Expression at Colleges. We quote portions of that resolution:

the American Federation of Teachers will condemn in the strongest terms attempts to constrain free speech on college and university campuses; and
[...] the AFT will strenuously oppose all efforts to limit free speech on our campuses, and will encourage its members to have their say before their boards of trustees and administrations, and will support those who labor to preserve that right

The Lone Star College Policy Manual (II.E.1.01.) claims

The College recognizes and supports free speech rights and the free exchange of ideas. The College recognizes individuals’ freedom of speech, petition, and peaceful assembly rights as set forth in the United States Constitution and the Texas State Constitution. The College strives to provide a suitable environment for its faculty, staff, and students to work, study, and perform activities furthering the College’s mission without undue interference or disturbance.

and

(c)   Disruptive means substantially disrupting or materially interfering with the College’s central mission of educating students. This definition does not include action that merely presents the possibility of discomfort or unpleasantness that often accompanies unpopular viewpoints.

For those of us who haven't recently read the Texas Constitution's Bill of Rights:

Sec. 8.  FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND PRESS; LIBEL.  Every person shall be at liberty to speak, write or publish his opinions on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege; and no law shall ever be passed curtailing the liberty of speech or of the press....  

Our Concerns

We remember an incident in 2014 where a LSC student was "shocked" when a professor assigned a "whiteness" worksheet and all the brouhaha in the Houston and national conservative alarm. We are also aware of other complaints by students against professors which did not garner the journalistic attention. Still, those professors have been both surprised by students' complaints of course material and the college's disappointing chastisement of the professor.

Further, we find too many faculty afraid to talk openly with college administrators, the Chancellor's office, and before the Board of Trustees -- too many stories of even aggressive conversations bordering on professional assault.  In a community college of faculty without tenure, the threat of an administration adds anxieties and frustration to our education environment. Threats appear across the spectrum: firing of another faculty threatens all faculty, while shunning any employee by administration results in

• isolation
• decreased productivity
• poor communication, and
• lowered morale

Ironically, in an institution that supposedly is an example of the excellence of intellectualism, threats to free speech demonstrate threats to the ideals of democracy, as promised by the Truman Commission (1947):

If education is to make the attainment of a more perfect democracy one of its major goals, it is imperative that it extend its benefits to all on equal terms. It must renounce the practices of discrimination and segregation in educational institutions as contrary to the spirit of democracy. Educational leaders and institutions should take positive steps to overcome the conditions which at present obstruct free and equal access to educational opportunities. Educational programs everywhere should be aimed at undermining and eventually eliminating the attitudes that are responsible for discrimination and segregation—at creating instead attitudes that will make education freely available to all. (see Zook) 

In other words, when we fail to practice democracy within the college, we fail our promise to teach democracy to our community. We notice, for example, that few of our students actually engage in free speech in our college campuses: participation in community campaigns, practicing debates outside the courses (and rarely do we see enough professorial preparing students for local debates), engaging with college administration on student needs, and certainly not participating with the Board of Trustees except for those managed presentations to highlight "sparkling" programs and initiatives.

Somewhere here, we would address LSCS "culture" of "No Fear!" but this needs to be addressed later.

So, we recommend: 

1. All union members read AFT resolutions on free speech and academic freedom. As reading these resolutions, we will engage this discussion in future meetings and publications
2. Review the LSCS policies on free speech and free speech zones. After reading these policies, we will engage both the PSSA and Faculty Senate.
3. We will encourage all students in all encounters to understand the free speech opportunities in classes and outside classes. Ultimately, we recommend that all community college students learn concerns with democracy and how to expand democracy in our local communities. 
4. We will explain with students why engagement with each other and professors is better than "complaining" to media or even administration. Ultimately, we must teach students, even with different ideologies, engaging instead of fleeing.

As always, we encourage union members to write their stories about free speech, learning from each other's experiences and collaborate with each other to expand our collective democratic rights.

Photo by Deddy Yoga Pratama on Unsplash

Resources

American Federation of Teachers. (2012). "Condemning Attempts to Constrain Free Expression at Colleges. 

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. "Faculty Academic Freedom." [Collection].

Kitzmiller, E. (2018). "Educating Educators in the Age of Trump." Radical Teacher.

Towbridge, R. (2012a). "Lone Star Tramples Constitutional Rights." See Thru Edu. 

Towbridge, R. (2012b). "The Rejection of Free Speech at Lone Star College, Part Two." See Thru Edu. 

