When you include graduate TAs, a majority of those teaching in the university are now employed part-time. Such an extreme of casualized labor is not seen in any other sector of the economy, and yet by pride of place it remains invisible in the university. By relying more heavily upon casuals and temps, otherwise known as TAs and adjuncts. Almost every major academic association laments this trend. It is time, now, to re-establish the principle that the members of the academic community should have a say over at least the conditions of their own work.
Unionization is the time honored way to democratize a workplace.
Thus, we unionize. The ideal of shared governance does not exist in today's universities. The reality of corporate governance does. It wasn't until I saw how Yale responded to the 1995-96 grade strike at Yale that I started to understand how power works in the academy, and became convinced that only a union could work to improve things. President Levin mailed the petition right back to us.