Many American workers today are exploited, but the image that strikes a surefire chord with the public these days is that of the part-time faculty member who cobbles together a living by teaching at multiple campuses.

AFT member Linda Cushing represented her beleaguered colleagues at a Feb. 13 press conference opening the AFL-CIO's executive council meeting in Los Angeles. An art instructor at North Orange County Community College, she is also president of Adjunct Faculty United/AFT, which represents 1,400 part-time faculty at three local colleges in the California county.

Since organizing her own campus last year, Cushing has helped lead a widening organizing crusade at other California community colleges, where the inadequate

pay and lack of benefits, she said, "is shameful."

She is the face of a more varied labor movement, said AFL-CIO president John Sweeney in introducing her. She and her fellow organizers won a landslide victory using e-mail and personal approaches to reach faculty "who are treated by their schools as nameless, faceless, interchangeable people," she said.

Cushing's position today is somewhat surprising, she added, even to herself, because before she began teaching, she worked in the private sector and fought the unions. "I stand before you now as a Republican who has seen the light," she proclaimed, "because I learned firsthand what happens to professionals when there is no representation and no hope."