Zook, George. (1947). Higher Education For American Democracy A Report Of The Presidents Commission On Higher Education Vol I - Vi. 

Adjuncts, Unions, and the "Right to Work"

2018 has become the Year of the Educator, with several "red" states' educators striking or otherwise successfully reminding their legislators about the, frankly, deplorable classroom situation in which our colleagues teach. As a union of educators, we applaud those secondary and primary teachers for their successful organizing (active verb) and effective communication with their sympathetic communities.

Source: Creative Commons

At the same time, the long discussion of adjuncts in colleges and universities reminds us that our contingent faculty colleagues struggle. The U.S. media applauds a strong economy (and we can argue that), but the situation for college adjuncts has maintained a sore discussion.

In 1975, 30 percent of college faculty were part-time. By 2011, 51 percent of college faculty were part-time, and another 19 percent were non–tenure track, full-time employees. In other words, 70 percent were contingent faculty, a broad classification that includes all non–tenure track faculty (NTTF), whether they work full-time or part-time. (Edmonds)

Of course, in Texas, we live and work in a "right to work" state (where educators who strike will have their teaching certificates and their Teacher Retirement System [TRS] benefits permanently revoked) and the economic market stacks the deck in favor of college employers, allowing them to cut back on wages and benefits (American Federation of Teachers). It's all about capitalism, right? Over the years, the number of full-time professors has dropped while that of adjunct professors has risen, as colleges attempt to rein in costs. Public colleges in particular rely on adjuncts.

This is a problem, because:

Firstly, some research demonstrates that the American academy reliance on adjuncts may harm students. Because of the realities of contingent working, adjunct faculties have fewer resources to support their students. This is more so in the community college, where our students need more resources, not fewer. For example, adjuncts rarely have dedicated office support staff, lack dedicated offices to meet with students, and many of our adjunct faculty drive from far away, arrive to campus in time to prepare the class, and need to leave after class for another job. This prevents convenient face-to-face time with students. The Delphi Project research has shown that students who take more classes from contingent faculty have lower graduation rates and are less likely to transfer from two-year to four-year institutions. Due largely to the exploitative conditions of their work, adjunct faculty are often less student-centered in their teaching, have less contact with students outside of class, and spend less time preparing for classes (Kezar & DePaola). A student's learning conditions will only ever be their teacher's working conditions.

Secondly, the hiring process reflects an economic market insecurity. Adjunct faculty are hired largely because of enrollment rates, and in community colleges, the enrollment rates are very sensitive to market economies. We have heard too many stories of adjuncts being hired a week before the semester, a day before the semester, the day after the semester has started, and the related stress of the insecurity and preparation. 

Thirdly, the insecurity of contingency reflects other economic insecurities and the first obvious is lack of health security. Though the Affordable Care Act attempted to address this, most community colleges lack support for  sufficient physical and mental health (this is true for Lone Star College, for example).  A March 2015 survey conducted by Pacific Standard among nearly 500 adjuncts found that a majority earn less than $20,000 per year from teaching (Chang). Nationally and locally, many adjunct faculty rely on additional government benefits. Typically, such as in Lone Star College, adjuncts are not paid for professional development and required department meetings. Of course, adjuncts are not paid for non "contact hours," though some disciplines require extensive preparation and grading. 

We should note that TA and adjunct union membership is increasing (Edwards and Tolley). The strongest strides over the past two years have been in non "right to work" states. In those other states:

Unionized faculty have negotiated steady increases that are significantly higher, and some of the steepest gains have come from unions formed within the last few years.

and

Eighty-nine percent of the contracts we examined include provisions allowing part-time faculty to receive health insurance. (Edwards and Tolley)

On the other hand, when a union does not collectively prioritize salary and benefits with adjuncts, these questions are delayed. In other words, as a union, we must prioritize our adjuncts' needs (salary, benefits, shared governance, working environment) for the whole college strength. Every department meeting, every curriculum discussion, every "safety" discussion on campus must include the real lives of our adjunct colleagues.

We Propose:

1. Tell stories. All employees should share stories of adjunct faculty; this blog is a perfect space to share and listen.
2. Share stories with the community. Lone Star College is somewhat effective with their marketing in the community, but the college does not market the adjunct reality. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) provides a useful set of questions to ask of any school you’re interested in.
3. Inform students of the realities of adjuncts, how our adjuncts must balance time and resources with students, and explain how tuition relates to a contingent faculty.
4. Include our adjunct colleagues in meetings, listen to their needs, collaborate with everyone for working space and support. When we discuss with administration, the term "adjunct" should be included in every conversation.  

