Contingent faculty file petition to hold union election

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Chicago Maroon

Lorentz Hansen

Last Thursday a group of UChicago’s contingent faculty members, in conjunction with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold a union election. The faculty members cited lack of job security and low wages among other factors motivating them to seek collective bargaining rights and representation through the SEIU, Local 73.

The faculty members behind the petition are part of the University’s Faculty Forward chapter. Under the organization of SEIU, which represents nearly two million public employee, health care, and property service union members across North America, Faculty Forward has established chapters on campuses throughout Illinois in recent years to help contingent faculty unionize. The contingent faculty includes adjunct and full-time lecturers, senior lecturers, and postdoctoral researchers.

At the University of Chicago, non-tenure track faculty comprises roughly 45 percent of the teaching faculty, according to 2013 data released by the National Center for Education Statistics. Contingent faculty members are afforded varying benefits and wages according to their job titles. Senior lecturers, for example, are paid more per course and are given health benefits, while adjunct faculty members are paid less, can only teach a certain number of courses per year, and are not given benefits. All contingent faculty members, however, are unable to negotiate their contracts or pay with the University and are not granted seats on the University Senate. According to the Faculty Forward website, these conditions sparked the movement to unionize.

According to Janet Sedlar, senior lecturer and member of UChicago Faculty Forward’s organizing committee, the Faculty Forward chapter started at the University after SEIU representatives contacted UChicago faculty last winter and discovered far-reaching support for unionization among non-tenure faculty.

FULL story at link.



Read more: http://chicagomaroon.com/2015/11/03/contingent-faculty-file-petition-to-hold-union-election/

[fasttense]

1. I know several adjuncts and they are paid horribly.

You could make better money teaching high school.

It's very interesting how those very wealthy actors and ball players are all represented by Unions but the rank and file workers are all told that unions are bad for them. I know Wal-Mart workers who are convinced they would lose their miserly benefits if they Unionized. These are employees who are put on report for taking sick leave and they think they would lose that useless benefit. Employees today are very easily brain washed.

Good to see some have pulled away from the haze of the propaganda and brain washing to see the light and Unionize.

[enlightenment]

2. I think you should talk to the

adjuncts you know and ask them if they are swallowing the propaganda - or simply trying to keep the job they have.

There are few overarching rules governing how higher education handles these matters, and even in strong union areas adjuncts are risking their jobs when they organize. In "right-to-work" states, they stand little if any chance of surviving if they rock the boat.

Most contingent faculty contracts are written with language that denies them any promise of future employment and immediate termination with no recourse or appeal - and the institution doesn't have to give cause. The most common tactic is to simply tell the boat-rocking adjunct that there are "no classes" available the following semester - and continue to say it for as many semesters as it takes. No harm, no foul - and the adjunct who dared to try and improve things is shut out of the system.

People say it's crazy that adjuncts continue to "put up with it" - but those people rarely stop to consider what would happen if all the adjuncts walked away, like they propose they do. The average percentage of part-timers across the US stands close to 50% - and the same people belittling adjuncts for their poor choices would be shrieking to the heavens if their local HE institution had to cancel even a quarter of their classes because they had no one to teach them.

And it wouldn't work. The system is self-perpetuating. Universities churn out new Masters and PhDs and every one of them believes that they - unlike the thousands before them - will snag a full-time, tenure track position . . . but until they do, they can always adjunct. Those new adjuncts will just step into the space left by those who walked away, and nothing will change.