I have been waiting two years to watch a film that was finally released today. Ever since I first learned about Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Labor I’ve been looking forward to seeing it. The documentary is an hour long exposé of the academic labor system that is quietly destroying the integrity of American universities.

Con Job was directed and produced by Megan Fulwiler and Jennifer Marlow, two composition instructors at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. It took the two professors about three years to collect and edit all of the interviews contained in the film.

The Con Job documentary explores in detail the world of adjunct and contingent labor on college campuses. Fulwiler and Marlow interviewed dozens of people for the film, many of whom are leading voices in the movement to improve the working conditions of adjunct professors.

As the film points out, adjuncts are the dirty secret of higher education. They support the system on their backs by working for exploitative wages. The thousands of adjuncts who work in the shadows for a fraction of the pay given to their tenure-track colleagues are the people who keep the university functioning.

Fulwiler and Marlow made Con Job in order to pull adjuncts out of those shadows and shine a light on the secret that colleges and universities have suppressed for the past three decades.

The two women had what they refer to as a “dual awakening” to the reality of adjunct life and this awakening caused them to become committed to exposing the truth about adjunct and contingent labor. Con Job is the three-year project that resulted from this awakening.

In Con Job, several key voices in academic labor elucidate both the problem of adjuncthood and also outline some of the contemporary strategies being used to remedy the problem. Some of these popular adjunct activist voices include Marc Bousquet; Maria Maisto, Anne Wiegard, and Matt Williams of New Faculty Majority; Seth Kahn, Sue Doe, Don Eron, Peter Brown, Steve Street, Bob Samuels, and Cary Nelson.

In addition to these well-known activists, Fulwiler and Marlow also interviewed several actual full-time adjuncts who are currently working in the trenches every day. These personal anecdotes from real adjuncts are what make Con Job important and interesting.

Seeing these teachers discuss their daily lives and struggles gives a face to the adjunct problem. Take, for example, Julie Demers, who couldn’t afford a gallon of milk, but yet had to watch with chagrin as her students drank lattes from Starbucks that would never make it into her own budget. Or Jessica Brouker, who has been working as an adjunct for years without health insurance, and who, as a result, ran into one of her students during a shameful and embarrassing encounter at Planned Parenthood.

The stories of these two professionals who are doing exactly what they were trained to do and who did everything according to the book, yet who are still stuck in adjunct hell, earning minimum wage and stuggling to take care of themselves really drives home the reality of adjunct life that thousands of teachers live every day.

Fulwiler and Marlow spent three years gathering interviews, filming, editing, and producing Con Job in order to tell the stories of these adjuncts who have traditionally been silenced by the system.

It was worth the time. The final product is an interesting and engaging hour-long exploration of adjunct life. Now, we need to spread the word about Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Labor, and share this documentary with anyone who will listen.

You can watch the documentary here or at the CC Digital Press website where it’s currently hosted.