Photo rawpixel on Unsplash

Resources

American Federation of Teachers. (n.d.) "What is Right to Work." 

Chang, Bettina. (2015) "Survey: The State of Adjunct Professors." Pacific Standard.

Coalition on the Academic Workforce. (2012) "A Portrait of Part-Time Faculty Members."

Edmonds, Dan. (2015) "More Than Half of College Faculty Are Adjuncts: Should You Care?" Forbes.

Edwards, Kristen and Kim Tolley. (2018) "Do Unions Help Adjuncts?

What dozens of collective-bargaining agreements can tell us. Chronicle of Higher Education.

Kezar, A. & DePaola, T. (2018). "Understanding the need for unions:  Contingent faculty working conditions and the relationship to student learning." In Professors in the gig economy: The unionization of adjunct faculty in America.

Korkki, Phyllis. (2018) "Adjunct Professors Step up Their Efforts to Increase Pay." New York Times.  

McKenna, Laura. (2015). "The Cost of an Adjunct." The Atlantic.

An Introduction to Neoliberalism in Higher Education and the Community College

In this series of blog posts, we address an introduction to a conversation on neoliberalism and how it affects the college's students and the workers. As a series of blog posts, we do not expect to explain all the complexities or deep ramifications of neoliberalism, but we hope that the union members can see the connections of global, national, state, and LSC System policies and attitudes, damaging both the community and the workers' future. We will provide multiple resources for additional reading. Ultimately, we want to uncover how neoliberal ideologies are practiced in the college so that we can slow down or resist administrative polities.

Source: Awantha Artigala

Definitions

Though David Harvey, writing in 1990, described the late-20th century economic system as "post-Fordism," showing contrast with classical industrial (and education) economic models of early the 20th century, today we recognize neoliberalism as "an economy built on just-in-time production, the internationalization of capital, the deregulation of industry, insecure labor, and the entrepreneurial self" (Iber). Whereas Enlightenment (classical) governments fostered capitalism but highlighted personal liberty (read: liberalism), neoliberal governments "act in the interests of capital, since, if businesses do not like a certain country’s policies ... they can disrupt the economy by abruptly withdrawing from that country," and therefore "preserving the rights of capital is the goal, even when that means sacrificing democratic demands" (Iber). Usually, when folks refer to neoliberalism, we look back to the University of Chicago in 1970s when, in response to revolutions in South America, academics advised the Chilean dictator Pinochet.

Most of those who oversaw the savagely abrupt dismantling of the Allende government’s economic policies and their replacement by austerity budgets, privatization of state enterprises and the state pension system, abolition of price controls, abandonment of most foreign trade restrictions, and demobilization of the labor unions did not call themselves “neoliberals.” Some Chilean economists had picked up the term from their German reading. (Rodgers, emphasis added)

But this economic model had already been influential to American politics, and a major actor (literally and metaphorically) has affected American higher education. In 1967, California Governor Ronald Reagan (who had never completed a university program, himself) told reporters that taxpayers shouldn’t be “subsidizing intellectual curiosity" (Berrett). This hostility towards higher education continues in our national and local antipathy for both universities, colleges, and faculty. Reagan's call for austerity instead of intellectualism has been the framework for Texas higher education since the 1980s and, we argue, is the foundational culture of Lone Star College System.

We can see how U.S. government moved in 1970s, then especially under Reagan and all presidential administrations (all -- including Clinton and Obama)  have prioritized forms of capitalism instead of personal liberties. Yes, we can discuss some expansion of personal liberties since the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Rights Movement, and important events such as reproduction rights and marriage equality, but a) every of these are being threatened by the increasingly conservative political scene, often mimicking classical calls for "liberty" but b) ultimately are benefited by the powers of production. We'll come back to this. But now, here, focus on the weakening of labor unions and the use of higher education with neoliberal government mindset.

