>my point was that, considering the amt of time one needs to spend,
>even at a high ball of 15 hrs per week for, say, 30 students for a
>16 wk semester, your hourly wage is far better than that of a
>housekeeper or janitor.
If you spend only 15 hours per week, yes (in my case, it would amount to a little less than $10 per hour *if* I spent only 15 hours per week per course, but keep in mind that the OSU pays better than most other colleges in the area -- the worst pay is Antioch College's which is about 60% of the OSU pay), but what if that's not the case? *Even* the Ohio State University where TAs & lecturers are _not_ unionized recognizes that a TA spends at least *20 hours* per week on work, and the pay scales are calculated on this basis. I believe, however, that most non-unionized TAs and lecturers work more than 20 hours per week. One of the anti-union arguments has been that TAs & lecturers don't even work for 20 hours per week (which tends to be the benchmark of what is called a "50% appointment"), as you allege, and that hence low wages are justified, but I don't think the argument holds.
Hell, even anti-union administrators recognize 20 hours per week as the minimum: "'Employees work 40 hours a week, fifty weeks a year,' Beckman [a NYU spokesman] continued. 'But graduate assistants work 20 hours a week for 30 weeks'" (at <http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/journal/union/univ_admin_1.htm>)!
Your contention that most TAs & adjuncts spend only 15 hours or less per week will only help administrators, I'm afraid.
>that's a burn out schedule. so pull it back down to, say, 8700 for
>16 wks. plus teaching 2 courses in the summer for 2200 a pop.
If you get any job in summer, that is. Summer, naturally, offers far fewer courses. Normally there is no course available for adjuncts at the OSU in summer. There aren't even enough jobs to go around for TAs who would like summer courses (and all of whom must be given jobs before any goes to an adjunct). At the OSU, there tends to be more jobs in Autumn than any other quarter, fewer in Winter than Autumn, much fewer jobs in Spring than Autumn & Winter. So my schedule is most often to teach 2 or 3 in Autumn, 2 in Winter, 1 in Spring, & 0 in Summer.
>again, it still sucks compared to the 40-75k fulltime fac tenured
>fac work for the minimum of say 40 wks per year, but it's better
>than housekeepers and janitors!
The thing is, though, that if one is to be an adjunct who mainly teaches so-called "service courses," she *doesn't need* a Ph.D. (In fact, since so many "service courses" are already being taught by grad students, one might argue that you only need a bachelor's degree to teach undergraduates; at the Ohio State University, the Department of Mathematics even allows qualified undergrads -- who don't have to be math majors -- to teach a good number of courses!) What's an an economic incentive of pursuing a Ph.D. if you are much more likely to become an adjunct than a tenured full professor?
More importantly, what's a political justification of the tenure system (part of the hierarchy)? After all, the thread "reparations & exploitation" came to center on an ethical & political justification of pay differentials (or lack thereof).
Yoshie