FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
To book interviews with adjunct professors leading the movement to
unionize, contact: Avril Smith, 202-285-8761
Boston-Area Adjunct Faculty Launch Citywide Push to Form Union with SEIU. Adjuncts Seek to Stem Trend of Low Pay, Lack of Job Security as Investment in Instruction Declines Despite Skyrocketing Student Tuition
BOSTON — Adjunct and contingent faculty from more than 20 Boston-area colleges
and universities are coming together to raise standards for their profession and
win a voice in the future of higher education by forming a union with the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU).
“When a university is asking $50,000 in tuition from students, one wonders where
the money is going and why it’s not going into instruction, ” said Deborah Schwartz,
an adjunct professor in the English Department at Boston College. “There’s a
systemic problem when the majority of students who walk into their first year
English class are taught by adjunct faculty.”
Part-time and non-tenure track faculty are now the majority of faculty at our
colleges and universities and their numbers continue to increase. At the same
time, revenues and tuition have increased steadily over the last two decades while
spending on instruction has declined – and it’s adjuncts and their students who are
suffering as a result.
Contingent faculty typically have no job security and low pay that forces adjuncts
to string together jobs at multiple colleges and universities to make ends meet.
Adjuncts do not have access to basic facilities like office space and receive little
support for research or scholarship. These conditions make it increasingly difficult
for adjuncts to do their best for their students.
The Boston-area adjuncts’ efforts come on the heels of victories by part-time
professors in the Washington, D.C. area. There, contingent faculty significantly
improved their pay, job security, benefits and working conditions after forming a
union with SEIU.
This Saturday, adjunct faculty from across the Boston-area are coming together
in Adjunct Action, a project of SEIU, to learn more about how forming a union can
improve their professional standards and strengthen their voice in the priorities of
the universities and colleges at which they work.
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Adjunct Action is a project of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation’s
largest and fastest growing union and home to over 15,000 unionized adjuncts who have won
improvements in pay, job security, evaluation processes, and access to retirement benefits.