Applications in Higher Ed

Under neoliberalism, the ultimate game is profit, privilege, and power -- not liberty. Neoliberal governments (remember, international, national, U.S. state, university systems, and college districts) “configures human beings exhaustively as market actors, always, only, and everywhere as homo oeconomicus,” explained by Wendy Brown in her Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution. Specifically, in neoliberal governments

• The state remodels itself as a firm
• the university as a factory, and 
• the self as an object with a price tag. (Rodgers)

We can see how the LSC administration practices this: the marketing, the enrollment process, the press releases, the "professional development" rely on corporate-speak and the discussion of college survivalism is always framed in terms of bodies, not minds. Each semester, we hear either praises for enrollment numbers (when higher) or in distress (when lower) but we rarely discuss student learning. The college models the administration as a corporation instead of a place of learning and the Board expects to reduce the tax rates though student success is not increasing; the college functions as a factory with input, cost-saving measures (obviously: contingent faculty, but also consider overcrowded classes, lack of sufficient student tutoring, and more); the administration markets large billboards to the community as a "cost-saving" opportunity -- it's all a price tag.

For now, we recommend that you watch a 43-minute video "Neoliberalism in Higher Education" produced by Critical Political Education on Vimeo.com:

Neoliberalism in Higher Education from Critical Political Education on Vimeo.

Practices in Community Colleges

The obvious symptom of neoliberalism in Texas is the decreasing funding support of the state. Whereas the American public higher education system had been founded for education for the masses through collective shared responsibility, Texas biennial budget plan is to decrease funding in each recent cycle (see, for example, Texas Monthly's "Senate Budget Slams Texas’s Colleges and Universities"). The rhetoric of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, the Senate and Legislation all call for austerity, using terms such as "belt-tightening" and "personal responsibility." Meanwhile, textbook prices increase, LSCS tuition has increased, while community students struggle with tuition, food, transportation, and child care.

Source: Lone Star College "Tuition/Fee History"

Similarly, the LSCS contingent (adjunct) labor rate is merely $41.75, while New York State community college contingent labor rate averages at $65. The college Administration argues that the Houston "market" compares HCC, and San Jac, while New York cost of living is higher. But that's the point: we know our adjuncts are struggling in Houston, but the Administration uses market-driven arguments instead of those of personal liberties, namely ... living.

This is just the conversation.

In Future Posts:

In future posts, we will address
1. Neoliberalism action in the State of Texas
2. Neoliberalism action in Lone Star College Administration and Board
3. Effects of neoliberalism in the classroom and student success.

What We Can Do

1. We must learn more about neoliberalism in Texas: reading circles, on-line discussions, and on-campus scholarly forums to better inform. We call each union member to lead this call for on-campus informed discussion of state policies that affect our students and our working lives.
2. Share our stories. Share our stories of how college policies affect our students. Share our stories of adjunct faculty. Share our stories with overcrowded classrooms. Share our stories of "disappearing" students. Share our stories of faculty load, exhaustion, frustration, and anxieties.
3. As we expand our own learning, we must meet with our legislators regularly to resist the pervasive and emerging neoliberal practices, laws, budgets, and rationalization. 
4. Very specifically, we must press our senate faculties, our campus presidents and vice presidents, and ultimately with the Board of Trustees to demonstrate how these ideologies are harming our communities. This should be a concerted discussion, informed discussion, and persistent discussion.

Suggested Reading

Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution

del Gandio, J. (2014). "Neoliberalism, Higher Education, and the Rise of Contingent Faculty Labor." 

Harvey, D. (2007). A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

Harvey, D. (2016). "Neoliberalism Is a Political Project: An Interview with David Harvey."

Iber, P. (2018). "Worlds Apart: How neoliberalism shapes the global economy and limits the power of democracies." The New Republic.

Metcalf, S. (2017). "Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world."

Rodgers, D. (2018). "The Uses and Abuses of "Neoliberalism'."

Responding to Janus, Part II

Last month, we wrote a brief summary of the SCOTUS decision of Janus v AFSCME. Since the decision, we have more time to reflect on how this right-wing court affects us as workers and as union members. With our reflections, we call for more assertive actions, especially locally, to strengthen our union in Texas.

1. The Court framed its decision as a First Amendment cause. The Court is wrong. We can address this as Texans.

The Court effectively overturned an important 1977 court decision (Abood v. Detroit Board of Education if you want to learn about that background) and argued that the First Amendment's protection of free speech prohibits public employee unions from charging a mandatory fee for the costs of representation. In Texas, we don't feel the effect of mandatory union fees for representing, but in otherwise union-friendly states, the effect of union collective bargaining is somewhat mixed in some facets and clear in others. According to The Brookings Institute (a conservative think tank), "collective bargaining rights lead to substantial increases in union presence and modest increases in wages" while "evidence on the effect of collective bargaining on public employee retirement benefits is much scarcer."

