Text Box: Opportunities for Activism Text Box: Current News, Issues, & Concerns Text Box: Portland Community College Federation of Faculty and Academic Professionals Text Box:    In March, Jobs with Justice led                a Rally to Fight the               Enemies of Change…                 While 2.6 million  Americans lost their jobs and taxpayers stepped in with 350 billion to bailout banks, Wall Street walked away with $18.4 billion in “bonuses.”  Corporate trans-nationals have taken billions of taxpayer dollars while aggressively lobbying against workers’ interests.  JWJ will continue to march for change.  Text Box: For far too long, our staffing ratios at PCC have been out of balance.  A majority of our teachers are underpaid and overworked part-timers.  While part-time instructors are highly-trained professionals, our students deserve full-time instructors, advisors, and mentors.   Text Box: AFT Convention in Sunriver Oregon! Text Box: While it may be cheaper to hire mostly part-time teachers, this policy has its risks.  Contingent faculty often have no office on campus and/or limited office hours.  When students need help, their instructors are usually somewhere on the highway, rushing off to another part-time teaching job.  And it is not only students who suffer.  Part-timers, due to their harried schedules, are often not available to serve on committees, do research, or participate in other essential tasks beyond the classroom.                                                                                              But The American Federation of Teachers Aims to Reverse this Course of Academic Staffing “ In citing higher education's continuing reliance on underpaid contingent faculty to staff college Text Box: and university classrooms and the rapidly declining number of full-time faculty with tenure, the AFT has  released a new report that provides a model for changing direction. “ Download the report | Download the model  This model will change the ratio to 75% full-time instructors, and   provide pro-rata pay and equitable health-care and pension benefits to contingent faculty members and instructors. Find out more about this campaign: http://www.aftface.org/ Text Box: future.  Savvy investment, job creation, regulation, and reform can make their future better than our recent past.  Our delegates to the AFT convention will help define and outline our strategic goals for the future.                                            The Convention is April 17-19 in Sunriver, OR   Text Box: We are at a point of crisis.  Investor Warren Buffet says  last September was a turning point not dissimilar to Pearl Harbor.  We are at war with the enemies of change. Our nation is in decline.  Our economy will get worse in the days to come, and it may take five years to recover and move forward.  Text Box: This does not mean that there is nothing we can do. Long-term investments in American infrastructure, education, jobs, and healthcare are some very real things we can do to restore hope and effect change.  Our children deserve a prosperous and abundant

 

Text Box: Online update for  The Gathering Monday, April 13, 2009 

Page 2: Lerc, Union Meetings, classes,
& trainings 

2

Page 3:  Health-care
Alliance, COPE, Chavez,
Salem Happenings

3

Page 4:  News, Pers, Contact Information, Letter from editor

4

 

Communication
of Issues, Ideas,
& Information