After years of earn­ing less than min­i­mum wage, Jack Dempsey and his co-work­ers decid­ed to orga­nize. They were sick of dis­re­spect and intim­i­da­tion on the job, tired of being called up and expect­ed to work at a moment’s notice, and des­per­ate for ben­e­fits and job security.

Adjuncts are increasingly emblematic of the modern workforce, as white-collar jobs undergo the same casualization that blue-collar workers have long suffered.

Some might be sur­prised to learn that this predica­ment describes Dempsey’s life as an adjunct pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Bent­ley Uni­ver­si­ty in Mass­a­chu­setts. But in near­ly 12 years work­ing there, he’s nev­er received a pro­mo­tion or ben­e­fits. ​“We’re liv­ing on a Band-aid,” he says. ​“If some­body gets sick, they’re fin­ished. Peo­ple are so afraid of los­ing the lit­tle bit of bread that they have that they’re afraid to speak up. But we’re going to try to change that.”

On May 9, adjunct fac­ul­ty at Bent­ley filed peti­tions for a union elec­tion to join Adjunct Action, a new project of the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union (SEIU). Ear­li­er this year, Adjunct Action began a push to union­ize part-time fac­ul­ty at pri­vate schools across the Boston area, an effort that’s part of an emerg­ing focus with­in the labor move­ment on con­tin­gent fac­ul­ty in high­er education.

That so many advanced degree-hold­ers are toil­ing in pover­ty con­di­tions flies in the face of the assump­tion that high­er edu­ca­tion is a path to pros­per­i­ty. But low wages and pre­car­i­ty rep­re­sent the new norm for what some adjuncts have termed ​“academia’s ver­sion of apartheid.”

Hired on a con­tract basis, adjuncts (who may include con­tin­gent full-time fac­ul­ty) are paid by the course — the aver­age rate is $2,900, accord­ing to crowd-sourced fig­ures from the web­site the Adjunct Project. Most con­tin­gent fac­ul­ty are also exclud­ed from access to health insur­ance or oth­er ben­e­fits, and are guar­an­teed nei­ther a full teach­ing load nor a steady contract.

Since earn­ing his Ph.D. in Eng­lish in 1998 from Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, Dempsey has pieced togeth­er a liv­ing by teach­ing com­po­si­tion and pub­lic speak­ing class­es at a series of uni­ver­si­ties — an endeav­or that at Bent­ley last year net­ted him $18,400 before tax­es — and by pick­ing up occa­sion­al work as a book edi­tor. Many part-time pro­fes­sors are even worse off: Dempsey men­tions a col­league who grades Com­po­si­tion 101 papers through a 30-year-old pair of glass­es that he can’t afford to replace. And news sto­ries abound of adjuncts who live in their cars or are depen­dent on pub­lic aid.

Per­haps the great­est irony of the lot of adjunct teach­ing staff is that they are no longer ​“adjunct” at all to uni­ver­si­ty oper­a­tions. Tenure-track fac­ul­ty posi­tions today con­sti­tute just 24 per­cent of the aca­d­e­m­ic work­force, an all-time low, accord­ing to an April report from the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sors (AAUP). Reel­ing from state bud­get cuts, uni­ver­si­ties have turned increas­ing­ly to the cheap teach­ing labor pro­vid­ed by non-tenure track fac­ul­ty. But the adjunc­ti­fi­ca­tion of high­er edu­ca­tion also coin­cides with its bureau­cra­ti­za­tion. Between 2001 and 2011, the num­ber of admin­is­tra­tors hired by col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties increased 50 per­cent faster than the num­ber of instruc­tors, accord­ing to U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion data.

The orga­niz­ing strat­e­gy SEIU and a hand­ful of oth­er unions have begun pur­su­ing is premised on the recog­ni­tion that adjuncts, though pro­fes­sion­als, are first and fore­most pre­car­i­ous work­ers strung between mul­ti­ple jobs at mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es. There­fore, labor activists believe, con­tin­gent fac­ul­ty will need to be orga­nized at the indus­try lev­el, rather than the insti­tu­tion­al one, in order to make real gains.

​“We want to change the entire mod­el of how adjuncts are treat­ed in high­er edu­ca­tion, and we can’t do that sep­a­rate insti­tu­tion by sep­a­rate insti­tu­tion,” says Anne McLeer, direc­tor of research and strate­gic plan­ning for SEIU Local 500 in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

After orga­niz­ing her own union as an adjunct at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in 2004, McLeer has helped build a region­al orga­niz­ing cam­paign with Local 500, which after a suc­cess­ful union elec­tion at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty this May now rep­re­sents more than three-fourths of con­tin­gent fac­ul­ty in the D.C. metro area.

This kind of ​“metro strat­e­gy” could help give adjuncts real pow­er to raise stan­dards mar­ketwide, says McLeer. Already, the local has nego­ti­at­ed con­tract gains at three uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing pay rais­es and, at Mont­gomery Col­lege and George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, pro­tec­tions against cut­backs to adjuncts’ course­loads. In the future, McLeer envi­sions all adjuncts in the area work­ing under a city­wide contract.

