Adjuncts & Janitors

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

The Ohio State University pays its unionized janitors, food service 
workers, plumbers, electricians, boiler maintenance workers, etc. in 
CWA Local 4501 (= workers whose strike my fellow local activists & I 
supported last year) health benefits, pensions, etc., whereas it 
doesn't pay term-employed adjuncts any of them.  That's not because 
OSU janitors, etc. have more education than OSU adjuncts.  That's 
because OSU janitors have had the political moxy to get unionized & 
fight for better wages, benefits, working conditions, etc., whereas 
too many TAs & adjuncts have been feckless individualists.

Perhaps, on the average, more formal education = less class 
consciousness?  I hope that the continuing proletarianization of 
academic workers will change this equation.

Michael Hoover says that he's been trying to organize his colleagues 
for the last 15 years or so, and I was doing the same, on and off, 
for several years (since I became an adjunct, however, I've had no 
time to devote to organizing on this front).  Neither of us has made 
much progress.  I guess we'll just have to keep at it.

Yoshie