By Stephen Thompson
This September will mark five years since the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, a former adjunct professor at Duquesne University. Vojtko taught at Duquesne for 25 years, where she made less than $25,000 annually and was let go without receiving any severance or retirement benefits. She died from a heart attack shortly after learning she would no longer be offered courses to teach. Her death gained national attention and she became a symbol for the struggles many adjuncts deal with, including low pay, lack of job security, and inadequate health coverage.
A new book by Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford, shows that Vojtko’s death is far from being an isolated incident. The book, titled Dying for a Paycheck, is a detailed study of how job-related stress leads to heart attacks and other serious health problems. Pfeffer also applies statistical analysis to measure the number of people killed by stress at work in the United States every year, and arrives at a stunning total: approximately 120,000 people.
Pfeffer identifies several factors that contribute to this total. Two of the biggest culprits turn out to be job insecurity and lack of adequate employer-provided health insurance—things that adjunct instructors are certainly familiar with. Pfeffer provides strong evidence that these things exacerbate work-related stress. In the process, they contribute to increased heart attacks, obesity, and mental health problems, all of which translate into higher annual death rates.
The book also includes more fine-grained information concerning personal health and working conditions. In an interesting section (see Chapter 6), Pfeffer reviews data showing that when people have less control over their jobs and work environments, they are more likely to suffer from heart problems and mental illness.
Although Pfeffer argues that stressful work environments are bad for companies as well as employees, he emphasizes that workers should not expect anyone to fix these problems for them. As he writes, “workers—be they freelancers or employees—need to take care of themselves.” But some of his specific suggestions are less than compelling. For example, he concludes Chapter 7 by simply urging employees to “take responsibility for finding workplaces where they can thrive”. Elsewhere (page 145) he urges people to work fewer hours and take more vacations. Unfortunately, for many workers, adjuncts included, this might not be a practical option.
So what should we do? Some changes can be made at the level of the individual workplace. Adjunct professors at Maryland Institute College of Art, as well as McDaniel College in Westminster Maryland, have recently organized unions and ratified contracts with increased job security provisions. These are things adjuncts at other colleges can do right now to build less stressful lives.
At the same time, we should not be afraid to build ambitious national campaigns that unite adjuncts together with workers in other sectors. As Pfeffer points out in the book, a European-type universal health care system would significantly reduce stress for workers across the economy, improve public health, and save tens of thousands of lives per year if implemented. Adjuncts and other workers can help to make this a reality by joining the growing political movement for universal healthcare (also known as Medicare for All) in the US.
To conclude, Pfeffer’s book is valuable because it takes a fresh look at how quality of life, working conditions and public health are linked. I would argue that when thinking about solutions for stressed-out workers, he puts too much emphasis on individual choice, and neglects the power workers have to improve their lives by engaging in collective action. But the book still provides a useful overview of how the US economy is failing to adequately serve people’s needs.
Read the rest of Issue 1 here.
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