September-October 2004

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Negotiating a First Contract: A Primer

By Leslie Brokaw

In fall 2001, a half dozen part-time teachers at Emerson College volunteered to develop the first contract for the new adjunct union. We were a subset of the school's nearly 250 adjuncts, driven by a desire to be part of a professional community as well as by curiosity, self-interest, and a general commitment to social justice.

It would be two and a half years before we signed our final, ra-tified contract in the office of the college's president, Jacqueline Liebergott, in May 2004. It took thirty months of often frustrating, occasionally exhilarating, and sometimes bizarrely comi-cal meetings at the table to shape the seventeen-article, twenty-six-page document that now covers the faculty we represent.

We knew little about writing contracts when we first got together (and we knew little about each other—the nature of adjunct work, of course, is that it's difficult to develop friendships when you're only on campus for class). We are teachers and practitioners of the liberal arts. David Daniel, then president of the union, is a nationally known poet; David Akiba, who became president last spring, is an exquisite photographer. We had a few secret weapons: Richard Williams, who earned an MFA from Emerson and was teaching first-year writing, also has a degree in law, and Brian McNeil, who teaches film, had been active in a teachers' union in Canada.

We had among us longtime, heavily committed teachers who had taught at Emerson for over a decade with course loads that met or exceeded those of tenured teachers, and newcomers who taught just one or two courses a semester. Our group's makeup would help us create balanced positions.

Looking back on our success, our negotiating group has five pieces of advice for other nascent bargaining teams.

  1. Borrow liberally. We started our process by reading the contracts of the City University of New York, the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges, the University of Massachusetts, and Hofstra, Rider, and Roosevelt universities. Some contracts were online, others were given to us by the AAUP. For our initial contract proposal, we borrowed both general thematic ideas and specific language. (Our contract, for similar poaching, is at www.emersonafec.com.)
  2. Get students in your corner. The politically active Emerson Greens staged actions at key stages, and the student newspaper covered our negotiations extensively. These efforts were crucial to our success.
  3. Take advantage of AAUP expertise. Pat Shaw, a wonderful AAUP organizer, provided guidance throughout the entire process, traveling from Washington, D.C., to Boston at least two dozen times for negotiating sessions. AAUP staff members Rich Moser, Mike Mauer, and Barbara Gottfried helped to organize membership drives and political strategy.
  4. Don't freak out when your enthusiasm wanes. Nearly everyone on our negotiating team wanted to quit at some point. It was emotionally draining to face what sometimes felt like contempt from across the table. But when a dark moment hit one member, the rest of the group would rally and pick up the slack. We carried each other.
  5. Negotiate firmly, compose yourself with grace, and always, always, find the humor.

Leslie Brokaw teaches magazine publishing at Emerson College and was a member of the Affiliated Faculty of Emerson College-AAUP negotiating team. She can be reached at lesliebrokaw@yahoo.com.