The Seven Year Itch
by Kip Lornell
It took me the same number of years (seven-and-a-half) to earn a B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. as it did to help organize the part-time faculty The George Washington University and participate in the vote to ratify our initial contract. When an old friend called to congratulate me a few days after the contract ratification in early January 2008, she observed that my Scandanavian-American tenacity had served me well both in getting through school in a timely fashion and in the successful organizing effort. Then she asked me the obvious question: “Was it worth my time?” I didn’t hesitate to answer “yes,” and here’s why.
Foremost, for years I have been annoyed to utter distraction at The George Washington University’s exploitative employment practices regarding its part-time faculty, but it was not just about the money. Until we negotiated a contract, which could not have done without our SEIU Local 500 affiliation, virtually all of the University’s so-called “policies” were unwritten. They were, therefore, actually practices and part of the oral tradition or they were disseminated in non-public documents, such as memos to chairs or deans. This lack of public transparency meant university officials could invent “policies” to suit their needs.
Whenever a University administrator invoked a so-called policy related to part-time faculty (for example, how many courses a partially-benefitted faculty member was “permitted” to teach per year), my standard answer became “show me the policy in the Faculty Handbook, the Faculty Code, or a written document available to the faculty.” This flummoxed many a GWU administrator, and I got used to their looks of disdain and the steam coming out of their ears. Our 30-month contract no longer permits such “creativity” on the part of university officials, which is far more important than most part-time faculty realize, because we no longer have to rely upon divination.
Money, not surprisingly, was the second (and admittedly) very important issue. In my own case, my spouse could support our family of four on her salary so I could afford to teach two courses a year at the “not-so-great-for-D.C.-cost-of-living rate” of $3,700 per course. Because I was teaching courses that no one else taught and that benefitted both American Studies and Music, in August 1999 my status changed from being a non-benefitted (paid by the course) to a partially benefitted part-time (year-to-year) faculty member at GWU. According to the Faculty Handbook, partially benefitted faculty “are to be paid not less than one-third” of the equivalent full-time salary,” moreover the Handbook calls for partially benefitted faculty to “do more than teach.”
I was then in my mid-40s, had taught as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia the College of William & Mary, and the Johns Hopkins University, published six books, won a Grammy for my writing, and had a Smithsonian Institution post-doc on my Vita. You can imagine my bitter dismay when I was told my range was “Adjunct Professor” (the highest rank for part-time faculty), but the salary for three classes per year and extra duty was $15,000. Even with these credentials, officials insisted that my annual salary be pro-rated to that of an assistant professor because that was its “policy.”
Apparently the words “pay equity” and the phrase “equal work for equal pay” were not part of the administration’s vocabulary. Clearly administrators did not interpret “equivalent full-time salary” in the same way as did I. It was clearly time not to mourn but rather to organize, so I began the long, strange journey in August 1999.
Within a year, I and a handful of other disgruntled part-timers had gained enough momentum to approach UAW about affiliating with them. After a year of efforts, it became apparent that this was not a good fit. UAW was head-quartered in New York City, and was fully engaged in the struggles of organizing part-time faculty at NYU and the New School. UAW representatives were also very conservative in their allocating resources, and were stolid in their refusal to file with the NLRB until we had signed cards from 2/3rds of the approximately than 1,150 part time faculty on campus.
We parted on amiable terms and cast about for another partner because we knew that we could not do battle with the economic juggernaut that is The George Washington University—the largest private employer and the largest private landowner in the District of Columbia with an annual operating budget surpassing a billion dollars. As we looked locally (after our experience with the UAW, we knew that a local tie was critical), we quickly settled on SEIU Local 500, which is located in neighboring Montgomery County, Maryland. After meeting with representatives, it became clear that they were willing to expend the personnel and financial resources, plus they would file with the NLRB once we attained the minimum number of signed cards because they knew that we actually had more entrenched support than a card drive could demonstrate. Furthermore, their progressive political and social agenda, with which I and most of the others on the organizing committee felt entirely comfortable, helped to cement the relationship.
SEIU Local 500 representatives kept their word; they assigned a reasonable number of field organizers to help us with office and home visits as well as phone calls. As soon as we reached the minimum percentage of card signers, we filed for recognition of the union with the NLRB. That’s when the University’s leadership finally did what we expected all along; they dug-in for a major fight, which started when they hired a locally-based and nationally recognized union-busting attorney, Jay Krupin.
The details of the two-and-one-half year fight for recognition are far too complex and complicated for this piece. GWU officials chose to follow a strategy whereby they contested the legitimacy of the election, which we had won by a scant ten votes. The highlights of their fight include appeals to every level of the NLRB, including a losing argument to its National Board. They even filed an appeal to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. The Court curtly denied their appeal in a terse two-page decision issued a mere ten days after the hearing. Their final recourse was the United States Supreme Court but after several years, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and bad publicity (not to mention the fact that the Supreme Court would never hear the case because it was not a precedent setter), GWU leaders concluded they had to negotiate.
Much to our surprise, administrators dismissed Jay Krupin, and hired Morgan-Lewis (a firm with a particular strength in contract negotiation). The firm assigned Jonathon Fritz to the case. What we anticipated would be a bitter 12-18 month ordeal morphed into a 9 month negotiation. The cordial tone was set by David Rodich, the SEIU Local 500 lead negotiator and mirrored by Fritz. We met bi-monthly beginning in February 2007 and reached a tentative agreement in early December 2007. The votes were counted on January 4, 2008 and the contract was easily ratified with 89 percent of the voters affirming the contract.
So what did I learn from this approximately seven-and-a-half year odyssey? First, it was an interesting process, filled with about 20,000 hours of phone banking, knocking on office doors, waiting outside of classrooms, and sitting across the table from GWU administrators who really didn’t want to be there. Second, its difficult to mobilize people (many of whom—rightly or wrongly—feared that they would be fired for their efforts), which means that a core of us (Kathy Larsen, Jim Levy, Chester Hartman, Jill Robbins and Libby Smigel) served as the organizing committee and on the bargaining team. Third, our core of activists were in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, (by far the University’s largest), so we focused our efforts on our the Columbian College. Fortunately we only had relatively benign foes across campus because both the full-time faculty and the administration largely stayed to the side. Finally, outside union support was absolutely critical—we simply could not have accomplished all of this without the legal, financial, and often moral support of SEIU Local 500, which was often pushed by the hard work of Dr. Anne McLeer, a former part-timer at GWU who now works for the Local. Like us, this was a personal victory for Anne.
Would I do it again? Only if I have to. More to the point, no one should have to go through the professional disrespect that I and other GWU part-timers faced for decades. There is still plenty of work for me to do, including serving on the GWU/SEIU Local 500 Union Liaison Committee. A final observation: once you win an election like this its like having children—while it takes a lot of labor getting to that point, but the real work is still ahead.
