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Here are the latest developments for contingent academic labor around the country.

At a recent conference, I met a woman who has been a visiting professor at her institution since 1998. She was hired before she finished her dissertation and thought the job would be a twelve-month stepping stone to a better position in a more geographically desirable location. Eight years later PhD in hand, she is still there with a renewable yearly contract, a husband who is tenured in the psychology department, and two children. She said that she, unlike her tenure-track colleagues, doesn’t feel pressured to publish or meet performance standards for tenure. Moreover, her university accommodated her need for maternity leave, and she feels secure in her job. But is she secure? By definition, this woman is one of the many “contingent” faculty members-full- and part-time non-tenure-track professors-increasing in number at universities around the country.

In 1999, the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW), a group of higher education and disciplinary associations concerned about the dramatic rise in contingent faculty, surveyed staffing practices across eleven humanities and social science disciplines. The surveys found “compelling new evidence about the use and treatment of part-time and adjunct faculty, highlighting the dwindling proportion of full-time tenure-track faculty members teaching in undergraduate classrooms and providing solid evidence of the second-class status of part-time and adjunct employees in the academy.”

This project aimed to develop more complete information about the main classes of contingent faculty, a goal participating organizations certainly achieved. They collected comparable data from anthropology, cinema studies, English, folklore, foreign languages, linguistics, history, philology, philosophy, composition, and political science. Most of the professional societies that gathered data released independent reports. In addition, Robert Townsend, assistant director for research and publications at the American Historical Association (AHA), wrote a report comparing all the disciplinary data for CAW.

The comprehensive report showed a growing use of contingent faculty in most disciplines-but it also revealed inequality between part- and full-time contingent professors. Full-time faculty participated in departmental decision making and received support for professional development almost across the board, while part-time faculty saw little of these benefits, to say nothing of access to health insurance and technology.

This 1999 collection of data remains the only large-scale examination of part- and full-time nontenure-track faculty in the disciplines. In fact, since the 1999 surveys, little or no comparable data on contingent faculty have been gathered in the disciplines, although CAW organizations have continued to pursue the problem of contingency on a smaller, more fractured scale. (see “Disciplinary Research on Continent Faculty” on liages 47-49.)

When CAW distributed the surveys in spring 1999, the department of the eight-year “visiting professor” described above believed her to be on a one-year visiting contract and would have included her as such on its forms. It would do so again if the survey were repeated. Is she the only one? Has her institution even noticed the inequity of her situation, and would it care if it did?

An Upward Trend

In their independent reports, the associations involved in the CAW surveys use different terms to describe contingent positions, which makes comparison difficult. Data were gathered on five staffing categories: full-time tenure-track, full-time non-tenure-track, parttime tenure-track, part-time nontenure-track, and graduate student faculty. In its report, however, the American Sociological Association places graduate students in a “supplementary” faculty category and groups all categories of full-time faculty together for statistical analysis, including those considered contingent by the collective CAW report. AHA publications discuss full- and part-time faculty only, regardless of their tenure status, while several associations use both “contingent” and “part time” in their publications without distinguishing tenure status.

A cross-disciplinary analysis of data gathered since the CAW disciplinary surveys indicates that the recent rate of increase in part-time appointments is minuscule compared with previous years. However, full-time contingent positions are rising dramatically. The 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, which reports on staffing data gathered by the U.S. Department of Education in fall 2003, provides the most current numbers available on contingent positions across disciplines, as shown in the table accompanying this article.

In a 2003 issue of New Directions for Higher Education called “Exploring the Role of Contingent Instructional Staff in Undergraduate Learning,” Ernst Benjamin, a former AAUP general secretary, suggests that administrators find these full-time contingent positions attractive because they allow institutions to maintain the advantages of contingent academic labor (for example, lower costs and higher flexibility) along with a full-time workforce. Yet even though these faculty members contribute to the life of their departments and the education of their students outside of the classroom, they are still contingent. Their growing use-along with a continuing dependency on part-time contingent positions-should concern faculty on all sides of the tenure line, college and university administrators, and anyone else worried about the quality of higher education and the academic workplace.

