The Atlantic
February 15th, 2015
Robert Yoshioka has chartered a bus to carry 60 part-time faculty from the campus of Butte College, in Oroville, CA, to the state capitol on February 25th, but he’s not sure how many protestors will be there to march when the bus arrives.
Yoshioka, a representative of the California Part-Time Faculty Association, is one of many who are agitating for better wages and greater job security for adjunct, part-time, and contingent faculty, who often don’t know whether they’ll be hired back until a few weeks before the semester starts. But as he and his fellow activists prepare for a National Adjunct Walkout Day on February 25th—the first nationwide protest of its kind—he is running into a problem: It’s hard to organize a loose collection workers who are hired and fired at will. “The problem is that part-timers as a group…it’s a revolving door,” he said.