These vic­to­ries have inspired SEIU to ini­ti­ate a sim­i­lar push in Boston. Pri­or to this effort, SEIU had orga­nized adjuncts into col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing units in Cal­i­for­nia and North Car­oli­na, among oth­er states. The Unit­ed Steel­work­ers are in the ear­ly stages of pur­su­ing a region­al strat­e­gy in Pitts­burgh, and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca and the Unit­ed Auto Work­ers have also ini­ti­at­ed efforts to union­ize non-tenure-track faculty.

Tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic unions, by con­trast, ​“have by and large had their heads in the sand” as the adjunc­ti­fi­ca­tion of high­er edu­ca­tion has pro­ceed­ed, says Joe Berry, a labor edu­ca­tor and author of Reclaim­ing the Ivory Tow­er, a 2005 hand­book for con­tin­gent fac­ul­ty organizing.

Near­ly 90 per­cent of orga­nized high­er edu­ca­tion fac­ul­ty are rep­re­sent­ed by three labor groups — the AAUP, the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (AFT) and the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NEA).

All three orga­ni­za­tions have tak­en strides to grow the ranks of orga­nized adjuncts dur­ing the past few years. But giv­en that they make up more than three-quar­ters of the teach­ing force, con­tin­gent fac­ul­ty con­tin­ue to be under­rep­re­sent­ed. A 2011 sur­vey by the Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion found that ​“about 30 to 40 per­cent of the col­lege instruc­tors in NEA bar­gain­ing units, and more than 40 per­cent of those in AFT bar­gain­ing units, are employed on a con­tin­gent basis, with sol­id majori­ties of the adjuncts in both unions on con­tracts to work part time.”

Some activists charge, more­over, that adjuncts lack real deci­sion-mak­ing pow­er with­in these unions — par­tic­u­lar­ly when tenure-track fac­ul­ty view adjuncts as com­peti­tors rather than allies. Until 2011, for exam­ple, the NEA-affil­i­at­ed Mass­a­chu­setts Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege Coun­cil gave part-timers only one-fourth of a vote, though they out­num­bered full-time fac­ul­ty in the union.

Among the ques­tions fac­ing adjuncts who wish to orga­nize is whether to do so with­in their own bar­gain­ing units or joint units with tenure-track fac­ul­ty; both types of units exist with­in the NEA and AFT. Non-aca­d­e­m­ic unions like SEIU that have stepped into the fold have most often done so at pri­vate uni­ver­si­ties, where tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic unions have typ­i­cal­ly made few­er efforts at orga­niz­ing because of legal bar­ri­ers to full-time fac­ul­ty exer­cis­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights. Both tenure-track and non-tenure-track fac­ul­ty at all the schools where Adjunct Action is orga­niz­ing in Boston are cur­rent­ly non-unionized.

Berry believes that aca­d­e­m­ic unions have no real incen­tive for wide­spread con­tin­gent fac­ul­ty orga­niz­ing. ​“If you orga­nize a whole lot of new peo­ple from the sec­ond-tier in high­er edu­ca­tion, you’re not going to get a lot of dues mon­ey, but you’re going to change the pol­i­tics of the union,” he notes. ​“As our num­bers get big­ger and big­ger, they want us less and less.”

For this rea­son, activists believe that union­iz­ing non-tenure-track fac­ul­ty must take place with a broad­er pro­gres­sive agen­da in mind. As white-col­lar jobs under­go the same casu­al­iza­tion that blue-col­lar work­ers have long suf­fered, adjuncts — who share impor­tant sim­i­lar­i­ties with oth­er groups of low-wage work­ers who have been at the fore­front of some of the most excit­ing labor orga­niz­ing hap­pen­ing of late — are increas­ing­ly emblem­at­ic of the mod­ern work­force. The suc­cess of adjunct orga­niz­ing, activists believe, could prove a bell­wether for the fate of the labor move­ment — in order to sur­vive, it must adapt to these chang­ing con­di­tions for orga­niz­ing, and con­tin­gent pro­fes­sion­als must prove them­selves will­ing to join the fold of a broad­er move­ment of pre­car­i­ous workers.

McLeer believes this is pos­si­ble, cit­ing the emerg­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty between adjuncts and ser­vice work­ers on cam­pus­es SEIU Local 500 has orga­nized. But adjuncts also face many of the same bar­ri­ers to orga­niz­ing as oth­er pre­car­i­ous work­ers, includ­ing a lack of cohe­sion and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to retal­i­a­tion from administrators.

As con­tin­gent fac­ul­ty at Bent­ley pre­pare for their union elec­tion, how­ev­er, Dempsey is hope­ful that it will be the adjuncts who find them­selves in a posi­tion of pow­er. Uni­ver­si­ties ​“have become so addict­ed to the prof­its of using adjuncts that … they’ve overex­tend­ed them­selves,” he says. ​“If we strike, the school stops.”