Data collected since the CAW surveys show that the face of contingent labor has been changing over the past decade. Contingent labor consists increasingly of full-time faculty members whose jobs, benefits, and even office space are guaranteed from September to May. Administrators see these full-time instructors as a more stable workforce that is more physically present than part-time contingents. But these full-timers have heavy workloads, including labor-intensive introductory courses, and must get used to a new workplace while hunting for that next job. Is this situation really any better than hiring parttime faculty who face the same demands for less pay at more than one campus? This question is more than rhetorical and yet unanswerable; the outcomes of this kind of staffing on both the academy and the students it seeks to educate have not yet been observed.

In the end, voiceless, burdened contingent instructors, no matter how talented they are as teachers or researchers, cannot contribute fully to the life of their departments or to the education of their students. Moreover, the increasingly contingent academic labor force reduces the influence of faculty-important contributors to educational quality-on the structure and function of higher education.

Keeping our conversation about contingent faculty current is a must. requiring ongoing statistical reassessment that can produce a coherent picture of staffing across disciplines, in different types of institutions, and even by region-a full and complete picture of the problem. Many organisions include contingent issues in their regular research agendas, including the AAUP, but few have the resources to dedicate large amounts of staff time to the study of contingency in higher education.

The Humanities Indicators Project, sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is beginning to collect staffing and curriculum data in humanities disciplines using consistent terminology and categories. Although only a small portion of the data will inform conversations about contingent faculty (the main focus is the state of the humanities), the project recognizes the need to avoid fractured statistics that speak about the same faculty using different terminology with data from a variety of years, gathered with multiple survey instruments.

The 1999 CAW surveys aimed to avoid these problems and produce comparable, discipline-specific data on the role of contingent faculty in higher education. They did-in 1999. As noted above, more recent data show that the use of contingent faculty is changing quickly, in response, at least in part, to the work of CAW and other organizations. More vigilance, altered awareness, and current and complete data are needed, however, to maintain a productive conversation about the constantly changing academic labor force.

Understanding the causes for legal action can help facility executives keep their organizations out of trouble

Consider the following: A building owner converts a warehouse into an office building and begins leasing space. During construction, designers had neglected to consider new air handlers for the building’s new use. Almost immediately, the owner hears complaints that occupants are constantly sneezing and the air always smells funny.

Busy with other matters, the owner puts those complaints on the back burner. After a few months, the owner is served with a lawsuit over personal injuries allegedly resulting from poor indoor air quality. For good measure, a request for damages for “business interruption” is also tacked on.

Or how about this: A developer builds a trendy new “live, work and play” mixed-use development in the heart of downtown. The complex includes retail space, restaurants, gyms, bars and condos. Within weeks, odors from a seafood restaurant begin seeping into an office space located directly above. The disgusted residents slap together a class-action lawsuit and the developer finds himself in court.

It seems that there is no definition for a “typical” air quality case, says W. Elliott Horner, a principal consultant with Air Quality Sciences and an expert in dealing with moisture and mold-related issues in commercial buildings.

“Lawsuits over indoor air quality are common and increasing,” Horner says. “The traditional construction defect lawsuit is still the most common, but indoor air quality lawsuits are becoming more mainstream.”

And just who is suing whom? That’s part of the changing characteristics of these suits.

“All parties are bringing suits: occupants filing against owners, contractors suing suppliers, owners suing insurance companies and contractors-just about anyone owning or occupying a building,” he says.

Personal injury is a familiar basis for the suits where the tenant of a space sues the building owner. Many of these cases stem from the suitability of the building for its current use.

“The air quality is not what they expect in that building,” Horner says.

Product liability is another angle creeping into air quality lawsuits, said Tony Worthan, president and chief operating officer of Air Quality Sciences.

“There is a rise in suits over issues such as VOCs (volatile organic compounds), product failures and adverse noxious odors,” he says.

Horner says lawsuits can emerge from seemingly the most innocuous types of buildings. In addition to the mixed-use example, other examples include cigar shops and beauty salons located next to almost any other kind of retail store space in a mall setting. Manufacturing facilities with any sort of emissions also are open to these kinds of complaints, especially if they’re adjacent to office spaces.

