BU Full-time Lecturers and Instructors Vote to Unionize

Decision affects almost 300 Charles River Campus faculty

SEIU Union

The Service Employees International Union says 3,500-plus faculty members at Boston-area colleges have joined its ranks. Photo courtesy of CentralMassAficio.org

April 8, 2016
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Boston University’s full-time nontenured lecturers and instructors have voted by a margin of 4-to-1 to unionize, part of a larger union drive at Boston-area colleges and universities.

The vote means that about 280 full-time and salaried faculty members will be joining the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 509, which already represents approximately 800 part-time faculty. Of the voters eligible, 171 sent in their ballots. The vote, conducted by mail-in ballots sent out last month and tallied Wednesday, ran 135 to 36 in favor of unionizing, according to the SEIU.

Judi Burgess, BU’s labor relations director, says it’s impossible to say when negotiations with the new bargaining unit representing the full-time faculty would begin, as the unit must first be certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Also, the eligibility of some individuals for membership in the unit has been challenged and may have to be resolved by the NLRB, she says. The University currently is negotiating with a separate SEIU unit representing part-time faculty.

“With fewer than half of the eligible faculty casting votes in favor of the union in the NLRB election, the result was a vote for representation by Local 509,” Burgess says. “It is an unfortunate outcome, but we will negotiate in good faith once the election results are officially certified by the NLRB.”

“This is a tremendous day for faculty, our students, and the entire Boston University community,” Bill Marx, a College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program senior lecturer, says in a statement through the SEIU. “Today’s vote gives full-time and salaried lecturers and instructors the proactive voice we need to improve the teaching and learning conditions on campus.”

In that statement, Katherine Lakin-Schultz, a CAS lecturer in French, says that “through a strong union contract, faculty will have a real seat at the table to push for investments in classroom education, professional development, and research. By standing together, we can make real progress in addressing the challenges faculty and students face at BU.”

Even without unionization, the University noted before the vote, full-time lecturers and instructors had privileges similar to the full-time professorial faculty, including being assigned the same annual salary raise pool, having access to the same employee benefits, and having membership in the Faculty Assembly.

Excluded from the new bargaining unit are all professors (full, associates, and assistants and professors of the practice); faculty compensated solely on a per-course basis; faculty at the School of Medicine, the Goldman School of Dental Medicine, and the School of Law; the Questrom School of Business graduate faculty; and deans, provosts, administrators, department chairs, and associate chairs. Also excluded are postdocs, graduate assistants, and graduate students; athletics coaches; lecturers, senior lecturers, master lecturers, or instructors who teach only courses at campuses other than Charles River (with the exception of the Metropolitan College Prison Program) or non-degree-granting courses (including the Center for Professional Education); the directors of the Writing Program and the Health Communication Program; the chairs of the Mechanical Engineering Course Review Committee and the Undergraduate Lab Safety Committee; the manager of the Global Hospitality Education Consortium; the director/coordinator of the College of Communication Adjunct Writing Program; all faculty who teach exclusively in online programs; managers, confidential employees, guards, and supervisors; and all other employees of the University.

Part-time faculty at Tufts, Bentley, Brandeis, Lesley, and Northeastern Universities have joined the SEIU, as have full-time teaching staff at Tufts and Lesley. All told, the union says, more than 3,500 educators in greater Boston have joined the SEIU.

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BU Full-time Lecturers and Instructors Vote to Unionize

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  • Rich Barlow

    Senior Writer

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    Rich Barlow is a senior writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. Perhaps the only native of Trenton, N.J., who will volunteer his birthplace without police interrogation, he graduated from Dartmouth College, spent 20 years as a small-town newspaper reporter, and is a former Boston Globe religion columnist, book reviewer, and occasional op-ed contributor. Profile

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There are 31 comments on BU Full-time Lecturers and Instructors Vote to Unionize

  2. Having come of age in the 1980s, when the cultural tide turned decisively against unions, it’s really striking to witness their return in strength. In an era of unprecedented wealth inequality, we’re suddenly ready to try the solution that helped our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, working in industrial age factories, climb out of poverty into the middle class. There’s a world of difference between an 1890s factory floor and a 2010s classroom, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make this solution work for us here at BU.

