The Bell Rings. (Again.)

by Michele Alperin

As universities bandy about expressions like “academic freedom” and “educational excellence,” they apparently still see themselves as idealistic bastions of knowledge. But at The George Washington University (GW) in Washington, D.C., finances have engendered a new language in academe, including phrases like “strategic priorities” and “available resources.” Indeed, financial concerns have been used to dictate the last word on a variety of debates within higher education, including the debate over the use of part-time faculty.

At GW, administrators and part-time faculty disagree about whether or not adjunct faculty there are primarily specialists brought in to share their expertise, or faculty essential to undergraduate education at the institution. Tracy Schario, Director of Media Relations at GW, says the institution’s adjuncts are a “selling point” for students, because they have access to people in the fields they are studying—lobbyists, former NGO’s, and government leaders. Kip Lornell, a part-time faculty member who teaches music, and a driving force behind the move to unionize GW’s adjuncts, sees it differently. He says the majority of GW’s part-time faculty do not work outside the university and are not being paid a living wage.

“[We have] become de facto full-time teaching faculty,” Lornell says. “They are pretending it is the 1950s, when adjuncts occupied a smaller role, but this is the 21st century.”

Saundra Rose Maley is one of those 21st century part-timers. She has been an adjunct in the English department since 1991, and cobbles together a livelihood at GW. For most of her 14 years she has taught freshman composition, with occasional forays into introductory courses in American and British literature. She is part-time, promised at least two courses per year, with partial benefits. This year, for teaching five courses, she expects to earn $18,784, of which $2,750 is “overload compensation” for teaching a higher-level course. To put her salary in perspective, consider that one year she was given an assistant professorship and earned $42,000—the same person, the same job, different title.

Although she says she supports unionization, she wrote in an e-mail, “I feel the university doesn’t care a fig about us, and there’s nothing the union can do to change this.”

At GW contingent full-time and part-time faculty, who number over 1,000, outnumber tenured and tenure-eligible more than 2:1.

“To pretend this is a university where the majority of the faculty are tenured and tenure-eligible and teach the majority of students is not supported by fact,” Lornell says.

Most GW adjuncts average $3,000 per class. University officials claim that $2,500 is the minimum per course pay. Lornell alleges some adjuncts earn as little as $1,800 per three-credit hour course. Along with the low salaries comes the indignity that per class pay for part-time faculty has remained unchanged since 1999.
As a result, about five years ago Lornell, who has partial benefits, but only a yearlong contract, got involved in organizing the college’s 1,100 part-time faculty.

“Economic and other injustices perked my interest,” he explains.

Dr. Donald R. Lehman, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and the University’s point-person for unionization matters, declined to be interviewed for this article. However, in a letter to GW’S part-time faculty dated September 29, 2004, Dr. Lehman defended the university’s position: “I hope you will consider how important it is that decisions regarding the professional interests of all of GW’s faculty and staff be made not on merit alone, but in the context of the University’s strategic priorities and available resources. [italics added] Our aspirations exceed the resources we have available to meet them in the short term.”

This statement doesn’t surprise Lornell.

“….GW is a multibillion dollar corporation—the largest private employer in Washington, DC, as well as the largest private landowner, with assets of $1.7 billion.”

Adjunct Professor Earl Skelton, has been teaching at GW for 30 years.

“With the current system, department chairs appreciate that they have a cheap source of labor,” Skelton says. “If they had to pay adjunct faculty what they’re worth, they would have to revamp their whole budget.” Skelton adds that the budget was developed to accommodate the status quo and will change only if forced to do so. Like any system, the university resists change, but if change is forced upon them, they will adjust.”

Given these realities, it is not surprising that in 2001 the adjuncts began to explore union affiliation.

“Our initial choice was the United Auto Workers,” says Lornell, “because they were organizing at Columbia and Brown, and they had more experience organizing with adjuncts than other unions.”

