Part-time faculty at the University of Cincinnati will become the first in Ohio to launch a campaign for collective bargaining rights and a union by pressuring the administration to voluntarily recognize them.

        UC's Adjunct Faculty Association will announce today its effort to become a union under the American Federation of Teachers, which represents more college and university faculty than any other union nationwide.

        “We have worked two years with the administration collaboratively and we've seen no results,” said Howard Konicov, a UC adjunct and coordinator of the adjunct association.

        “One, we want to provide a safety net for our colleagues. Two, we are working to ensure they have a living wage. And three, we think it's important they have a voice and a vote in decisions that directly affect them,” he said.

        The move is the latest in a proliferation of labor disputes on the nation's college and university campuses involving lecturers, adjuncts and graduate students. At UC, only adjuncts — essentially part-time professors — are involved in the organizing effort.

        Twenty years ago, the number of part-time faculty on public college campuses was about 20 percent. In 1998, that number was estimated at 43 percent, according to the AFT.

        As schools rely more heavily on part-timers to bear the burden of the undergraduate curriculum, these instructors want more recognition, better benefits, office space and higher compensation, said Jamie Horwitz, an AFT national spokesman in Washington, D.C.

        “This is a huge growing trend,” he said. “In states where labor laws allow it, we've seen it all over the place. You're certainly on the cutting edge in Ohio.”

        Mr. Horwitz said UC adjuncts earn about $1,500 per course, about half the national average.

        UC's chapter of the American Association of University Professors represents 1,976 full-time and part-time employees, according to UC's latest payroll numbers. The part-timers this union represents teach the equivalent of four or more classes per quarter.

        But 1,495 other part-time faculty members are not represented by AAUP. The non-represented make up about 43 percent of the total faculty. They are paid only a fraction of what full-time professors earn teaching the same courses.

        It's too soon to say what impact this group's demands might have on UC's bottom line — or on students.

        “Many of the demands that have been made have costs associated with them and when those costs come into play there are only three things you can do,” said UC spokesman Greg Hand.

        “Either you get more money from the state, which I think you'll agree they're not going to do,” he said. “Or you cut your budget, and we're already doing that. Or, the third thing you can do is raise tuition. Essentially what any additional request for money does is reach into the pockets of students.”

        Under Ohio's labor law, part-time faculty members are excluded from the definition of public employees and therefore don't have the right to organize and bargain. But UC's adjunct association is focusing on another provision in that law.

        “What it does say is that employers — university and college trustees — can recognize them if they choose,” said Tom Mooney, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, who will be at today's 1:30 press conference at the AFL-CIO Labor Council office, downtown.

        “That's exactly what we'll be pushing for,” Mr. Mooney said.

        AFT has been successful with this approach at schools in states with laws similar to Ohio's. Administration officials at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign recently agreed to allow graduate students to hold an election on whether to unionize. State law there prohibits students from forming a union.

        “It doesn't mean it's clear sailing from here,” said Bill Murphy, the university's associate chancellor of public affairs. “They first have to have an election. It's far too early to know what the impact will be.”

        Those not represented at UC believe a union will help them achieve:

        Better job security.

        Access to subsidized health benefits for those who aren't now eligible.

        Paid office hours.

        Telephones and e-mail accounts to communicate with students.

        “What we will do is essentially not only organize as if we had a law but demand that they voluntarily recognize our union, which is in their power,” Mr. Horwitz said. “We're not waiting for someone to change the law.”

        Greg Loving, an adjunct philosophy professor at UC's Clermont campus in Batavia, also works full time at the Clermont Learning Center on that campus. Space is a problem there, he said. About 120 part-timers must share one office with six desks crammed into it. Money and workload are issues too, he said.

        “The union is not the goal,” Mr. Loving said. “Justice for adjuncts is the goal. A union may be required to do that. It's easy to verbally support something. It's tougher to write a check. When you boil away all the issues, it comes down to money.

        “Everyone has to deal with limited resources. That is always said regardless. I know they face some tough decisions, but they do find money for other things.”

        Wendy Larcher, who has been an adjunct at UC since 1989, is on a yearly contract and teaches no fewer than three classes per quarter — so that entitles her to benefits. But the portion she has to pay is more than full-time professors pay.

        “The job security is nice, but I lose a lot of income if I choose the benefits,” she said.

        And, Ms. Larcher said, adjuncts who have been with the university for a period of years should get a discount on their children's tuition.

        “We're tired of having to have this existence and not being acknowledged in any way,” she said.

        Karen Faaborg, vice provost for faculty and administrative services, said neither she nor the university is anti-union. There are five unions on campus already.

        “(But) I don't see a reason for a part-time faculty union because the AAUP represents a good portion of them,” she said, adding that she believes the university can better address adjunct faculty needs by talking to them directly.

        Nationwide, the debate has been contentious on some campuses. While groups have galvanized to bring unions to some, there is also plenty of opposition. At Brown University, for example, which is governed by federal labor laws because it is a private institution, a group called At What Cost? is against graduate student unionization.

        “We believe that unionization will create a hostile ... relationship with the university,” said Len Erickson, a sixth-year graduate student at Brown and a spokesman for the group. '

        The union at City University of New York, which includes both adjuncts and full-time faculty, ratified a contract this summer that provides paid office hours for part-timers and included a 23 percent pay increase. The increase in the number of adjuncts in the union and their activism over the past several years raised the temperature for everyone involved in the bargaining, said Barbara Bowden, president of the Professional Staff Congress.

        The use of unions reflects a tremendous push to restore full-time faculty positions, the funding to hire them and to increase the protection of academic freedom, she said.

        “It's happening because people have been awakened nationwide that we are at a crisis in higher education,” she said

        Mr. Konicov wants UC to move in that same direction.

        “We recognized long ago that our strategy had to be to gain strength over time,” Mr. Konicov said. “Today marks a milestone in this effort...

        “It's about more than working conditions for adjunct faculty ... it's about supporting the teachers who teach your children. We're in this for the long-term.”

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