The collective bargaining act was seen as a free speech act, and Janus argued that he should not be forced to use his "speech" (union fees) though he is rewarded by the union's bargaining. However, the Court's minority dissent notes that unions do not inhibit the freedom of speech of members or non-members. While labor unions have a right to equitably represent all workers in a bargaining act, labor unions are, by law, the exclusive representatives of workers. This means that workers cannot have two labor unions representing them within the same working situation (you can imagine what a Detroit factory would look like with two working unions representing the floor, attempting to bargain with Ford; thus, the law permits only one union representing all workers). 

This singular representation is not unique to unions. We do the same in our communities where we all represent ourselves collectively in the voting machine for our taxes (note: this is ideal, of course, and we are not arguing that our voting system is either fair or equitable, especially in Texas. But let's pretend). As a taxing "collective," we cannot declare one day that as a result of differences with a government body that we should be able to avoid taxes. 

But as Bill Fletcher explains:

In the case of labor unions, they have been granted by law the right and duty to represent workers in a given economic jurisdiction—a bargaining unit. Workers in the public sector are not obligated to join the union but the compromise that was established, and been in operation for 41 years in many states that permit public sector unionism, was that those who choose not to join contribute towards representation costs. Thus, an individual worker who decides not to join the union may, nevertheless, face an issue for which they need representation. Representation costs money. A case may go to arbitration, for instance, which can be very expensive. There may be issues that have to be litigated in court. Indeed, an issue may need to go to a legislative body. These steps can be very expensive. The Supreme Court majority knows this and, essentially, what they said today is that they do not give a damn.

As Texans, we can address this easily:

1. Explain to your colleagues that this was not about free speech. This is about how collective bargaining helps all workers. 
2. Learn about collective bargaining and have a conversation with your local Texas legislator and senator. Yes, most of our legislative representatives are anti-labor, but our silence only encourages demagogues like Abbot and Patrick .
3. Look at immediate history. The massive teacher strikes this year in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina have all taken place in “right to work” states like Texas, and this common fact was likely no coincidence. Workers in “right to work” states tend to have lower salaries and fewer benefits. Remind your local legislator.

2. Let's See a Perspective of the Impact -- Public Sector Unions

The court's decision certainly continues a national trend towards attacking labor-sector unions, such as in Illinois and Wisconsin, where since 2010, union membership declined 38 percent after the attacks on unions by Gov Walker and the Legislature (for a good resource of current news on labor issues such as happening in Wisconsin, see LaborNotes.org). Yet, the international union movement is larger than public-sector, while our national (and state) hostility toward labor-sector union has been part of our lives for decades. Moshe Marvit summarizes this:

the Janus decision will only directly impact less than half of the labor movement. This is because the ruling only applies to public-sector workers: federal, state and local government employees. However, federal employees (including postal employees) have long been under so-called “right to work,” so Janus will have minimal direct impact on them.

So, as Texans, we can address this:

1. Be proactively engaged as a union. More than paying dues, be verbal, physical present. Specifically,
2. Be present for Board of Trustees meetings: start at least once a year and remind the Board that you are a union member
3. Meet your local legislative representative. Local has power while federal representatives are weak. Write your Texas legislator and senator and remind them how our union protects us as employees and strengthens us as citizens. Let them know that our union is very alive
4. Inform other college employees about our union's efforts. Recruit other members to be paying union members.

3. On the other Hand, Understand that Some Populations will be Harder than Others ... Read: than Whites. Duh.

As Miles Kampf-Lassin argues, national public-sector unions disproportionately empower Black women, "this class of hyper-exploited workers is poised to be hit hardest by the anti-union ruling."

Source: Economic Policy Institute

While public-sector labor has facilitated Black women moving into the middle class, the ugly truth is that, on average, African-American women have to work seven months longer to receive the same pay as white men. The Janus decision further exacerbates that economic disparity. This discussion of color, unions, and education needs to be discussed elsewhere.

Here, we recommend:

1. We need to hear more voices of Black women and men, Latinx women and men, and all disenfranchised workers in the college. Their stories often stun us. Our union chapter is open to all, but we see too many white voices and representation, which makes it especially important to listen. 
2. We very pointedly want to understand real racial equity in the college at every corner: administration, faculty, and staff. For example, we call for a Freedom of Information Act request for hiring status, hiring persistence, and salary at LSCS. Though some tools show salaries for University of Houston and Houston Community College, no open data are available for LSCS.
3. Trust Black Women.

