Chicago's Columbia College adjuncts hit the bricks.
Columbia College is the poster child for the mistreatment of adjunct faculty.
Chicago’s Columbia College adjuncts have been on strike for a week.
Columbia has always been the poster child for the exploitation of adjunct faculty who are low paid and mistreated.
I have followed the Columbia adjuncts since back in 2015 when their local union, the Part-time Faculty of Columbia College, voted to disaffiliate from the National Education Association and the Illinois Education Association.
The local complained that the IEA was acting undemocratically by meddling and interfering in the local’s business and for a general lack of support.
Voting to become an independent union was a courageous thing to do. The law kept them from affiliating with any other union for a year after disaffiliation, which left them without the resources that a national union provides.
Since the adjunct faculty left the IEA and the NEA they have joined with the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers.
Now they are members of the CFAC, Local 6602, IFT-AFT/AFL-CIO
Nearly 600 adjunct professors at Columbia College Chicago walked off the job to demand job security and health insurance.
A 2018 podcast of Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers and our friend and Columbia College adjunct faculty union leader Andrea Dymond.