Uniting for a better working environment– and university.

Uniting for a better working environment. And university.

We are voting “yes” to form our union with SEIU/Adjunct Action

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A message from the Lesley Adjunct Union Organizing Committee

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To our fellow adjuncts,

Last semester we filed with the National Labor Relations Board for our union election. Adjuncts teaching across Lesley’s four campuses stood together and showed their support for a union on campus by signing a union autho-rization card in favor of a union.

Adjunct instructors and professors teach because we love to. We know that institutions, like Lesley and across America, undervalue our contributions as professional educators, which has produced a fundamental unfairness in our working conditions. Individually, it is difficult to address inequities or advocate for change. When we work together, however, we will gain a say in addressing issues of fairness in our compensation, benefits eligi-bility, job security and be included more equitably in decisions that affect our lives at work.

We believe forming a union will help the long-term health of the academic community and provide stability to the very people who have supported Lesley’s expan-sion over the years. We are proud to be affiliated with this institution and are committed to working together to provide outstanding education for our students and strengthen the Lesley community as a whole.

Unionization has made demonstrated improvements to the working conditions of adjuncts. According to

the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, unionized adjuncts report more job security and have a median pay per course that is 25 percent higher than their nonunion counterparts.

Adjunct Action, a project of SEIU, is a campaign that unites adjunct professors at campuses across the coun-try to address the crisis in higher education and the troubling trend toward a marginalized teaching faculty that endangers our profession. By coming together in Adjunct Action, as adjuncts at Tufts University have already done, we have the power to create change by building a market-wide movement to raise standards for faculty and students alike.

Last semester we decided to take the first steps. This semester we will stand together for all adjuncts at Lesley University. Our union election is scheduled for January 31st through February 21st via mail ballot.

When your ballot arrives, vote yes for your students, for your colleagues, for your voice on campus.

Sincerely, The Lesley Faculty Union Organizing Committee www.luadjuncts.org

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Meet the facultyWe’re voting YES!

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I have been teaching in the Expressive Therapy depart ment for 5 years. I love teaching and learning. I cherish my interactions with my students and faculty. I support forming a union at Lesley University so we can be heard. I believe that through a union we can strive to change things we need to see changed like: being compensated for our time when we do student site visits and special meetings for students’ academic notifications, having improved working conditions and living standards.

MARINA STRAUSSAdjunct Faculty in Expressive Therapies

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I have been working for Lesley for at least twelve years. I have a M.F.A. and a Masters degree and am the author of nine books. I have no health insurance from Lesley, no guarantees of work, no path to a permanent part time or intermediate position, and sometimes it feels as if no one really knows that I’ve been working there at all. If my job ended now, who would write a letter of rec-ommendation? So, I suppose my hopes for a union would be more communication with adjuncts, who make up the majority of faculty, more respect and specific acknowledgment of service, insurance, and, last, but importantly, a pay scale and teaching schedule that reflects the number of years teaching and competency. I think it also would be beneficial to everyone if there were a paid in-service in Cam-bridge where people could meet each other.

MELISSA KWASNYAdjunct Faculty in Integrated Arts in Learning

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My day job is currently working as a music teacher at a Massachusetts Charter School. The school is wonderful. The faculty AND administra-tion are great so far. But there is no union, low pay and no way to negotiate for better pay as a faculty. The school is new. When we’ve been here for awhile and the shine wears off, we will not have the benefit of a union to negotiate as we did at my last job in a public school. I earn very little at this job and so I’m happy to have an adjunct position at Lesley. But once again, it is not a living wage and it is not reliable income as the courses are offered to me sporadically, only when cohorts open up across the country. We need the strength in numbers that a union would provide to negotiate fair wages and working conditions. The cost of joining may seem intimidating, but only until you find you have NO job, a pay cut, or have to find a health insurance policy you can afford.

Vote for collective bargaining. It is in your best interest.

