U.S. Labor News Roundup

Week of May 27, 2013

Frozen, Furloughed and Sequestered: Federal Workers Fed Up

The government-wide spending cuts known as “the sequester” took effect March 1, forcing federal agencies to cut $85 billion from their budgets through September 30.

Among many other cuts, that means five to 11 days’ unpaid time off for many federal workers. For example, 650,000 civilian Defense Department employees will take a day off every week, July through September—a 20 percent pay cut.

Workers at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Labor, and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are also facing cuts.

“HUD helps the poorest 5 percent people in this country,” said one union official. “All our programs are being cut: subsidies for rental housing, Hurricane Sandy relief, programs to keep people out of foreclosure, housing for those with AIDS, the homeless program.”

Head Start, the program for pre-school children, has been forced to cut thousands of places. Head Start was designed to educate poor children to bring them up to the level of middle-class children by the time they started school.

Since January, Social Security offices have been open fewer hours. Offices are seeing the same or larger numbers of recipients, although the agency has 5,000 fewer employees because of a hiring freeze.

The result? Recipients’ appointments are delayed, more employees are on stress-related medical leave or retirements, “and those who stay are not sure how long they’ll be able to stand it,” said Jim Campana of the Social Security workers union.

On top of higher workloads, federal worker pay has been frozen for three years.

Chuck Orzehoskie says EPA employees are dedicated to their mission, but “when you hear politicians calling you scumbuckets every day, you start to lose some of your momentum. Congress is talking about more pay cuts next year; people might want to leave and work in the private sector.”

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The trend is toward privatization anyway, union staffer Jacque Simon explained. The layoffs create backlogs, “and then Congress has hearings about the backlogs and how inefficient the federal workforce is—and that we have to privatize.”

Adjunct Faculty, Now the Majority of College Teachers, Organize Citywide

When adjunct faculty at Georgetown University swept their union election May 3 with 72 percent voting yes, it marked a local tipping point: Service Employees Local 500 now represents a majority of adjuncts at private colleges in the Washington, D.C. area.

The spread of adjunct unions in D.C., where faculty self-organized at four colleges, inspired SEIU to launch a citywide, cross-college organizing strategy in Boston. Seattle may be next. The Steelworkers are doing the same in Pittsburgh.

Both unions held conferences on contingent faculty organizing in April. SEIU’s Boston event drew workers from at least 20 colleges.

Adjuncts teach on a contract basis, often booked one semester at a time. Adjuncts number at least a million and now make up 75 percent of college and university faculty.

Staffing at universities is an extreme two-tier scenario. In many institutions, the average tenure-track faculty member makes two, three, or even four times per course what an adjunct does.

Many adjuncts make only $2,000 to $3,000 per course, with no benefits. (Eight courses per year would keep you very busy.) Some get food stamps.

It’s been a dramatic slide in working conditions, even compared with other industries. “Almost no place have you seen a job that was as good as a professor job completely casualized in the space of a single generation,” said organizer Joe Berry.

Citywide bargaining could create a more stable work life for adjuncts, perhaps with centralized job posting and something like a union hiring hall.