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    1. Being a student, I find it disturbing that you’ve noted “our working condition is THAT bad”. The welfare of all of the staff at BU directly translates into the quality of the learning environment.

      Could you be more specific. Working hours? Lack of funds?

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        1. But with all due respect, is the University responsible to pay you for your life choices, ex: renting an expensive apartment, having children, having a family breadwinner instead of being a two-income household, etc?

          Certainly the University isn’t forcing you to work for them: you are more than free to pursue employment elsewhere in a different field with more prospects and better pay.

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          1. AP is thoroughly wrong. There simply aren’t enough tenure-track teaching position in higher ed — but universities are far from broke. Where does the money go? To administrative bloat & vanity construction. This is what happens when universities embrace the Business Model (BU was among the very first, in the 1970s). Running higher ed like for-profit corporations virtually guarantees that actual instruction suffers, while admins become addicted to the illicit savings provided by hiring adjuncts & lecturers. The BU admin can huff & puff all it wants, but adjuncts & lecturers remain more dedicated to the official purpose of instruction. Unionizing allows them to keep contributing by making teaching more economically viable.

            Finally, AP has got a lot of nerve telling anyone they’re making wrong choices in their lives. S/he should walk a mile (or more) in others’shoes. It’s called empathy; try it sometime.

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      1. I wish that students could collectively negotiate these obscene tuition prices, which are poised to only go up due to decisions such as these. There is no justification.

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        1. ASDF, tuition & fees will go up whether profs organize or not. BU is rich; there’s no need to raise student costs to meet the just bargaining demands of unionized faculty. It’s the BU admin that decides to raise costs, largely to protect the obscene salaries that come with administrative bloat, & also with vanity construction projects. Does anyone really believe that the School of Management truly NEEDS gold-plated bathroom faucets? Bah.

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  5. I’ve been a lecturer here at BU for almost 20 years, first as an adjunct and now full time, and I was one of the 36 who voted against organizing. Maybe it’s just me and the departments I’ve worked in, but I just don’t understand what grievances there might be that would cause us as a group to feel that we need outside representation. When I look at what unions have done to destroy the quality of primary and secondary education in this country it give me pause to think what damage they can do to higher ed.

    Also, the 36 of us who voted against organizing will be forced to pay a percentage of our salary to the union, which will then use that money to promote political candidates and agendas that we might disagree with. You would think that this would be a violation of a fundamental right, but our union-funded elected officials have decided that this isn’t the case.

    I believe that union organization will drive a wedge between lecturers and tenure-track faculty and result in worse, not better, conditions for us. Our focus should be on providing quality education for our students; we don’t need this distraction. I will be working to call for both a deauthorization and a decertification election as soon as those options are available to us.

    You can learn more about these issues on the National Right to Work LDF site at nrtw.org.

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    1. > “I just don’t understand what grievances there might be that would cause us as a group to feel that we need outside representation.”

      Perhaps you could personally ask some of your colleagues why they feel this way and learn more about the trade-offs they are facing? As they say, “there’s no data like more data”.

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    2. It’s fortunate that you’ve had a positive experience, however, you are also responsible for ensuring that your peers and coworkers are entitled to this experience. This is the basis of an advanced society. You must put (often money) into maintaining the interests of society as a whole– even if you may not directly reap the benefits of that investment. You could also recognize that you benefit indirectly from this investment, for example, by working for an institution that is accountable to employees, etc.

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      1. Actually, lecturers are not responsible for ensuring their peers and coworkers have the same experience. I work in the private sector and simply because my firm used to provide lunch when there were less employees does not make my peers responsible for pushing management to afford me the same experience they had when they first started working here. PerryD didn’t want union representation yet he/she will now be forced to pay for it simply because he/she worked hard and had a good experience with the University? PerryD, I’m happy to hear that you will work to call for both a deauthorization and decertification election as soon as possible.

