BU and its part-time faculty have reached tentative agreement on a four-year contract.

University News

University, Part-Time Faculty Tentatively Agree to New Four-Year Contract

Union representing the adjuncts needs to ratify the deal, which includes annual raises of between 3.5 and 4.25 percent

Boston University and the union representing more than 1,200 part-time faculty have tentatively agreed to a four-year contract, with annual raises for the adjuncts between 3.5 and 4.25 percent.

The agreement, hammered out in 18 sessions over the last nine months, must still be ratified by the part-time faculty members of SEIU Local 509, the Massachusetts Union for Human Service Workers and Educators. Rachel McCleery, Local 509 lead internal organizer and the union’s chief negotiator with BU, says the union will hold informational sessions this week about the agreement. Voting by online ballot will start sometime next week and run for about a week, with specific dates to be announced.

“The goal is to finish the ratification process by the end of the semester,” McCleery says.

Judi Burgess, BU’s executive director of employee and labor relations, says the contract is retroactive to August 1 of last year and runs until that date in 2027. The largest numbers of part-time faculty teach at the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Communication, the School of Law, and Metropolitan College.

“This is great news,” Burgess says, “as we have been working hard to come to resolution over tougher topics during a more intense time for labor.” (Another BU bargaining unit belonging to Local 509, representing more than 3,000 graduate student workers, has been on strike since late March, mostly over pay and benefits.)

“We believe that we reached agreement on a contract that is fair and balanced for both part-time faculty and the University,” Burgess says.

The tentative agreement calls for annual wage increases of 4.25 percent (retroactive to 2023), 4 percent, 3.75 percent, and 3.5 percent. It also includes, among other provisions:

“We’re very proud of this tentative agreement and look forward to seeing it ratified,” McCleery says. “It’s the product of a lot of hard work on both sides to address part-time faculty concerns about pay equity—specifically, eliminating the former two-tiered pay structure—workload, and better job security for faculty who’ve been committed members of the University community for years.

“We’re especially excited about the University’s development of a center for students who need testing accommodations. That center was not directly mandated by any language in our tentative agreement, but we proposed creating one back in October.” McCleery says that need became clear during negotiations because part-time faculty rarely have offices they can use “to provide extended time or a quiet testing environment for students.

“We’re incredibly pleased to see the University taking steps to ensure that our faculty have the resources they need to better serve all of their students,” she says.

“We are pleased to have reached agreement with our part-time faculty,” says Kenneth Lutchen, BU interim provost and chief academic officer. “Our negotiations were constructive, respectful, and addressed matters of importance to both the union and the University. The result was an agreement that both parties can feel good about and proud of.

“Our part-time faculty are important members of our community,” he adds, “and I am grateful to them for the devotion they have to Boston University. I am also grateful to our Labor Relations team for all their efforts on closing the agreement.”

Amanda Bailey, vice president for human resources, says the University “is pleased to support our part-time faculty by successfully reaching a collective bargaining agreement for the next four years. We look forward to continuing to support the needs of our part-time faculty members well beyond the terms of this agreement, alongside the support we continue to offer all members of our University community.”