Public buildings are particularly vulnerable to complaints about poor indoor air quality. But these buildings don’t necessarily have “tenants” in the traditional sense of the word, says George DuBose, vice president of Liberty Building Diagnostics Group.

“In the case of assisted living centers, schools, and courthouses, their relationship is not the same as an office building. There is greater potential for occupant outrage over issues such as temperature and odors,” DuBose says. “There is the potential to lose trust.”

Just how often do plaintiffs win these types of lawsuits?

“They win enough to stay in the headlines,” says Horner. “They are increasing in visibility.”

Many times, the lawsuit isn’t about poor indoor air quality itself, but about what caused poor indoor air quality.

“What we’re seeing in relation to poor indoor air quality are issues related to design deficiencies,” says Horner. For example, high moisture and humidity in a building are linked to a specific construction deficiency.

Not all lawsuits are the result of smoldering, unresolved complaints. Some complaints stem from accidents and disasters. When these kinds of problems emerge, they tend to escalate rapidly.

“In our experience, it depends upon the population that occupied the building. When there is a higher level of trust in the building owner, the outrage of occupants escalates quickly,” DuBose says. “There is a loss of trust in the management company or facility executive and the building itself, and now the technical fix becomes more expensive. You can’t deny the problem. You really have to respond quickly to complaints.”

Horner agrees. “If an accident does happen, have contacts in place. Know ahead of time how to respond appropriately. This is crisis planning. Think about it in advance. It’s like fire safety. You want to know before the need arises.

“It’s a lot easier and cheaper to work this out before there’s an emergency. And indoor air quality issues become an emergency very quickly: from mass hysteria all the way to people really being exposed to agents that can give them permanent debilitating illness,” Horner continues. “As soon as the TV truck shows up, it becomes an emergency. It’s the same as having a natural gas pipe burst. You have to have a communications plan in place.”

amount due under the policy but may include consequential damages extending beyond the policy limit when such damages are foreseeable.6

appellate division modified the lower court’s decision by reinstating the breach of contract, bad faith, and unfair practices claims and remanded the case for further proceedings.15

incentive to settle claims in good faith if they are held liable for the policy amount-they have nothing to lose and much to gain in delaying payment to insureds.21 Conscious of all these concerns, the court concluded that foreseeable consequential damages exceeding the policy limits, including damages for emotional distress and inconvenience, may be awarded to a plaintiff who has proved a bad faith breach on the part of his insurer.

recovery of an award beyond the stipulated contract amount.31 Such consequential damages should be permitted in the case of an insurer’s bad faith breach because such breach could cause injury to policyholders in amounts above those set in the policies.32 Finally, insofar as insurance contracts are executed to provide and secure “peace of mind” for the insured, damages for emotional distress may be foreseeable and properly awarded.33

The plaintiff even failed to allege facts, the dissent contended, that would make out a bad faith claim under the standard adopted by the majority.39 The dissent, therefore, would have affirmed dismissal of the plaintiffs bad faith claim. The majority, on the other hand, concluded that dismissal pursuant to N.Y. C.P.L.R. 3211 based on the defendant’s documentary evidence was inappropriate as a matter of procedure.

It is submitted that the Acquista court was correct to expand damage awards to include consequential damages, including damages for emotional distress, when an insurer commits a bad faith breach of a policy. The court, however, in focusing on the insured, did not consider the repercussions of its decision on insurance companies. This Comment contends that because insurance companies provide important benefits to policyholders, expanded awards could have a detrimental effect on society. It is submitted that, while an award of consequential damages would be appropriate in certain cases, the contours of such an award should be more sharply defined than they were in Acquista.