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        1. Great example of how your employer can take things away from the employees anytime they please because it affects their profits. Now instead of free lunch, consider your wages, dental insurance, vision insurance, sick leave, vacation time, maternity/paternity leave, etc. If you suddenly lost any of those benefits, I wonder if you’d want to be able to depend on your peers.

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      2. I respectfully disagree. Rather, I would agree with you if SEIU focused solely on collaboratively representing a group of workers to those workers’ benefit.

        Unfortunately the SEIU doesn’t give a whit about the individual worker. They are a political lobbying organization that, in 2014, gave $47 million to federal election candidates, 99% of whom were Democrats. That $47 million was funded by member dues. From seiuexposed.com: “According to the Center for Responsive Politics, as of the 2014 election cycle SEIU is the single largest organization contributor to federal political candidates in the United States. SEIU political action committees (PACs) have funneled over $222 million into political accounts, with 99 percent directed to Democrats.”

        Many states recognize that requiring individuals who do not support the union PAC to hand over a portion of their paycheck to that PAC is a gross violation of our rights. Massachusetts, so far, does not agree. I am disgusted by this organization, ashamed that my colleagues want to ally with them, and angry that I will be forced to support it.

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        1. Again, you seem to be ignoring the /cause/ of these events, and focusing on your distaste for the outcome. Why would so many of your colleagues, who are otherwise rational, well-educated, and in many instances well-informed choose this route? Aren’t you at all curious?

          This is an inconsistency that always puzzles me: neoliberal favor “free markets”, the efficiency of which relies on the rational behavior of agents. This means you believe most agents must be rational, or else you would not believe a “free market” could be efficient. Yet when those same rational agents make decisions such as this, you claim they are irrational. Which is it?

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        2. “SEIU … gave $47 million to federal election candidates, 99% of whom were Democrats”

          It’s called looking out for the interests of their members. What should they do, give to the GOP so they can continue to destroy the middle & working classes? Yeesh.

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    3. It’s called collective bargaining for a reason, Perry. Try negotiating all by your lonesome for any improvements in compensation or benefits. You’d be lucky just to have the door hit your rear as you leave.

      Union dues average 1.5% of members’ pay, which is routinely covered by annual raises & additional benefits, brought to you courtesy of collective bargaining. Finally, if your satisfactory personal circumstances change for the worse, you’ll be glad to have a union behind you. Union support has a way of converting skeptics into grateful, then active, members.

      Solidarity!

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  6. The article doesn’t talk about WHY many full-time non-tenured faculty are pushing to unionize in the first place. I’m a graduate student at BU and I feel like I’m left in the dark on a lot of issues with this news report.

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    1. Because we were so powerless. Professorial faculty members have contracts and part-time faculty members are unionized, we didn’t have anything to protect ourselves. We only have appointment papers. In reality, we are not able to be members of committees in our own departments. In addition, our salary, especially in Humanities, is lower than comparable schools in this area. This year the BU Administration changed the medical coverage and we have to pay lots more when we have medical test at places other than BMC (=BU).

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      1. I think lecturer experiences are very different depending on academic department. In my department the directors of both the undergraduate and master’s programs are full time lecturers. I am not sure they be allowed to keep these positions as union members because directors have substantial influence over curriculum in those programs and that conflicts with the standards set out in Yeshiva decision.

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      2. Some BU full-time lecturers do have contracts, and are paid fair living wages. I believe that one reason for the low turnout in this election was that some of us were never contacted; the publicity and organization of the vote was terrible. I think if it were held again more publicly, we’d see a different outcome, and will likely see that if there is a deauthorization and decertification election.

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  7. I am confused. The article does not state faculty grievances and faculty commenting here who have supported the vote, do not elaborate. All I am hearing is “ask some of your colleagues”. Can someone please provide more detail as to why this was a good idea?

