It is my opinion that the only thing that the full timers are really going to get up in arms about is the problem that, because of the availability of adjuncts, their departments never get new hires to replace the people who retire.
Departments want new hires. Aside from the obvious advantages of having extra people around to do committee work, most disciplines also need a shot in the arm of new ideas from out there in the field. If they hope to be cutting edge, they need to bring in people who are on the cutting edge. Hiring adjuncts doesn't really fit the bill since we aren't winning any laurels for the department. If we were to write the top book in our field, we wouldn't stick around being adjuncts; we'd go somewhere else and become faculty.
Some faculty are sort of angry about this situation, and many, if the comments in The Chronicle of Higher Ed can be believed, blame the adjuncts for the low pay they're willing to take. It's screwed up logic, but even the worst of its espousers understands that, so long as the price for labor is pushed down, no one's going to foot the bill to bring on a new Assistant Professor.
This is an attitude we can exploit. Now, I know, some of you don't like the conversation when it turns to tenure, tenure track, etc., but the reality is, you are shoulder-to-shoulder with people for whom tenure track jobs ARE the goal. But until adjuncts get paid more, that goal cannot be achieved.
So, what I'm saying is that we are all in this together: the people with master's degrees who want more pay, the people with Ph.D.s who want a tenure track job, and the Tenure Trackers who want new hires and can't get them until the adjuncts get paid more money.
Because, when the price of an assistant professor new hire is $55,000 and the price of an adjunct who teaches that same number of classes is $14,000, the administration would be fools not to go the adjunct route. But, if the price of the adjunct was $45,000, it would become cost effective sometimes to hire on the TT faculty member.
In other words, the full professors should want you to get $45,000 a year so long as they know and believe this argument (which is, I think, a pretty good argument). They will support your efforts if they think, in the end, they will start getting the new hires to replace the members of their bare bones departments they have lost over the years.
National conversation time: this needs to be up on the Chronicle of Higher Ed. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops to any professional organization that defines your discipline (mine are MLA, CCC, and ASA). It needs to be at your ready for whenever you talk to full time faculty about the adjunct situation. Every faculty member should know why they should support you...besides, you know, human decency (which cannot, sadly, always be counted on).
Most of all, it needs to be in writing and published in every professional journal we can get into.
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