"This book tells the story of the transformation of higher education in the United States and Canada as a place where skilled teachers earning decent salaries and benefits were free to teach students and pursue their research interests in a climate of relative security, to one in which most classes are taught by skilled but poorly paid and extremely insecure contingent faculty. The great irony of this transformation is that those who teach do not enjoy the wages and benefits they are presumably preparing their students to enjoy, in many ways working under circumstances not so much different from those of migrant farm laborers, who often cannot afford the food they produce for the rest of us. Unfortunately, tenured faculty, even in unionized colleges, have used their power to protect themselves, not only ignoring but acting in a hostile manner toward their less fortunate part-time colleagues. And yet, as the noted teachers, scholars, and activists in this timely volume tell us, there is hope. The book provides many examples of successful struggles, waged largely by contingent faculty themselves, that have not only won better wages, benefits, hours, and working conditions for these, most exploited of professors, but have revitalized teacher unions and improved the academic life of their workplaces. Equality for Contingent Faculty not only reveals the dirty little secret of today's higher learning, but it also offers a workable roadmap for change." -- Michael D. Yates , author of Why Unions Matter and Wisconsin Uprising.