1.Hadley v. Baxendale in New York

Because insurance policies traditionally have been regarded as contracts to pay money, damages for breach of a policy have been limited generally to the amount of the policy plus interest.41 As stated above, limiting damages to the amount of the policy may be insufficient to place the nonbreaching policyholder in the position in which it would have been if the insurance company had not breached the contract.42 Since the seminal case of Hadley v. Baxendale,43 decided in 1854, the common law has recognized that damages for a loss that would not naturally flow from a breach is recoverable as consequential damages only when such a loss was reasonably contemplated by the parties at the time they entered into the contract.44 Modern courts express the Hadley v. Baxendale test in terms of “foreseeability”; they allow damages only insofar as the possibility of the loss for which they are sought was foreseeable by the contracting parties at time of contracting.45 In order to meet the requirement of foreseeability, it is sufficient that the breaching party had been aware of the facts that rendered the loss foreseeable.

2.Justification for Applying Hadley v. Baxendale Principles to Insurance Policies

issue against the insurer.56 It is submitted, therefore, that courts must provide an incentive to the insurance companies in the form of consequential damages to encourage settlement of meritorious claims in good faith.

The assumption that a policyholder will have access to funds to pay what the insurer refuses to pay is unfounded.57 In fact, the aggrieved party may indeed suffer losses that exceed the policy amount. Such losses could include litigation costs, losses due to bankruptcy, foreclosure of mortgaged property, interest debt on money borrowed from a lending institution, interest lost on money used to pay the amount the insurer did not pay, and penalties imposed for early withdrawal of a retirement plan or CD.58 If courts are to give effect to the recognized goal of contract damages-to place the nonbreaching party in as good a position as it would have achieved had the contract been performed-they must consider these extra-policy losses as possible consequential damages.

3.Limitations on Consequential Damages

Insurance is a significant component of our business, personal, and social lives upon which most of us have come to depend and rely.59 It is of great import, then, that excessive damage awards do not unduly burden insurance companies. It is submitted that strict adherence to Hadley v. Baxendale principles would serve to protect both the honest insurer and any maltreated insured. Furthermore, if New York were to adopt the expanded contract remedy, insurance companies would not be subject to damage awards in excess of the policy amount unless a plaintiff proved bad faith on the part of the defendant insurer.

determining whether this foreseeability with particularity test is satisfied, courts should thoroughly examine the circumstances, correspondence, and discussions between the parties.

For example, assume an individual with a catering business whose van is destroyed in an accident and whose insurer breaches his physical-damage policy in bad faith. If the caterer is unable to cater an affair due to the insurer’s breach– assuming, of course, mitigation of damages by the insured was unreasonable-the insurer should be held liable for the caterer’s lost profits as foreseeable consequential damages. If, however, the caterer is unable to acquire additional culinary equipment that he intended to purchase with the profits he expected to earn on the cancelled affair, and he thus consequently must cancel a future catering job for lack of the necessary equipment, the insurer should not be held liable for the lost profits relating to the subsequent job. The damages in the latter case are too remote to have been foreseeable by the insurer, absent special circumstances and communications that indicate the contrary.

Two of the jurisdictions cited by the Acquista court as having adopted the contract rationale for bad faith insurance breaches-New Jersey and Maine-have not adhered strictly to Hadley v. Baxendale principles. In Pickett v. Lloyd’s,63 the New Jersey Supreme Court allowed the recovery of consequential damages for an insurance company’s bad faith breach of a physical-damage policy on a Mack tractor-trailer truck.64 The plaintiff owned the truck, which he used to haul freight for a carrier.65 Because he had attained seniority, the plaintiff had the ability to choose among the more lucrative and desirable assignments.66 In the event of an accident, the carrier permitted senior “owner/operators” a sixty-day grace period in which to replace their trucks and return to work and thereby avoid losing their seniority status.67 The plaintiff, however, lost his seniority due to the fact that his claim was not settled within this grace period and, as a result, he suffered reduced earnings.

work until he repaired his truck,69 it was not aware of the plaintiffs seniority status or of the benefits the plaintiff received due to seniority, nor was it aware that a grace period existed after which the plaintiff would lose seniority and its related benefits.70 The court sustained the consequential damages award, which included both the plaintiffs lost profits and the difference between what the plaintiff would have earned as a senior operator over four and a half years (the time remaining until he reached retirement age) and what he would have earned working for the lower pay as a non-senior operator.71 The court then held that it was sufficient that the insurer knew that plaintiff was out of work,72 concluding that the insurer “could reasonably have apprehended that a truck driver in this situation might lose an economic advantage such as his seniority entitlement.”73 The court also dismissed, without discussion, the fact that the plaintiff had not considered leasing a truck, which would have allowed him to retain his seniority, although he did attempt to obtain a bank loan for the purpose of purchasing a new truck.