But in the fall of 2003, after 18 months, GW’s adjuncts and the UAW decided to dissolve the relationship: adjunct organizers felt the UAW’s staff support was insufficient; in addition, UAW officials wanted two-thirds of GW’s 1,100 adjuncts to sign election cards before petitioning the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a vote. (The legally mandated minimum is 30 percent of the electorate). Finally, the UAW wanted to quietly organize both the adjuncts and graduate student employees. But the adjuncts, says Lornell, “wanted to concentrate on one group at a time, and be more public.”

“We cast about looking for unions,” Lornell says. The adjuncts first approached the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which represents approximately 50,000 part-time/adjunct faculty nationwide and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The AFT did not initially respond to the group’s overtures. According to AFT spokesperson Jamie Horwitz, the union was disappointed that things did not work out with the GW adjuncts: “They felt like they were getting a better deal elsewhere,” he says.

Lornell explains that the group settled on the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) because the organization’s representatives seemed interested and willing to move forward.

The first step toward unionization was proving the adjuncts had a “show of interest” among the union’s target population (some 1,117 part-timers) by getting at least 30 percent of eligible voters to sign cards.

Organizers based their target numbers on data posted to GW’s Office of Institutional Research Web site. However, when adjunct organizers went to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to file on March 8, 2004, university officials claimed that the target population was much larger, somewhere around 1,600 individuals. As a result, the adjuncts withdrew their first petition and then revised their description of the bargaining unit. A subsequent petition, filed on April 19, 2004, was approved by the NLRB. When it came time for the actual election in October 2004, nearly 700 out of the 1,100 part-time faculty eligible to vote cast ballots.
The union won, but by a surprisingly slim margin. The initial results showed 328 in favor of a union, 316 against, and 50 contested votes.

Lornell sees three reasons for the exceedingly close vote: 1.) some people just don’t believe in unions; 2.) others were not sure that SEIU was the “proper union to represent an academic institution”; 3.) and a third group “felt they were being treated fairly by the university and didn’t think they needed a union.” He adds that some people were afraid of retribution. Although signing cards and voting are confidential, they feared that if the university were to find out, they might lose their jobs.

Suddenly, the 50 contested ballots became crucial to both sides. The ballots fell in three categories:

The SEIU and university officials eventually whittled down the number of contested ballots to just 20. University officials then posted this to the school’s Web site:

“The University’s position has consistently been that the votes of all part-time faculty employed by GW who meet the eligibility criteria should count, but regretfully, the Service Employees International Union (Service Employees) chose to challenge the ballots of dozens of eligible voters. The University worked in good faith to resolve these challenges and eventually the Service Employees withdrew its challenges to all but 15 of the 50 ballots it initially challenged.”

Union organizer and Women’s Studies instructor, Anne McLeer, sees it differently. According to her, university officials eventually agreed with the union organizers that certain voters were ineligible, for example, people who taught part-time, but also had responsibility for assigning classes and hiring and firing.

As a result, an NLRB hearing in January 2005 concentrated on the eligibility of those contested 20 ballots, more than enough to overturn the union’s victory. Both sides await the Board’s final decision.
Although Kip Lornell does not feel that the university ran an overtly aggressive anti-union campaign, materials posted to the college’s Web site list a number of potential repercussions associated with unionization: class scheduling would be more complicated, and there would be fewer opportunities for part-time faculty to select, create and revise their courses. GW officials suggest that a part-time faculty union would polarize relations with the full-time faculty on matters ranging from course scheduling to evaluations to compensation.

Interestingly, at GW course revisions come from the curriculum committee; there is no formal mechanism for part-time faculty evaluation. As for selecting courses, part-time English Instructor Sandra Rose Maley wrote in an e-mail response to the administration’s assertions that she already “couldn’t choose [her] courses. When did I ever get a chance to do that?”

So, where do things stand? The university’s Web site makes it clear that GW administrators believe “unionization is not the best way to address” the legitimate concerns of part-time faculty at the institution. Lornell and his fellow organizers, on the other hand, believe that “unionization leads to collective bargaining so you have a voice that someone would actually listen to.” With respect to the part-time faculty organizers, the bottom line is this: their union has been certified by the National Labor Relations Board. The next step, had GW officials not summarily dismissed the most recent legal ruling in favor of the union, would have been to negotiate a first contract.

