Routinely getting classes or having your schedule or textbook changed hours before a class started, and often after you’d made commitments to other jobs; sweetheart deals; inconsistent raise, peer review and administrative policies; lack of grievance procedures; working in fear that you had no other protection for your position than the good graces of your superiors and all the while whispering with colleagues in dark corners that there had to be a better way.
Sound familiar? In 2002 two adjuncts decided on the only course of action that better way could take. Their names were John Bousamra, long-time adjunct in French, and former full-timer and Spanish adjunct, Joe Dipaola. At lunch one day they decided, “Let’s form an adjunct union.”
After approaching several higher ed parent unions, and often at their own expense, they started to work with the Michigan Education Association. It took months of legal battles as the college claimed we were “casual and temporary” labor, and therefore had no standing to form a union. The Michigan Employment Regulatory Commission [MERC] agreed with the MEA petitioners and granted a vote. That vote took place in the fall of 2003 and the response was overwhelming to form a union and the Macomb College Adjunct Faculty Association (MCAFA) was born. MCAFA became the first all adjunct union at a community college in the state of Michigan not accreted with their full time counter-parts. The inaugural officers were John Bousamra, President, Joe Dipaola, Vice President, Physics Instructor, Dr. G. Hossein Azarbayejani, Treasurer and History Instructor, Michael Johns, Secretary.
Now it was time to write an inaugural contract. It was the summer of 2004 and the bargaining team consisted of long-time union advocate and Instructor of Economics and Psychology, Joe Miller, English Instructor, Andrew Kos, head negotiator and MEA Uniserve Director for our MEA district, Aaron Sheposh, Joe Dipaola and Jeffrey T. Kass, History Instructor. It took almost two years of bargaining to write the entire contract. The largest stumbling block was the issue of seniority. It took months of side bars to hash out what we on the union side agreed was not “absolute” seniority but felt that it was the best we could get under the circumstances. That is the system described in Section 4 of the contract in
place now. Andrew Kos and Aaron Sheposh represented MCAFA in the side bars. John Bousamra, Jeff Kass and German Instructor and special advisor to the bargaining team, Dr. Kendall Weeks, congregated in the South Campus Library each week, waiting like expectant fathers for news of a breakthrough. It finally came in 2005. It then took about another year to work out evaluation language, grievance, load limits, pay and some other issues. Finally in the spring of 2006 the membership ratified our first contract.
Also in 2006 John Bousamra and Joe Dipaola, believing the bulk of their work had beencompleted with the ratification of a contract, decided to step down before the end of their terms. In a special election Richard Filbey, Instructor of Mathematics, and Jeff Kass, inaugural bargainer and Instructor of History were elected president and vice-president, respectively. Dr. G. Hossein Azarbayejani stayed on as Treasurer. Michael Johns also stepped down and was replaced temporarily with Philosophy adjunct, Theresa Catalano Reinhardt.
Jodi Monday from Media and Communication Arts eventually came on board as Secretary and Grievance Officer. Since then Jerold Sommerville from the History department rounded out the Executive Board as its new Member-at-Large.
Meanwhile the relationship with the MEA, though strong at the beginning, began to deteriorate. The decision was made to hold a special election to decide whether the MCAFA should stay with MEA or go out on its own as an independent union. The membership voted to leave MEA in the summer of 2012. The union was renamed the AAFMCC, The Association of Adjunct Faculty of Macomb Community College. It soon became evident, however, that running a union with just a few officers was easier said than done. The AAFMCC leadership began negotiating with the American Federation of Teachers to become our new parent union. The final decision to go with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT-MI), though somewhat controversial since we just recently left the MEA, was made easier by political events when an increasingly hostile administration and legislature in Lansing passed Michigan’s first “right-to-work” law which will eventually prove to be our greatest challenge yet. The membership agreed, voting in May of 2013 to join the AFT.
Our union is by no means perfect and organizing part-timers, most of whom have income from other sources, has been no easy task to say the least. We continue to work hard to improve seniority language, pay and hope to one day even provide benefits to at least some of our membership. But it’s only with the growing support and help of the membership that this will
be possible.