It is important to emphasize that, under Acquista, insurance companies will be subject to adverse judgments for consequential damages only if they breach a policy in bad faith. New York must take care to adopt a bad faith standard that will not affect insurers who breach “honestly.”82 The Acquista court would find bad faith “where an insured demonstrates more than merely a denial of benefits promised under a policy of insurance,… [where] the insurer’s denial of the claim was deliberately made in bad faith, [and] with knowledge of the lack of a reasonable basis for the denial.”83 This articulation of the bad faith standard is too vague to prove useful. The majority, in effect, stated that bad faith will be found when an insurance company deals in bad faith, without defining or describing the parameters of bad faith. Courts and juries need a more specific, objective standard when they review facts to indicate bad faith dealing. The majority’s loose description allows for too subjective of an examination on the part of the fact finder, which could lead to inconsistent decisions. Without uniform decisions, insurance companies will be unable to determine whether they are acting in good faith when dealing with policyholders, and plaintiffs will be encouraged to litigate unfounded claims if they are lead to believe that a finding of bad faith is solely within a sympathetic jury’s discretion.

dealing, it must “diligently investigate the facts to enable it to determine whether a claim is valid,… fairly evaluate the claim, and … thereafter act promptly and reasonably in rejecting or settling the claim.”86 The insurer must also ” `deal with laymen as laymen and not as experts in the subtleties of law and underwriting’ and refrain from actions that will injure the insured’s ability to obtain the benefits of the contract.”87 The Beck or some similar standard should be adopted and fully articulated by the New York courts. This Comment asserts that a several-pronged approach, such as the one advocated by the Utah court in Beck, will protect insurance companies (and the courts) from frivolous claims. Insurance companies will have a standard against which to measure their own actions. If they conform to each of the prongs, they can expect to be protected against bad faith claims. Plaintiffs, too, will be better able to judge whether their claims have merit. If plaintiffs are presented with a more precise standard, they will be less likely to bring frivolous suits. If they cannot allege facts that show a violation of at least one of the prongs of the bad faith test, they will be hard-pressed to sue.

insured in the third-party context is fiduciary,92 and the relationship between these parties in the first-party context is essentially contractual,93 some courts and commentators have declined to employ a third-party analysis to a first-party situation.94 Therefore, it is submitted that Pavia does not govern the bad faith contract claim in Acquista.

Increasingly, drug abuse, AIDS and other social factors are causing “parentless” children to be raised by their grandparents

throughout 70 years of living a relentlessly difficult life, the most important philosophy for Evelyn Reliford has been if there’s something that needs to be done, she just has to set her mind and go ahead and do it. Fifty years ago, she moved from Charlotte, N.C., to New York City with her husband, a long-distance truck driver. He died when the youngest of their seven children was 6 years old, leaving her to raise the family in Bronx housing projects. A retired home health aide, she’s lived to see the births of 14 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Family is everything to her, so when she learned two great-grandson were being neglected by their mother, a granddaughter now 31 years old, Reliford went to court to get custody. She never had legal custody of their mother, but raised her because it had to be done.

Initially, the judge gave the children’s grandmother, Reliford’s daughter, custody of them. Thier mother came to stay as well. For a brief time, everyone was living under Reliford’s roof, and she didn’t have to worry as much. But things didn’t stay calm. Her daughter began talking drugs again and her granddaughter started hanging out on the streets. New York’s Administration for Children’s Services interceded, and so did Reliford.

“Their mother, my granddaughter, wasn’t taking care of them, feeding them, so I had to go to court,” she explains while sitting in a chair in a living room teeming with framed photographs and knicknacks. Her “boys” are downstairs in the apartment building where the three live, participating in an after-school program.

