Adjunct professors re-filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday to hold a campus-wide election on unionization, the movement’s organizers said.
The move came in response to indications that the NLRB was prepared to side with the University in a dispute over the number of adjuncts teaching at GW. Operating under a belief that there were 1,115 adjuncts, movement organizers collected the signatures of 30 percent of the part-time faculty needed to force a vote. GW claims the number is closer to 1,600.
Using the school’s numbers, the original petition would have had an insufficient amount of names to force a vote. The new petition more specifically defines the bargaining unit.
“This is an attempt to get (the University) to produce a list more similar to our list based on who is considered part-time faculty,” said Anne McLeer, adjunct professor of women’s studies and a leader of the union movement.
While the previous petition had been worded to include all part-time and regular part-time faculty, the new language explicitly leaves out teaching assistants, paid guest lecturers and other individuals that organizers charge the University with using to inflate the actual number of adjuncts on campus.
“There were some graduate students who are not technically faculty who, for whatever reason, were helping teach a class and were on the list,” said Jamal Pender, director of organizing for the Service Employees International Union, which represents the adjuncts. “We’ve tried to rewrite it so the University has to exclude them.”
GW officials said the University has not had time to fully analyze the petition’s new language and could not comment on the matter.
“At this point, there’s nothing really new we can say until we’ve seen all the documents,” said media relations specialist Eric Solomon.
The two parties will attempt to reach an agreement in the coming weeks. If a resolution is not reached by April 9, a hearing will be held before the NLRB to settle the matter. Either way, unionists and the school will need to renegotiate terms for an election that had been scheduled for later this month.
Union organizers said their roll of supporters would not be significantly trimmed under the more narrow definition of an adjunct.
“From our perspective we’re filing for the same group of people,” McLeer said. “We worded it as carefully as we possibly could to include everyone that we had in the (original) petition and exclude anyone that the University might be trying to slip in.”
Organizers said adjunct professors rarely occupy offices on campus and can be hard to locate, forcing recruiters to track down professors on an individual basis and meeting with them in person.
“We used traditional union organizing tactics,” McLeer said. “We’d talk to people after their classes and ask if they wanted to sign up, and the majority of the people we spoke to signed (a petition) card.”
Though they were unsure of the actual impact a union would have, some adjunct professors said they favored the movement. Steve Forssell, an adjunct professor of psychology, said he was approached about unionization earlier this year after one of his classes and signed on with the hope of securing better wages.
“I believe it would be great if adjunct faculty could get together and be represented in some capacity,” Forssell said. “We are fairly underpaid as you might guess and just having someone to represent our interests would be a good thing.”
While many adjuncts also hold full time jobs outside of the University, some professors said a union was crucial for those who make a career out of part-time teaching.
Cathy Hamann, an adjunct professor of English and union supporter, said several of her colleagues rely on two or three adjunct positions at different universities as their primary source of income and would benefit greatly from collective bargaining.
“I only know what I get paid, but it’s very little in the scheme of things with the hours I actually work,” Hamann said. “I know people who are trying to make a living (as an adjunct) and I don’t know how they can do it. Especially in a city like this, it can be pretty tough.”
Currently, adjunct professors earn $2,500 to $4,200 per course per semester, according to an April 2002 Faculty Senate report. According to past Hatchet reports, officials determine adjuncts’ salary ranges based on seniority.
Union organizers said they were confident they had most GW adjuncts backing them, but that an election will determine the true level of support for the movement and that for the near future, that will remain the primary objective.
“My perception from talking to people is that angry at the university… for preventing their right to hold a vote,” McLeer said. “An election is the only true way to tell if we’ve got the support. Getting that far is the goal.”
