ARCHIVE - August, 2001

Sweated Labor at CU
Paul Levitt, Department of English

The English call it sweated labor, by which they mean the labors of those who work in sweat shops for little pay. Deliberately or not, the university has created the equivalent of sweated labor: a cadre of non-tenure track teachers and graduate students who teach more than fifty percent of the classes at C.U., at a penurious wage. Although economists say that a surfeit of workers causes the problem, I see no reason to exploit people just because their skills can be replaced. The University of Colorado disagrees. The university treats courses like piece work, for which it pays from $4000 to $6000 per class. The teacher, perhaps even the recipient of a Ph.D., will not infrequently teach six classes a year, earning from $24,000 to $36,000 a year. After three years, that person may qualify for an instructorship that pays an annual wage of $35,000. This situation obtains in a university that espouses equality and justice, denounces exploitation, opposes sweated labor in Third-World countries--and proudly advertises that its best scholars teach and its best teachers engage in research. The discrepancy between word and act invites the charge of hypocrisy.

Many years ago a colleague of mine in English was the first person off the mark if an injustice touched a professor anywhere in the state, except in Boulder. He was utterly blind to the mistreatment of his own colleagues. I fear that we are now seeing this phenomenon on a grand scale. Sweated labor should be opposed not only abroad but also at home. I therefore suggest that we take a closer look at the second-class citizens whom we have created with our refusal to cap enrollments, to sue the legislature for non-support, and to better their working conditions.

These are the very people who make possible the time the rest of us have for scholarly and creative work, the very people who often hold a doctorate and somehow manage in the little time they have apart from classes to write and publish. If C.U. has, as we claim, a reputation for first-rate teaching, then we owe much of that reputation to the work of the non-tenure track personnel. If C.U. is a user-friendly place, then we can loudly applaud this same group for the hours they spend in their overcrowded offices seeing students. If student papers are read judiciously--the literary critic Newton Arvin once likened reading student papers to "holding urine in one's mouth"--we can thank these people for handling this onerous task.

Americans, in particular, like to say that money talks. If we value our sweated labor, let us unsweat them and look after their financial well-being. To that end, I suggest that we pay non-tenure track teachers a wage that exceeds the market rate--yes, act as a humane patron and not as a pinchbeck--that we extend to these valued colleagues the perks and benefits that faculty enjoy, and that we invite the published scholars among them to join the rest of us in forming the nucleus of an undergraduate faculty that is esteemed for its scholarship and teaching, and for keeping the good ship C.U. afloat.

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The opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors, and do not represent those of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, CU faculty at large, or the University of Colorado.

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