One of my pet peeves is when an administrator says that allowing adjuncts to attending faculty development is a “benefit”. I always just assumed that if the center for teaching and learning is offering a free faculty workshop that adjuncts were naturally included. But I still take issue with adjuncts not being paid to attend faculty development. I take even greater issue when it is “mandatory training” that I’m required to attend but am not compensated for. One of the schools I teach at has a great union that fights for part-time faculty (it is a part-time faculty union). They managed to get us a “bonus” for completing mandatory training. It wasn’t a lot, but at least it was some form of compensation for the time required to do training that was “out of scope” for our contract. Unfortunately what I’m seeing happen is that administrators are adding the faculty development or mandatory training or staff meetings into the contract as a requirement. They are not adding the 2-3 hours per semester to the dollar value of the contract, they are just tagging it onto what they require adjuncts to do. An no matter how you put it, faculty development that you offer to your full time faculty is not a “benefit” for adjuncts/contingent faculty – it is a right.