“My other daughters, they wouldn’t take the children because ‘they weren’t theirs,’” she continues. “Their grandmother, my daughter, was on drugs, so that left me. I just couldn’t see them end up in foster care.”

Now ages 12 and 14, the boys, Derrick and Daron, have spent virtually all their young lives being parented by their great-grandmother Every few months, their mother will call or they see her, but Reliford is the one who is always there for them. She is the one at home in the mornings and in the evenings after school. They call her “Nana,” and occasionally go down South with her, back “home” to Charlotte. Eventually, Reliford wants to move back to North Carolina where much of her family remains.

“Every generation of raising kids, it gets harder,” she observes wistfully.

Evelyn Reliford and her family are part of a growing phenomenon among African Americans and the larger society as well. The growing population of children being raised by their grandparents is forcing the need for greater medical, educational, legal and housing services for millions of children. As the saying goes, “it takes a village to raise a child,” but lately that village has consisted of fewer and fewer biological parents.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the number of children living with grandparents as their primary caregivers increased 31 percent between 1990 and 1997. The rise of children with grandparents was not tied to growth in the population of children, but rather other social factors.

“There are a number of different reasons for the increase in the number of grandparents raising grandkids, such as increases in extreme poverty, which occurred in [the ’80s and ’90s], the impact of crack cocaine, the challenges of mental health problems and the incarceration of women, which also grew,” observes MaryLee Allen, director of the child welfare and mental health division at the Children’s Defense Fund, in Washington, D.C. Other reasons can include military service, child abuse and neglect, as well as domestic violence.

“Kids usually come to live with their grandparents with special health and mental needs that the grandparents don’t always know how to address, such as dealing with a new educational system from when they raised their children,” she adds.

More than 6 million children younger than 18 years old are living in grandparent-headed households, 2.5 million of them in homes without a mother or father present. The greatest portion of the 2.4 million grandparents raising their grandchildren are White, 47 percent, closely followed by African Americans, 28 percent, and Latinos, 18 percent. Seventy-one percent are younger than 60, and 19 percent live in poverty.

Experts describe people in these situations as “kinship care families,” or “Grandfamilies.” Children can end up with grandparents formally through the foster care system and other legal avenues, or informally at the discretion of the biological parents or other family members.

“Grandparents have helped raise children for years, but parents would stay more involved,” says Angela Burda, a coordinator at the Kinship Care Resource Center in Jonesboro, Ga., a division of the Clayton County Aging Program. grandparents are raising a generation of ‘throw away kids,’ abandoned by their parents. There is a selfishness among parents that I don’t feel was there in times past. There is not the connection to their child.”

Black Children represent a highly disproportionate number of those in the foster care system. Only 15 percent of children in the United States, Black children constitute 35 percent of those in the foster care system and they remain in the system longer than their counterparts from other racial groups. In general, a high number of kids remain in the system even after the possibility of family reunification has been eliminated. Between 20 percent and 40 percent of kids put into foster care end up with family members. These kinship foster families, according to family research studies, receive less information and services from caseworkers than non-kin foster families.

“There are several hundred thousand relatives caring for children through the foster care system, but a child has to be formally placed in that system to be eligible for ‘foster kinship care,’” says Allen of the Children’s Defense Fund, referring to the financial and medical resources offered by the foster care system. One of the biggest challenges which grandparents and other family members may face when taking in children is the legal hurdle, even when the transfer of custody is consensual.

Legally there are several categories of grandparent or extended family-households. For example, a “legal guardianship” puts a child in another relative’s care, but allows the parent to maintain rights and allows eligibility for some state benefits. A judge could end such an arrangement at a mother or father’s request, as well. When children are under the “legal custody” of a grandparent or other adult relative, similar guidelines apply as with legal guardianship, but the specific rules for control over decision-making ing vary. To enroll a child in school or seek medical insurance cov- erage, grandparents are normally required to obtain consent from a parent.

While the majority of kinship caregivers do not obtain court approval, those who do have a much easier time getting medical, educational and housing benefits for the children.

