Colleges and universities are increasingly relying on adjuncts rather than full-time faculty. Adjuncts are part-time teaching staff who often have master’s or doctoral degrees. They are usually paid a set amount per course taught. Adjuncts don’t receive health insurance or other benefits and they work on semester-long contracts. Schools are very much like corporations in this respect: they push for lower costs.
One recent adjunct at Bradley University calculated his $2,000 payment for a semester-long course this way: six hours of teaching each week, seven hours of preparation and grading each week, about 25 hours of meetings over the course of the semester plus the costs of textbooks and a computer upgrade. His pay came to below the Illinois minimum wage of $8.25 an hour. He has a college degree and decades of professional work experience, yet his pay is below entry-level positions at McDonald’s and Walmart.
Adjuncts at Washington University in St. Louis facing the same problem voted to unionize in January, joining Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Adjuncts at Tufts University voted to join SEIU months earlier. Graduate assistants and research assistants at Columbia University in New York are seeking to unionize and join the UAW.
Unions are a counterbalance to the growing political power of corporations, universities and the super rich. The imbalance that results in growing wage disparity is pushing us farther from democracy and closer to plutocracy.
“I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together both to protect their own economic status and also generally speaking to secure their influence in the political field.” Albert Einstein, charter member, Princeton University American Federation of Teachers Local 552
Methadone in Jail
Drug addicts taking methadone to help get off illegal drug dependency face a potential civil rights violation if they become incarcerated. Unlike medications for high blood pressure or diabetes, methadone is not universally administered in jail.
In response to a request for information filed under the Freedom of Information Act, the sheriff departments in Peoria, Tazewell and Woodford counties confirmed they have no policy regarding administration of methadone to prisoners.
In an article published in Community Word (December 2014, “Counting on Methadone”), Pat Kennedy, vice president of clinic services at HSC (formerly Human Service Center), said “In our society, we still look at addiction in a moralistic way, but it’s a medical issue that needs treatment. Other health care is not viewed moralistically. Addiction should not be a moral issue, it’s a chronic medical issue.”
When 70 percent of people in prison are there for nonviolent drug crimes and incarceration costs are at least $40,000 a year, treatment at $10 a day becomes fiscally conservative, said Dr. Ernest Rose, Rose Medical Association clinic in Peoria.
Gov. Bruce Rauner has stated he wants to reduce prison populations by 20 percent. Expanding Medicaid to cover methadone could meet and exceed that reduction target.
Stop Citing Old, Disproven Excuses for Not Raising Minimum Wage
How much longer are we going to allow people to work full time and live in poverty? How much longer are we going to subsidize corporations and enable them to pay wages so low to full-time employees that they are below the poverty level, eligible for food stamps and subsidized health care coverage?
At a recent forum for city council candidates, Eric Turner, Chuck Weaver and Katherine Coyle said they do not favor an increase in minimum wage. Beth Jensen and Beth Akeson said they support an increase.
Voters in Illinois approved an advisory referendum calling for an increase, with 68 percent favoring an increase and 32 percent against.
Paul Krugman, Nobel prize winning economist and New York Times columnists, has written that rising income inequality may be the biggest challenge facing our country. Regions that have increased the minimum wage have not experienced increasing layoffs and unemployment. States that raised the minimum wage saw job growth surpassing the national average. Layoffs in restaurants did not occur. In actuality, people have more money to spend on eating out and other amenities.
If Springfield won’t listen to the voters, Peoria should. One proven way to stimulate the Peoria economy is to follow the example of Seattle and raise the minimum wage.