SALLY ROGERSAdjunct Faculty in Creative Arts in Learning

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SHIRA KARMANAdjunct Faculty in Expressive Therapies

I have been an adjunct in the Expressive Therapies department off and on for three decades. I love teaching at Lesley but too often the adjunct faculty experience is one of feeling invisible to the Administration. A friend and beloved adjunct faculty member was let go without any notice or compensation after teaching here for 35 years! We, the adjunct faculty, need to feel seen and respected because we are a vital part of the Lesley commu-nity. Adjunct faculty make up a majority of the teaching staff and by achieving greater recognition and integration at Lesley, we will help make Lesley the best institution of higher learning that it can be.

We have received heartening support from all corners; full-time faculty, students, alumni and our local elected officials are standing with us as we vote to form our union. I will be voting yes so that we can have a voice and a place at the table with the university.

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JASON PRAMASAdjunct Faculty in Business Management and Communication

The main reason I want a union for adjunct facul-ty like myself at Lesley University is not poetic. “It’s just business,” as the famous line from The Godfather goes.

Adjuncts need to regularize the conditions of our employment, and we need to organize collectively to stand on equal footing with the university in all future negotiations. That is to say, adjuncts — like contingent workers everywhere — will never get ahead individu-ally trying to negotiate piecemeal with a powerful insti-tution like a university.

There can be no job security in a situation where our future livelihood is based on the whims of department chairs and higher administrators. Or worse yet, where people that attempt to bargain with the university in their own interest simply don’t get rehired after de-manding a better deal.

What adjuncts want is what every worker wants: we want mandated pay for all the work we do (be it teaching a course, running a research project, tutor-ing students or developing a new course), we want seniority and pay scales that ensure we have a rational job ladder over time, we want real benefits that kick in after agreed upon milestones and we don’t want our

course pay cut or our courses cancelled based on how many students enroll for a given section.

Beyond that, what can I say? Personally, I want a more democratic university like I want a more democratic society. But to get that, I first need to be a member of a democratic union that will fight for my rights on the job.

And that’s why I joined SEIU Adjunct Action.

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I always say that Lesley is my home away from home. I graduated from Lesley in 1980 and have worked as a member of the Boston Teachers Union for the past thirty-three years. I know first hand how unionism has improved my ability to teach and to contribute to my family’s security. At Lesley, I have been an adjunct professor since 1990 and have taught a broad range of graduate level courses during that time. Yet, I have not been asked to become involved in any of the decisions that influence our working conditions. I will vote yes to unionize our adjunct faculty because I believe it will strengthen our Lesley teaching and learning community.

BERTA BERRIZAdjunct Faculty in Creative Arts in Learning

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I am excited to have the opportunity to vote yes for our union. With a union, adjuncts will have a far stronger voice in addressing the concerns that affect so many of us — concerns that non-tenured contingent faculty are sometimes less willing or able to voice as individuals. And yet the adjunct faculty members at Lesley, as elsewhere in the United States, are highly qualified educators, often with years of experience and the highest degrees in their fields, who should abso-lutely be compensated fairly. This means salaries that are commensurate with the time and effort spent to prepare classes, the opportunity for benefits such as health insurance, and some measure of job security. After all, the University, and more directly, its student body, depends on adjuncts’ expertise and dedication on an almost daily basis.

When I was hired as an adjunct faculty member at Lesley last year, I was excited to begin teaching a new group of students, but didn’t know quite what to expect otherwise. I hoped to meet more experienced adjuncts who might have tips on how to navigate all of the as-pects of starting out the semester (writing the syllabus, preparing lesson plans, beginning to teach and meet with students) without any office space and before having received a first paycheck. These responsibilities

themselves are aspects of teaching that I enjoy and am very devoted to, as are the other adjuncts I did even-tually meet. But I was shocked to learn that some of them had done all of the same unpaid pre-semester planning I had, only to have their classes cancelled due to low enrollment. Some adjuncts may worry that supporting a union would cause tension with their department chairs and administrators. To the contrary, I think our union would create better working conditions for all of us, so that the situations actually causing tension, (such as last-minute loss of income due to course cancellations) not to mention financial hardship and emotional strain on contingent faculty, could begin to be rectified and regulated, resulting in a stronger Lesley community.