“We [held] the lead,” Anne McLeer says, “but the university will stall and stall as much as it can within legal limits.”

In the meantime, organizers project union dues will be set at about $300 per year with a sliding scale, but as Lornell says, “a union that can’t make up $300, isn’t worth much.”

One thing is certain, the newly formed union will ask GW officials to re-evaluate their “strategic priorities” and, potentially, to reallocate millions of dollars of their “available resources” to the college’s 1,100 adjuncts. What is uncertain is how long GW administrators will defy the will of their faculty, and the ruling of the United States National Labor Relations Board.

Sucker Punches

Part-time faculty union organizers charged George Washington University with unfair labor practices on July 1, 2005. The day before, administration officials had announced that they would not recognize the part-time faculty’s collective bargaining unit.

On May 6, 2005, the National Labor Relations Board handed down a decision that concluded adjunct faculty voters had approved a union in the October vote, 341 to 331. The board’s decision was thought to have ended an eight month dispute between University officials and union supporters over 50 disputed ballots.

At the end of June, university officials said they would not recognize the union because two part-time faculty members in the Law School who were hired by an outside firm to work at the University were allowed to vote. Officials are arguing that an additional 30 such workers should be allowed to voice their opinion on a collective bargaining group.

The two part-time professors were initially excluded from the October vote since GW does not pay their salaries, but Law School adjunct professors petitioned the NLRB to allow them to participate in the vote. The board deemed their ballots eligible; it is not known whether they voted for unionization.

“We at the University believe strongly that these other individuals should have an equal opportunity to cast their ballots,” Donald Lehman, executive vice president for Academic Affairs, said.

All “supplier” employees–those hired by third-party organizations to work for the University–should be able to cast ballots, Lehman added. Even though Lehman emphasized that the University wanted to ensure all eligible part-time professors are able to vote, he said he didn’t know if GW would be calling for the inclusion of “supplier” employees if the vote went the other way.
Some would-be members of the Service Employees International Union Local 500 said GW is employing an obstructionist tactic aimed at preventing the SEIU from acting as the legal representative of GW’s part-time faculty.

After filing a charge of unfair labor practice against the University with the NLRB, union members said they hope to force GW to engage in collective bargaining. The board now must decide whether GW is breaching employment regulations by refusing to recognize the union. NLRB representatives said the University might seek to challenge the board’s certification in U.S. courts, allowing for possible judicial review of the NLRB’s decision.

Lewie Anderson, director of the SEIU Local 500 Representation Programs Department, wrote in a news release July 1st: “We are going to expose George Washington University’s attempt to deny its employees union representation to the public. Make no mistake about what’s really behind GW’s action.”

University officials said a comprehensive list of eligible voters was agreed upon between union supporters and the administration before the October election, a list that totaled about 1,200 professors and did not include any supplier employees.

Tracy Schario, the University’s director of media relations, said that “after much soul searching,” administrators, including President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, “came to the difficult decision that a big group of suppliers were disenfranchised, and that (the October vote) was not a full and fair election.”
But SEIU members said that by not recognizing the certified union, the University is acting illegitimately.

“The election is over and (GW) is just blowing smoke,” said Kip Lornell, lead union organizer and professor of Africana studies. “(The University) is basically saying the NLRB is wrong and they’re not going to abide by their rules. They don’t want to bargain in good faith.”
Schario said that GW is not “anti-union” and already has three collective bargaining groups on campus. She characterized the adjunct unionization movement as a “complex issue.”

“Our part-time faculty members are really a quite diverse group of individuals.” Schario said.

Robert Penney, an assistant professor of sociology who specializes in unions and working-class collective activity, said that in a time where the University is becoming increasingly business-oriented, it is less willing to share decision-making power with its employees.

“GW will argue the need for flexibility in which to control who’s working at the University or to offer an array of classes, but I don’t buy that,” said Penney, a tenured professor.

“It comes down to power – who gets to make decisions,” he added. “The University wants to have universal control in that process.”—GW Hatchet