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    1. “Why is this a good idea” is the wrong question to ask if you want to understand why this is happening (the latter is a very different question). This vote is most likely a symptom and result of a broad and varied range of individual anecdotes and experiences. Picking any single experience would be both uninformative about the magnitude and extent of the issues, and perhaps even make it easier to dismiss the issue on the basis, or lack thereof, of an individual anecdote.

      Ultimately, SEIU representation may actually be worse! But that doesn’t necessarily make this choice irrational; it could be a natural and rational response to desperation and frustration. If the alternative is an unsatisfactory status quo, this could be an attempt by a large population to induce a phase change, to send a signal. This warrants a careful (and no doubt expensive) investigation. And most likely, the result of that investigation won’t be a simple list of nicely curated grievances, but a complex morass of individual issues that will take a great deal of work to address. But if the community is not willing to pay that expense, then groups like the SEIU could (to play devil’s advocate, here) “take advantage” of the situation, as some above claim they are doing.

      Ultimately, outcomes like this are a result of the failure of leadership. If the leadership of an community has the trust and respect of its community, then they would have no reason to take actions such as these. So, the question is, why don’t they have the respect of leadership? Treat this as a research question. It is not the responsibility of the phenomenon under study to provide information to you in a neatly compiled format.

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  8. “With fewer than half of the eligible faculty casting votes in favor of the union in the NLRB election, the result was a vote for representation by Local 509,” Burgess says. “It is an unfortunate outcome, but we will negotiate in good faith once the election results are officially certified by the NLRB.”

    The patronizing tone and distorting rhetoric of this remark provide some insight into the attitude of the administration toward the faculty at Boston University. While it is true that fewer than half of the eligible faculty voted for union representation, it is also true that only 36 out of 280, or 13%, of eligible faculty members voted against union representation. Construing this vote as reflecting anything other than widespread concern over the current state of the relationship between the non-tenured faculty and the administration is symptomatic of the problem.

    Most of the people I’ve spoken with who voted in favor of union representation did so more to communicate their dissatisfaction with the distant and condescending attitude of the administration than to embrace the political philosophy of unionization. They are not radicals or militants. And they are well aware of the disadvantages of union membership. In other words, more open communication and respect for the people who do much of the teaching at Boston University could have easily averted this outcome. And more denial will only increase the distance.

    It would be a mistake to characterize this vote as motivated purely by self-interest, although that view may be understandable in the corporate thinking of an ever-expanding and highly compensated administration. The non-tenured faculty, who receive less than ten percent of what their students pay for their courses, see themselves not as money-makers, but as educators and foremost among their concerns are administrative decisions or oversights that could adversely impact their classes. They would at the very least hope to be consulted when policies that may affect the education of their students are imposed.

    As far as compensation goes, it is true that lecturers and instructors now receive benefits such as health care and a pension. But, as pointed out in previous comments, $40,000 and $50,000 salaries do not go very far in a city like Boston where rents within several miles of the campus are approximately $2,000 per month for a single-bedroom apartment. It’s not unusual for single, middle-aged, fully employed faculty members to have a roommate. And in the case of married faculty members, the instructor’s spouse in effect is subsidizing Boston University. Also, as pointed out in a previous comment, health care coverage appears to have been cut in some ways on January 1st when we were issued, through a sleight of hand maneuver, debit cards for $250, which will hardly compensate for our increased payments from reduced coverage.

    The concern that “union organization will drive a wedge between lecturers and tenure-track faculty and result in worse, not better, conditions for us” may be unfounded. Although the evidence is purely anecdotal, the tenured faculty I have spoken with support the move by non-tenured faculty to organize.

    If the administration negotiates with the non-tenured faculty in good faith, I believe the faculty will respond in kind and this vote will result in a more positive relationship between the administration and faculty, which will also be in the interest of the students at Boston University.

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