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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

I was an adjunct for one semester, many years ago. I mentioned my experiences to my mom, who is a retired high school teacher. Her response: "Now you know why teachers have a union."

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Yes, I had the same experience. I work in higher ed, and occasionally teach a course, maybe once a year. It's good to pickup a little extra $$ with little inconvenience since I can just walk over to the classroom at the end of my workday. It also keeps me in touch with the on-the-ground reality of both faculty and student life, a perspective that gives me great context for my normal job. But the amount of work it takes for even a single course really illustrates just how low the pay is for the time required. And where I work the adjuncts actually DO have a union, but all it's been able to accomplish are modest increases in pay and the ability to buy into the health benefits plan. Not that they get health benefits, they still have to pay the full price for the premiums, they simply have access to do so. And if it's a family plan, the premium could actually come close to costing a majority of their pay. So I'm not sure how much of a "win" that was for the union.

>It's even worse than you paint it, for a lot of adjuncts.

Yes, I specifically showed an optimistic picture of adjunct work so it didn't seem like I was tanking the numbers, but I should have said as much. I've gone back and edited it to reflect that my presentation is more of a best-case scenario.

I think you meant to reply to ska's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20206480

Oh, thanks. I can no longer edit/delete this, but I reposted to their comment.

Because the price determined by the market is wrong. Wrong!

I wish taxpayers had a union.

Most adjuncts are in the business of selling their services to effective monopsonies. Oligopolies, at best. Free market economics don’t exonerate the result.

I don’t agree with the parent but calling the educational system a monopsony sounds even less believable, there are tens of thousands of educational institutions in America alone

Most adjuncts - heck, most people - are not capable of moving around the country chasing low-paying, often part-time jobs.

When you’re geographically locked, the universities become effective monopsonies everywhere but NY, Boston, etc

Tax payers sort of do have a union where the collective bargaining takes place in the form of electing official to work on their behalf. Often enough though, those elected end up working against the intersts of voters, sometimes explicitly advocating for policies that voters don't realize are not in their interests.

Not unlike unions that hire a negotiator to work on their behalf, if the negotiator ignored the contractual priorities given to them by the unions.

Except suffrage is not limited to taxpayers.

Not sure what you mean. Everyone doesn't pay all types of taxes, but everyone pays some types. Payroll tax, sales tax, etc.

Taxpayers do have a union. The taxpayer's union in my state outlawed the teacher's union.

We got that Howard Jarvis thing that brought us so much wonderful stuff... like Prop 13.

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