The 2010 spark for the Program for Change was the thought, “Twenty years from now, do we want to be still talking about the issues of tenured and non-tenured and adjunct faculty with little comprehensive progress having been sought or achieved?” The authors, Jack Longmate of Olympic College in Washington State and Frank Cosco of Vancouver Community College in British Columbia emphatic answer is, “No.” The Program for Change is their effort to argue for and to map out incremental change.
The focus of this Program is doing whatever can be done to improve the worklife of the non-tenured and doing it whenever and as soon as it’s possible to do it. The current state of inequity did not come about quickly, it will not go away quickly, but that does not mean real change cannot be achieved.
The Program could be used by any activist or activist group seeking more equitable workplace conditions. It provides arcs of measurable progress on over thirty aspects of faculty work. It was based on the most equitable existing conditions the authors are familiar with, those in British Columbian Colleges and Universities under the aegis of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators and especially the Collective Agreement between VCC and the VCC Faculty Association. Most of its advocacy is targeted to the needs of the adjunct majority of faculty in the USA .
The authors encourage questions and comments. Past contributions have been used in the following update and FAQs. The authors also encourage the adoption of the Program as a workplan by those working in groups, both formal and informal, who are trying to end inequity.
Jack Longmate
jacklongmate@comcast.net
Frank Cosco
fcosco@vccfa.ca
A Program for Change: Real Transformation over Two Decades
Introduction
1.A The dysfunctional state of faculty employment in post-secondary education in 2010 is well documented and well known. Over the last few decades, corporatization has fragmented faculty. It has resulted in a caste-like structure with primarily two tiers. The majority of the faculty occupies the lower tier and is recognized as performing only a portion of the job, classroom instruction; these faculty tend to be compensated at a rate of pay in violation of the principle of “equal pay for equal work,” often resulting in a poverty-level income. They work in complete insecurity. They are left to draw upon the satisfaction of working with students as their chief inspiration to continue because of their dismal working conditions and the equally dismal prospects for improvement.
Appendix B Commonly Raised Comments and Questions about the Program for Change