JILLIAN DEMAIRAdjunct Faculty in German

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The Lesley/Cambridge Community stands with us

Hundreds of Lesley students, full-time professors, alumni and others in the community are coming together to support our efforts to improve standards for the profession by forming a union with SEIU/Adjunct Action. As reported in the Boston Globe and Chronicle of Higher Education, “The

Cambridge City Council overwhelmingly approved a resolution ... expressing support for colleges’ contingent faculty members and their unionization ... [the resolution calls] for adjunct faculty members to be allowed to unionize without interference and to be ‘paid fair wages and benefits that allow them to support themselves and their families.’“

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The following is the full resolution presented to the Cambridge City Council

WHEREAS: There are almost 13,000 non-union and non-tenure faculty currently working at Boston-area non-profit colleges and universities; and

WHEREAS: There are currently over 270,000 students enrolled in 4-year non-profit colleges and universities in the Boston area, including at least 44,000 in Cambridge, who increasingly depend on the instruction and guidance of adjunct professors; and

WHEREAS: Students can pay upwards of $50,000 in tuition and living expenses every year to attend a college or university in the Boston area; and

WHEREAS: Adjunct professors should be adequately supported by their institutions for their growing presence and role in the academic pursuits of students in the Boston area; and

WHEREAS: Adjunct professors have little job security and must take on multiple course loads in order to make ends meet; and

WHEREAS: Most Boston-area colleges and universities do not provide health care benefits to their adjunct professors; and

WHEREAS: The cost of living in the Boston area is 32 percent higher than the U.S. average; and

WHEREAS: Adjunct professors in the Boston area should be paid fair wages and benefits that allow them to support themselves and their families; and

WHEREAS: The decision of whether to unionize belongs solely to workers, and should not be interfered with by management or their agents; now therefore be it

RESOLVED: That the Cambridge City Council go on record expressing support for fair wages and benefits for Cambridge’s adjunct professors, the right of Cambridge’s adjunct professors to form a union, and the adoption of free and fair union election principles, similar to those that have been adopted by many higher education institutions in other U.S. cities, which establish the commitment that workers are “free” to make up their own mind, under “fair” voting conditions; and be it further

RESOLVED: That the City Clerk be and hereby is requested to send a suitably engrossed copy of this resolution to SEIU’s Boston office.

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I love my job and care deeply for the students I teach. I feel honored to be part of a rigorous academic environment and part of an institution like Lesley University. But we all know there are problems here as well. I have been adjunct faculty at Lesley University College of Art and Design for seven years. Last year I was asked to take a 50% cut in pay for a mandatory but under-enrolled class. Recruitment for classes is on the backs of the adjuncts; we are not paid to recruit and there is no oversight from management to ensure the number of courses offered is logical for the number of students registered. Because of this, classes can be canceled at anytime and there is no job security from semester to semester. We are not told if we are teaching until weeks before classes begin, thus we have little time to prepare.

We need to come together and win a union so that we can support each other and negotiate with the administration for these very basic things.

STELLA JOHNSONAdjunct Faculty in Photography

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Teaching is a passion for me. Seeing students transform their ways of thinking and doing is what it’s all about. I believe an organized and unionized part-time faculty can offer Lesley University’s students a more rich experience and education. With part-time faculty making up the majority of faculty, our working conditions are directly related to student success. A fully supported part-time faculty community, combined with core faculty, is what the institution and students need to succeed moving forward.

It’s time for part-time faculty to be treated with the same respect they give to their students and colleagues.

MAT THEW WHITEAdjunct Faculty in Design

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We adjuncts love what we teach and nothing is greater proof of our love of learning than our lack of benefits, extremely low pay and systemic lack of institutional support for research, scholarship and our exclusion from the governance of our

institutions. Teaching one course at Lesley does not even cover the costs of health insurance for me and my family during the 13 week semester.