In 1990, when she was nearing the age of 40, Jacqueline Shields’ three grandchildren came to Uve with her and her husband. Her youngest child, a daughter, got married, then divorced and couldn’t hold an apartment or job to support her children, two boys now 16 and 18 years old, and a girl, now 15. Shields stayed home and raised three of her eight grandchildren until last January. Now 55, she works as an assistant at a chiropractic clinic in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“I had [the boys] for two years before the girl was born, and then my daughter went back to court asking for custody of all of them,” says Shields, explaining the turbulent legal journey she’s undertaken to gain recognition of her caregiver status. “It’s been a back-and-forth thing for years. Finally, the kids said they didn’t want to go back with their mother and that they wanted to stay with me. When I first got custody of the kids, it wasn’t difficult because [their mother] was a willing party. Originally, the judge had it written up where we both had legal custody of the kids. The police came to the house to intervene on one occasion and ended up giving [my daughter] the kids.”

Shields has had her grandchildren full time for the last six years. Her daughter, now working a steady job and renting an apartment, has rebuilt and maintains a relationship with her children. She visits and phones regularly to check on their academic progress.

“The whole thing is very hard and emotional on the kids, because naturally they love their mother,” Shields says. “It was hard to explain. ‘Mommy can’t afford to take care of you, feed you or house you. Grandmommy has a house and a little more money.’” It wasn’t the burden of the children that motivated her to return to the work- place, but the de-funding of a help group she facilitates, the St. Petersburg Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Support Group. She learned of the organization when she first took in her daughter’s children, through a posted advertisement. A woman facilitating the organization died and the executive director asked Shields to assume the position. It was started 17 years ago with two grandmothers commiserating in a health clinic about caring for their grandchildren.

“I really try to get the kids back to their parents,” says Shields, explaining her primary goal in the unpaid position. “We have parents who are incarcerated, some out there on the street, some who are dead because of different diseases. It’s open to anyone who’s raising someone else’s child. There are grandmothers, grandfathers and even great-grands. In the support group, we’re trying to help one another and not be isolated, to get through this situation.”

Last October, the U.S. Congress reauthorized the “Older Americans Act,” which was first signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. The new provisions will bolster federal support for kinship caregivers. First reauthorized in 2000, the latest version also lowers the age limit from 60 to 55 for grandparents heading households to have access to the National Family Caregiver Support Program, increasing the number of eligible families by 47 percent.

“This legislation could literally save lives,” says Donna M. Butts, executive director of Generations United, a Washington, D.C-based advocacy and support organization for kinship care families, in a statement about the reauthorization of the act. “For example, we know that grandparents often neglect their own health because the lack of affordable child care can make something as routine as a visit to the doctor’s office impossible. [These] funds will make the difference between canceling the appointment and being able to keep it.”

In situations such as Evelyn Reliford’s, where the grandchildren come to stay from the very beginning for the long term, housing can be a factor. With public housing, in particular, there are limits on the number of individuals allowed to stay in one place. Further, if someone in the house or apartment is convicted of a felony, the space must be vacated by everyone living there. If forced to move, the children’s provider may not be able to afford a safe place large enough to accommodate the family.

Private Company Incorporated: 1956 Employees: 6,000 Sales: $1.2 billion (2005 est.) NAIC: 484110 General Freight Trucking, Local; 484121 General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance, Truck-load; 484122 General Freight Trucking, Long-Distance, Less Than Truckload; 484220 Specialized Freight (Except Used Goods) Trucking, Local; 484230 Specialized Freight (Except Used Goods) Trucking, Long-Distance; 488320 Marine Cargo Handling; 488330 Navigational Services to Shipping; 488390 Other Support Activities for Water Transportation; 488490 Other Support Activities for Road Transportation; 488510 Freight Transportation Arrangement; 541614 Process, Physical Distribution, and Logistics Consulting Services

Gulf Agency Company Ltd., which trades as GAC, is a leading global provider of shipping, logistics, and marine services. Its 200 offices span five continents and are staffed with knowledgeable locals. It handles logistics for a slew of multinational corporations. As part of its marine services, a fleet of crew supply vessels brings food and fresh water to oil platforms and passing freighters. Originally formed in Kuwait in the mid-1950s by Swedish shipping interests, the company is the largest shipping agent in the Middle East and operates at more than 1,000 locations around the world. Its international reach has been enhanced through acquisitions such as that of Benair Freight in 2005. GAC has a number of regional affiliates with local partners as majority shareholders. It also maintains a number of marketing alliances for regions of the world it does not cover on its own.

