Poorly, in my experience. I spent some time on shop floors here and there in Detroit and Flint, some years ago, and found the workers very free-spoken. Junior tenure-track faculty, by contrast, are very cowed. And adjuncts never open their mouths."
After Lt. Pike pepper sprayed students on our campus, who was the first to call for the Chancellor's resignation? A junior tenure-track faculty member --- who works on "pomo" theorists like Foucault and Deleuze, no less! Meanwhile, one of the main occupy organizers adjuncts in the French dep't.
I'm not sure what's gained by making gross generalizations about academic workers.
J