American myth: low-wage work is unskilled labor, generally in service or sweatshop manufacturing: education is the route out of poverty.

American reality: over the past 15 years, a huge low-wage labor pool has grown among some of our most educated workers: community college, college, and university part-time faculty.

While the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has addressed the plight of part-timers since the 1960s, most people regarded it as a relatively minor issue. The typical part-timer was a person with a full-time professional position in the "real world" (i.e., "where people have to work," in contrast to the "country club" of education) who came in to teach a course for which demand was too low or the subject too specialized to require a full-time faculty member. Because they were supplementing their regular pay and offering their time as a sort of community service, their low (very low) wage was not widely considered a problem.

However, the days of those occasional employees are long over. While the number of part-timers had been creeping up for a long time, since the mid-`80s it has grown exponentially, to a point where 43 percent of all higher-education courses are taught by part-timers-64 percent at community colleges. By the early 1980s, full-time higher education employment had reached a saturation point, making competition for jobs tremendous, and leaving a huge pool of qualified academics unemployed and eager for positions, a classic "surplus army of labor." So it was a buyer's market for teaching, and the old-style occasional adjunct evolved into thousands and thousands of people trying to piece together a living by teaching several courses here, several courses there-sometimes as many as ten separate classes at three to five separate institutions in one semester. Even this, with its impossible time demands (double a heavy full-time load, with travel thrown in), can bring a part-timer as little as $36,000 or less per year for working the equivalent of two full-time jobs. One cannot sustain such activity for long without damaging the quality of one's teaching-or one's health. Most part-timers teach five or six courses per semester, which provides them as little as $15,000 per year (unionized part-time faculty can make $20,000 or more).

This amounts to anywhere from 25 to 60 percent per credit of what their full-time colleagues bring home. Pay is generally lower in community colleges than in four-year schools and highest at private colleges and universities (though the latter are equally skilled at exploiting their teaching assistants, who are also beginning to organize). Part-time instructors generally don't have health coverage or retirement plans; they have no guarantee of being re-hired from one semester to the next, no protection against arbitrary dismissal, no voice in campus or departmental affairs, often no offices and no compensation for office hours; they are often assigned (or even hired) at the last minute, sometimes even a week or two into the semester; they use pre-selected texts-and they get little if any respect from administrators and sometimes even from their full-time colleagues. But most people outside the academy don't know about this. Part-timers are an invisible underclass.

Faculty unions, such as the AFT, and other activists have taken various approaches to addressing this problem. The first is contractual: many unions have negotiated a specific ratio of full-time to part-time credits taught, so that administrations have to start hiring new full-time faculty (including, ideally, former part-timers) at some point. A relatively healthy average ratio is 60:40 full-time to part-time credits taught; the California system actually managed to win legislation calling for 75:25, though it has yet to be enforced. Unfortunately, administrations have managed to find ways around this, at least temporarily, such as getting unions to agree to relax the requirement during years following early retirement options-which can be worked into each year of a contract, thus effectively voiding the ratio.

Another approach is organizing part-time faculty, ideally into the same local and bargaining unit as the full-timers, though separate bargaining units within the same local have also had some successes. While the first part-time faculty organized in the late `60s and early `70s, it had been relatively uncommon until four or five years ago. Since then organized part-time faculty have negotiated salary increases of from 20 to 30 percent have begun to get some level of benefits; are starting to be included on college-wide and departmental committees; have a vote (though sometimes not a full vote) in the union and, in some cases, in their departments; and more. Much more rare are such amenities as rank, preference in new full-time hiring, and a job-security system similar to tenure, although some unions have successfully negotiated them.

However, part-time organizing has its problems-some of them very demoralizing. One is a long-developed mistrust between full- and part-timers, with some part-timers (sometimes justifiably) concerned that full-timers won't stand up for them, and some full-timers afraid that less "qualified" or "professional" part-timers will take over the unions through sheer numbers. They are also concerned that once part-time teaching is made legitimate, full-timers will be phased out. It can take time and careful planning to build the trust and solidarity necessary to a successful unionization process. And even when part-timers are part of the local, the two groups can be played against each other, with administrations using one group's needs as a bargaining chip with the other. A strongly class-conscious union (it comes down to a matter of class dynamics, even if faculty are not technically "working class" by income or occupation) can probably hold on to solidarity well enough to weather such attacks.

The third approach is legislative: put pressure on state lawmakers to mandate desired changes. Unions in California, Illinois and Pennsylvania have won legislative improvements ranging from state-mandated studies of part-time working conditions to actual pay raises. Probably the most positive campaign (in large part because of its high visibility) was a 1999 Washington Federation of Teachers intensive lobbying effort, which included parking a car on the steps of the state house with a sign, "My Office." The newspapers gave the lobbying positive coverage and decried the situation, the public sympathized, and even a Republican legislator came out and spoke to the crowd in support of their efforts. In the end, the state budgeted an additional $10 million for part-time salary increases, improved benefits, and set up a study.

Creeping capitalism is insinuating itself into all corners of our society. That much of higher education has become a sweatshop is a timely wake-up call to those who consider themselves safe from the market-those who feel that education is either a haven or the salvation from economic hardship. It should remind us all that the struggle of labor against management is not limited to blue-collar workers, but that this struggle is universal, crossing lines of profession and training. In this microcosm of the struggle, full-time faculty need to develop solidarity with part-time; faculty unions need to rekindle solidarity with other unions; and unions need to build solidarity with communities. While unionizing and putting rules into contracts will help hold back exploitation, it will only be totally destroyed when those rules are enacted into law-and when the people push their representatives to enforce those laws. That is a conscious, compassionate democracy.

October 28-November 8, 2001, was Campus Equity Week, when, all over the country, union members, students, local politicians, and other activists leafleted on campuses and in towns and demonstrated, generally at state capitols, to bring attention to the plight of part-time faculty. This was a great show of solidarity, and it certainly educated some people. But until all part-timers are treated fairly, every week needs to be Campus Equity Week.

John Strauss is on DSA's National Political Committee and was liaison between full-time faculty and part-timer activists during their organizing drive at Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania where he teaches (full-time) in the English Department.