ORIGINS

Gulf Agency Company (GAC) was originally set up as a Kuwait joint venture in 1956 by a top Swedish shipping agency, Nyman & Schultz, looking to expedite things at the country's busy seaport at the dawn of the containerized shipping age. Nyman & Schultz dated back to Carl Oscar Strindberg's shipping agency, which had been formed in Stockholm in 1861 and acquired by the Lindberg family in the 1920s.

Offices were soon established in nearby Saudi Arabia and throughout the Arab world. Branches in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Libya would eventually be closed, however, due to the outbreak of war or nationalization. Egypt closed the Suez Canal for eight years following the Six Day War with Israel in 1967. After it was reopened, GAC handled traffic to the Suez Canal from its Athens office. GAC also had opened an office at the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai.

GAC entered the Nigerian market in the 1970s, first overseeing ships to haul cement to the country's construction boom. Oil development later brought more business.

GAC opened an office in Jordan in 1985. Within about ten years, reported Lloyd's List, it was the country's leading shipping agent. The shipping business in the Persian Gulf was going through an unprofitable couple of years, exacerbated by the war between Iran and Iraq. In January 1985 GAC began operating a less-than-container-load (LCL) freight forwarding service in the Persian Gulf through its Cargo Gulf unit, which grew quickly following the end of hostilities in the region.

NEW FRONTIERS IN 1990

The fall of the Soviet Empire opened new opportunities for GAC. It became the first international shipping agent in Poland in November 1989. GAC introduced a cargo service for the former Soviet republics several years later, in 1997, attracted in part by Azerbaijani oil developments. At the same time, GAC was expanding its reach to the east, working in partnership with a local carrier in Indonesia to begin operations there. A Singapore unit had opened a few years earlier.

GAC staff had to be evacuated from Kuwait during its invasion by Iraq and the subsequent Operation Desert Storm. Growth soon resumed following this turbulence. A new door-to-door air freight unit, Air Gulf Express, was launched in May 1991. It began with connections from the Middle East to Europe and the United States. (Oil industry forwarder specialist Danaher America Inc. was its U.S. freight forwarding partner.)

In 1993, GAC spent $3 million to open a large, technologically advanced freight center in the emerging trade center of Dubai. It had a capacity exceeding 3,000 containers a year, according to Lloyd's List , and was operated by GAC's freight forwarding division, Gulf Express Freight. A portion of the facility was temperature-controlled.

GAC's Dubai distribution facility was instantly successful with multinational corporations, and underwent a $10 million upgrade within a couple of years. The shipping agent business was becoming more competitive, an official told Lloyd's List . The Dubai center offered co-packing and online services in addition to warehousing.Besides distribution and shipping agency, GAC's third main line of business was shipping support services. This included representation for property and indemnity clubs (a kind of marine insurance), repair facilities, and the ability to ferry cargo, supplies, or crew to or from passing ships that did not want to spare the time or expense of docking at port. The company was expanding the scope of its services, transporting heavy equipment such as construction cranes.

In the mid-1990s, GAC began coordinating its European ports through a common hub office. The center of GAC's trade, the distribution facility in Dubai's Jebel Ali Free Zone, was expanded yet again in the late 1990s, bringing its total capacity to 75,000 cubic meters. It also began building a 10,000-square-meter facility in Bahrain in 1999.

GAC benefited from the privatization of the agency business at the Suez Canal in 1998. The company subsequently formed GAC Egypt. The company was also active at the other end of the continent. Due to interest from its existing multinational clients in Nigeria, GAC launched operations in Angola. The company reported that within a few months, it had a 50 percent share of the tanker market there, which was booming following recent deepwater finds. GAC also was beginning to operate in South Africa.