4. Remember Who Represents Who: Texas Senator Ted Cruz

The Liberty Justice Center, one of the parties that represented Janus in court, received $800,000 from a policy institute funded by Richard Uihlein, an anti-union megadonor, according to tax forms reviewed by OpenSecrets. Uihlein is an Illinois businessman who has spent millions of dollars supporting Republican candidates such as Sen.Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

This is not a surprise, but as Texans, we have a responsibility to 

1. Inform (repeatedly) Senator Cruz how his poise against workers affects us, and
2. Connect with other Houstonians resisting Senator Cruz's agenda against people of color, migrants, workers, and everything that AFT stands for.

Postscript: As of 20 July, Mark Janus has left from his public-service position ... to work for the Liberty Justice Center, making even more money.

“Once again it’s clear that this court case was never about Mark Janus, but about billionaires like Bruce Rauner and big-money corporate funders launching a political attack on the freedom of working people to speak up together through a strong union,” AFSCME Council 31 spokesman Anders Lindall said. “While IPI tries to dupe workers into quitting their union, AFSCME members will continue doing what they’ve always done: providing important public services and building their union to speak up for themselves, their families and communities.”

Additional Reading

Compa, L. (2014). "An Overview of Collective Bargaining in the United States." Digital Commons.

Semuels, A. (2018). "Is This the End of Public-Sector Unions in America?" The Atlantic. 

Tang, A. (2018). "Life After Janus." [see whole 81-page PDF]

Post-Mortem of May's Houston Education Rally

On May 19th, 2018, educators throughout Harris County congregated near Discovery Green for the "Texas Public Education Rally." Co-sponsored by AFT, the "rally" was not advertised as a protest, demonstration, or anything looking like a strike, as we know educators do not have the legal right to strike in Texas. The Facebook invitation explained:

We are proud to announce that on May 19th Texas AFT, Mike Collier, and Texans for Public Education will be holding a Rally for Public Education for all teachers, parents, students, and all those who care about public education across the state of Texas. Join us at Discovery Green in Houston as we stand up for a first-class public education system and hold our leaders accountable.

Mike Collier is a candidate for Lt Governor and will run against Lt Governor Daniel Patrick. Collier's "issues" page has a fluffy claim that education is a "highest priority" but includes little detail except that he is opposed to standardized testing and that higher education should be affordable.

Texans for Public Education are a very imprecise advocacy group who are "a group of people who are sick of what the politicians are doing with our school system, so we're taking it back using something they understand very well."

The intended day for the "rally" was the day after the shooting at Sante Fe High School, and the discourse sharply moved to a question of "safety." We will address realities of school safety in a future posts. Here, we want to return to the "rally" in Houston and its insufficiency to impress neither the taxpayers nor the politicians.

We suppose that Texans could build some critical mass similar to educators in West Virginia or Colorado or North Carolina or Arizona where they decisively used effective solidarity and effective communication to persuade the community that neoliberal politicians' decades of education budget and policies have demonstrated ... again ... that neoliberalism is always a poison pill for the community.

But Texans shouldn't hold their breaths.

Seth Uzman explains that Texan educators have multiple disadvantages compared to other states:

1. The part-time Legislature, meeting only every two years, while bureaucrats of SBOE and THECB maintain daily hours. 
2. Second, in any right-to-work state with no collective bargaining rights, striking has potentially significant penalties for militant teachers. Duh.
3. "Aggravating the situation is the state’s cruelly stupid mechanism for funding teachers’ benefits. Texas is one of 15 states that doesn’t allow teachers to pay into Social Security, leaving them instead with a poorly organized pension fund through the state’s Teacher Retirement System." 

We want to discuss these other issues including the lean towards a privatized pension fund. We also need to review the state and court hostility toward laborers. We need to discuss the collaboration of community colleges and the THECB.

Actions like the rally for public education may have value in bringing together and energizing a group of people, but only if there's a significant next step that presses the need for face-to-face meetings with legislators. Because we know that as long as rallies take place outside of work hours, outside of legislative sessions, outside of the the earshot of the SBOE and the THECB, that those with power aren't listening. It will take more sustained action to be heard. The State of Texas is a well-organized oligarchy and each educator must become more direct, effective, and energized against it.