True — the crisis in higher education is complex. There has been a shift in institutional resources from instruc-tion to administration, including huge compensation for college presidents. This shift has been funded by quickly rising tuition, resulting in record levels of student debt. But, just because this problem is complex does not mean it is intractable. When a union organiz-er stopped by my classroom this fall to tell me about

the union effort at what is both my alma mater and place of work, I jumped at the chance to join the SEIU/Adjunct Action. I am eager to make a difference even though I am as vulnerable as any day laborer. Every-one’s work and academic life — from freshman stu-dents to administrators and marketers trying to sell the experience — would be improved by a strong Adjunct Union. This is a trickle up effect that is real.

We know that, although we may be part time, we are the most important part of the delivery of high quality education to our students. Our work should be valued and supported as such by the institutions who profit from our labor.

Lesley is exceptional in the way it cares for its stu-dents as human beings. As an Alumna of Lesley, I love my alma mater and owe her much. The folks in my division and school have been exceptionally kind and supportive of me. I, and other alumni like me, want to see Lesley University take the lead and treat its adjunct faculty with the same care and attention we remember thriving under as students. Let Lesley treat its adjuncts as if the academic life and reputation of the school depended on it. Because, quite simply, it does.

NORAH DOOLEYAdjunct Faculty in Business Management and Communications

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SHAARI NERETINAdjunct Faculty in Counseling and Psychology

I am writing to you today as a long-term Adjunct Faculty member here at Lesley. I have taught in the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences — mainly in the Graduate Program of Counseling and Psycholo-gy — for the better part of 18 years.

There can be no question that this growth has been in no small part due to Adjunct Faculty’s dedication and academic excellence university-wide. We are essen-tial and we are everywhere — on-campus, on-line, off-campus. And yet the standards of employment for adjunct faculty have not been upgraded accordingly. I strongly believe that together — as a cohesive bargain-ing unit — we can create a standard of equitable and sustainable terms of employment for us all. Let me be clear that I have enjoyed excellent working and profes-sional relationships with my supervisors, faculty and administrative staff. I have been a valued and respected colleague. However, I am cognizant that while I have been treated well, the critical decisions on matters that profoundly impact my quality of life — health insur-ance, pay, job stability, the physical work environment — are made exclusively by the university administra-tion. So it is with the university administration that

Adjuncts — as a cohesive bargaining unit — must begin to negotiate. I urge you to think about what a union can do for you and vote yes this February.

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Tufts University Bargaining Committee in solidarity with Lesley Adjunct Faculty

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Dear Colleagues at Lesley,

We understand that you are being cautioned to care-fully consider implications of voting to have a union. We were written to by our administration at Tufts also, in similar terms — terms that we have found to be misinformed, at best. It is apparently a common trope to consider a union an external organization, a so-called “third party,” with the monolithic self-interested agenda that implies. The suggestion is that the “third party” would intervene and interrupt the productive relationship between adjuncts and the administrators of their university.

Our experience at Tufts, where we are at the early stag-es of bargaining for our first contract as members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has been strikingly different from that stereotype. From our very first encounters with SEIU organizers it has been clear that we were building our union. Though we have benefitted from the experience and energy of SEIU’s professional staff at every step, our issues, our preferences, our priorities, our language about our situation, our strategy and our ability to discover all of these have determined the shape and direction of our efforts to form a union.

Far from feeling separated by some third party, we feel much more deeply and more significantly integrated into the university than before. We have gained stature by being together, a union, and we feel it both in our own commitment to the well-being of our students and our teachers, and in our ability to be heard and consid-ered part of our university.

We hope you will take our experience into account and work to create your own union at Lesley.

Tufts Part-Time Faculty Bargaining Committee Members

Rebecca GibsonElizabeth LeavellCarol WilkinsonGeoffrey GardnerAndy Klatt

SEIU/Adjunct Action145 Tremont StreetSuite 202 Boston, MA 02111

adjunctaction.org

Lesley University faculty are voting “yes” to form our union with SEIU/Adjunct Action www.luadjuncts.org