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Suffolk University Adjuncts File for Union
By Ruth Flower
A group of adjunct faculty at Suffolk University, the Suffolk Affiliated Faculty/AAUP, petitioned the National Labor Relations Board in November to recognize the group as the collective bargaining agent for nearly 450 adjunct faculty at the institution. Adjunct faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences, the New England School of Art and Design, and the Sawyer School of Management would form a bargaining unit to negotiate with the university administration.
At Suffolk, as at many institutions, part-time faculty outnumber tenured and tenure-track faculty, and they teach a growing percentage of courses—especially those taken by undergraduates. They are paid by the course, with no health care or other benefits, and with little or no compensation for the time needed to prepare for classes, to meet with students, to grade exams, to help develop and oversee the curriculum on the campus, or to keep up with developments in their own fields.
Bob Rosenfeld, Suffolk AAUP chapter president and a leader in the adjunct group commented, “We need to regularize our negotiating with the university. As Suffolk grows, there are more programs and more financial pressures. We are hired by different departments all over the institution and could be overlooked or pushed aside without an organized voice to make our case to the administration.”
At Emerson College, Suffolk’s next-door neighbor, the AAUP adjuncts achieved collective bargaining status in 2001 and successfully negotiated a five-year contract with breakthrough gains. “We’ve also made some gains at Suffolk,” Rosenfeld said, “but we need to defend the gains we’ve achieved and address other issues, such as our seven-year waiting period before we qualify for benefits.”
The next step for the Suffolk Affiliated Faculty/AAUP will be an election in the near future, in which adjunct faculty will decide democratically whether they want to be represented by a union.
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