History

A Part-time Faculty Movement to Gain Rights and Power

In 2001, a group of part-time faculty and graduate students at The George Washington University, inspired by the successful efforts of part-time faculty and grad students at New York University, started a grassroots movement to unionize. They formed a small organizing committee and approached the United Autoworkers, with whom the part-time faculty and students at NYU had been affiliated, to support the campaign. In the fall of 2002 and the spring of 2003, an organizing committee grew and garnered the support of more than half the part-time faculty and graduates students at GW.

They called themselves the DC Coalition of Academic Labor. From the beginning they planned to grow to encompass all the institutions in our region, as they realized that unionization at one university alone would not be enough to make market-wide changes in the way part-time faculty and graduate students were treated at institutions of higher education.

They knew that unionization was the only way to force a powerful employer (GW is the largest private employer in DC) to agree to and carry out the changes in their working conditions that they sought. Their mantra was and remains: “Collective bargaining gives you more rights and more power.” With this mantra and the affirmation that “we are the union,” they began to address the myriad questions and concerns of their part-time faculty colleagues.

However, in the summer of 2003 the UAW ended its campaign at GW. The organizing committee decided to continue with the campaign to organize the part-time faculty alone. In 2004, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that graduate students did not have the right to bargain collectively. The organizing committee approached AFT and SEIU Local 500 about affiliation, and in the fall of 2003 chose SEIU Local 500 which was more prepared to move quickly and to support the campaign in a way that reflected the organizing committee’s wishes.

In the fall of 2004, the part-time faculty at GW voted for representation by SEIU Local 500. A two-year NLRB and court battled ensued, with GW refusing to come to the table to bargain with the part-time faculty.

In the fall of 2006, after running out of appeals, GW was found to have violated labor law and was ordered to bargain with the union. Negotiations began in January 2007 and trust was gradually rebuilt between the sides. In December 2008, the part-time faculty overwhelmingly ratified its first union contract with GW.

Following the ratification of the contract, the GW organizing committee lent its efforts to help organize the part-time faculty at Montgomery College, a nationally recognized community college serving Montgomery County, Maryland. From this partnership, the morphed into the SEIU Local 500 Coalition of Academic Labor emerged.

The road to unionization at Montgomery College began in February 2007, after the full-time faculty, with the Association of University Professors (AAUP), ratified a three-year contract with the College and posted it on the MC website. For the first time, part-time professors became aware of the generous compensation and rich benefits granted to full-timers, contrasted with the low salaries and virtually nonexistent benefits of part-timers.

The MC employee e-mail system exploded with questions and demands from adjuncts. After a month-long debate, a small group of part-time teachers from all three campuses decided to take the discussion offline. The group formed a grassroots organization in March 2007 called the Adjunct Forum. For 10 months, they met to discuss and prioritize their key concerns.

Finally, the Adjunct Forum decided to form a union despite warnings that such an undertaking might be illegal. That hurdle was overcome in part because the full-time teachers at MC had been unionized for many years; in fact, the part-time faculty was the only large segment of MC employees that did not enjoy union protection. The Forum met with a number of unions, including SEIU Local 500, and ultimately chose Local 500 because of its victory at GW and eagerness to organize.

After a five-month organizing campaign, part-time teachers at MC voted in favor of union representation on June 3, 2008. By an overwhelming margin, the part-timers at MC became the first adjunct faculty at a public college in Maryland to win a union. Soon they will complete negotiations for a first contract.

They hope to move toward long-term goals of pay equity and improved benefits for all part-time teachers. They remain committed to fair compensation for all professionals that will ultimately benefit the quality of education and the 60,000 students from over 130 countries presently served by Montgomery College.

In keeping with its grassroots origins and ideals, the SEIU Local 500 Coalition of Academic Labor is now working to help other part-time faculty form organizing committees in their own workplaces in order to bring the power of collective bargaining to part-time faculty throughout the region.