Nataly Reed’s landlord increased her rent by $300 over the past year. As a contingent faculty member in the English department at the University of Arizona, she teaches a full-time course load on a short-term contract. Now, the inflated cost of living in Arizona has her wondering how much further she’ll be able to stretch her salary.
“I’m glad that I can still afford to pay my rent, but I’m at my limit. You’re not supposed to allot more than 30% of your income for housing and I’m there,” Reed said. “That’s money I’m not saving. I’m not planning on retiring tomorrow, but I wonder if I’ll ever be able to.”
Creating more job security for contingent faculty is why Reed, who is also an organizer for the United Campus Workers of Arizona chapter at the UA, has joined hundreds of other faculty members at the UA and Arizona State University in signing a petition calling both campuses to raise the minimum wage for all campus workers to $25 an hour by 2025.
The union is also circulating a petition at both universities which demands “job security, thriving wages and paths to promotion” for contingent faculty.
‘Job security, thriving wages’
As of fall 2022, contingent faculty make up 51% of the UA’s teaching staff, which is part of a decades-long national trend toward colleges and universities relying more heavily on non-tenure track faculty.
“So many of our students have no clue that the faculty who walk in and teach their classes have no job security, aren’t really earning a living wage and are often really struggling,” said Marcia Klotz, an assistant professor in the UA’s English department and faculty representative to the union’s executive committee.
Although she does have tenure, Klotz said that from the union’s perspective, offering that kind of job security to all of the UA’s faculty members would benefit the campus as a whole. “To the extent that we can advocate on behalf of the working conditions of our faculty, we’re advocating on behalf of the learning conditions of our students,” she said. “It’s a completely direct correlation.”
Right now, the minimum salary for a full-time contingent faculty member is $32,000 for one academic year, but actual salaries can vary widely by department. Many of those contingent faculty are hired on one-year, or even semester-long, contracts, as opposed to tenure-track faculty who are working toward permanent positions. Contingent faculty members who don’t carry a full-time teaching load are paid roughly $5,000 per class and typically work on semester-long contracts.
“When people are hired to teach courses on a part-time basis and with no job security, professors disappear,” said Reed, who explained that from what she’s seen, those inconsistencies can hurt students who may not be able to take a key course or build strong relationships with their professors. Receiving low wages and little job security to do the work of teaching a full-time course load, she added, also lowers morale in the classroom, which is why she and the other signatories of the petition are asking for multi-year contracts and clearer paths to promotion that recognize merit.
According to UA spokeswoman Pam Scott, the university is already making progress toward meeting those demands.
“We have been working to increase the number of career-track faculty on multi-year contracts,” she said in an email. “It has been steadily increasing the past few years and after the push this semester, we are likely to see substantial growth in multi-year contracts in the following year data.”
Scott added that while career-track faculty, which are benefits-eligible contingent employees, already do have paths toward promotion, adjunct faculty, who are generally not benefits-eligible, do not.
$25 by 2025
But even if there is a possibility for an eventual promotion, the $32,000 minimum salary for full-time contingent faculty set by the UA, Reed said, is one of the big reasons behind the union’s call for a $25 minimum hourly wage by 2025.
“When you’re salaried you work as many hours as you’re willing to give,” Reed said. “So many people are working on fumes.”
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator, a single adult with one child living in Pima County would need to earn $30.73 an hour to make a living wage in Tucson. In Maricopa County, where ASU is located, that same person would have to earn $32.73 an hour to make a living wage.
Neither UA’s, nor ASU’s minimum wages come close to that pay.
As of right now, the UA’s minimum wage for student-workers is $13 an hour, which matches Tucson’s new minimum wage schedule, and $13.50 for staff. Beginning Jan. 1, 2023, the UA will raise its minimum hourly wage to $13.85 for its 27,000 workers, in line with the state’s scheduled increase.
“We are in agreement that it is important to continue to increase the pay of our lowest paid employees given current high inflation and an increasingly competitive labor market,” Scott, the UA’s spokesperson, said. Scott also added that the UA does intend to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour before 2025, which is when the city will require all employers to offer a $15 minimum wage, per a ballot measure voters approved last year.
Up in Tempe, where the cost of living is higher than in Tucson, ASU has raised the minimum hourly wage for its approximately 16,500 workers to $20 “to remain competitive in the current labor market,” a university spokesperson said in an email. However, ASU, where 61% of its teaching staff is composed of contingent faculty, did not respond to further questions about the specifics of its contingent faculty contracts or any plans to adjust them.
The union is working on gathering more support from workers, students and the community before it sends the petitions off to the leadership at the UA, ASU and the Arizona Board of Regents, which sends budget requests to the Arizona State Legislature for approval.
But its message is already clear and uncompromising.
“Universities encompass a large workforce, so they should be leading and giving their workers a livable wage,” Jessica Rodriguez, lead organizer for the United Campus Workers of Arizona which serves both ASU and the UA, said. “Workers are asking for $25 by the year 2025. We have three years ahead of us, so the administrations, ABOR and the legislature can start making proactive decisions that support higher education and the workers in the universities.”
WATCH NOW: University of Arizona graduate student Kelli Lycke speaks at a rally dubbed "a funeral for health and safety” on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021 at the University of Arizona campus in Tucson. Video by Kathryn Palmer.
