PATFA Colleagues:
Fifteen years teaching English at USM, with stints at Lewiston-Auburn and Saco-Biddeford, give me deep familiarity with our adjunct working conditions and concerns and the road our union has travelled both in gains and yet unrealized objectives. Active on PATFA’s last three contract-bargaining teams through negotiations and a mediated settlement, I have served as vice president, system-wide grievance officer for individuals and the unit, and as a campus rep. At USM, I maintain adjunct voting representation on university-wide committees and the Faculty Senate. Recently, I turned around a unilateral withdrawal of Academic Year Appointments from USM adjuncts and instituted a system-wide grievance for uniform AYA practice across UM campuses, as well as the happier work of resolving adjunct problems without having to grieve. I liaise with the Southern Maine Labor Council and student organizations and the local press.
Some of you are already feeling the fallout from the major transformation of the University of Maine System, which will entail a projected 100 full-time faculty cuts over the next five years. Adjuncts now provide nearly two thirds of classroom face-time, a number that should grow. As the predominant entry-level course instructors, we are a key student retention factor in a scenario of declining enrollments. In this shifting landscape, we need to make our value in a restructured university clear to the administration, our non-adjunct university colleagues, and the Maine legislature and public. I will anchor our claim to professional dignity, support and equitable compensation in how our teaching conditions translate into students’ learning conditions, a message I hope to push through both traditional and new media. This is also the time to:
• preserve the hard-won gains of our last four contracts in a clear “career path” raise structure, health coverage, and job security measures
• consolidate our membership to respond nimbly to changing conditions
• use our AFT affiliation for more technical support and services
• develop our coalitions with education, labor and student organizations, the press and the legislature with liaisons
• supply you with timely information on rank advancement, election and legislative actions, opportunities to influence university policy, and our existing rights
• bring students more closely into labor work through collaboration and intern relationships
Not finally but first, this is a time to reassess who we are as a unit in an evolving situation. If you elect me president, my first priority will be to survey your priorities, desires and needs, share that information with you, and let it shape my course of action while in office.
We teach because we love to equip students to work and play in the fields we know and care about. As a union leader, I fight for our worth and dignity so that we can all continue to shape real and transformative higher education for our students and ourselves.
You can read more about my ideas at the PATFA website at patfa.me.aft.org and I am always happy to hear from you at mjcheung@maine.rr.com