7k or strike!

“7k or strike!” The adjunct Sandor S. John exclaims at the Hunter College Socialist Revolution Club’s event on Friday, following his vivid description of the unfair working conditions of adjuncts in the CUNY system. Adjuncts are teaching 60 percent of classes, yet they are only paid a fraction of what the other faculty is paid.

Downtown view from the Hunter College skybridge above Lexington Avenue.

Generally, Hunter College adjuncts are paid about $3200 per three-credit course, which only accounts for the time spent in the classroom and one hour office hour a week. No matter how many students or how much administration work per class, the wage stays the same.

For example, Alison Parks an adjunct instructor for 5 years, explains that she is not solely reliant on her adjunct paycheck, as she has four other jobs. “Not knowing if you’ll have a job next semester is very stressful, as well as delayed paychecks at the beginning of a new semester. If we’d win ‘7k or strike’ we could spend more time on each student while pursuing our own research.”

The CUNY-wide union, PSC, supports the “7k or strike” movement, and urges their members to organize on their own campuses. As there are 24 campuses within the CUNY system, organizing both students and faculty is hard, but not impossible.

One initiative to visualize the unpaid labor the adjuncts have to perform are “grade-ins”, where adjuncts grade together in a public place on campus, to display their uncompensated labor.

Mia Becerra, a student attendee of the event on Friday, says she has been aware of the adjunct struggle for some time now. Her experience is that adjuncts seem more eager to do their job well, but that they seem to fall short with things like feedback on grading, due to their apparent time constraint.