Adjunct faculty union prepares agenda for CBA negotiations

Having officially unionized, adjunct faculty members are preparing to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the University. 

After voting last month for union representation by the Service Employees International Union, approximately 300 non-regular rank, non-tenure track faculty are working to define a set of goals and create a bargaining committee. The union includes adjunct professors and lecturing fellows from the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School and the Center of Documentary Studies. 

Duke Teaching First—the organization of contingent faculty that led the unionization effort—has yet to determine when negotiations with University officials will begin. DTF members said they hope to meet with administrators before the spring semester ends and will try to present their demands and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement starting next fall. 

“It’s exciting, but there’s a lot going on,” said MJ Sharp, CDS instructor and a member of DTF. “It’s kind of a moving target in terms of the time frame.”

Provost Sally Kornbluth noted that administrators would begin to work with representatives from the union on a collective bargaining agreement in a Duke Today release

“While we are disappointed not to be able to continue working more directly with our colleagues, we are glad that together we made some advances this past year that will impact many of our adjunct faculty,” Kornbluth said in the release.

However, Vice President for Administration Kyle Cavanaugh said that he expects the “working relationship” between union members and Duke officials to remain the same.

Since voting to unionize, a main priority of DTF has been agreeing on what the goals of the bargaining unit should be. Sharp said that because adjunct faculty members are from different departments, there are a variety of grievances about job security, teaching resources, benefits and salaries that the union must account for.

DTF has been holding meetings in which union members have expressed their desires and concerns. Sharp added that DTF has also sent members surveys asking how much they care about issues such as health insurance and compensation for advising and overseeing research. Respondents can also recommend what the priorities of the bargaining committee should be.

“We’re trying to determine what the themes are,” Sharp said. “Even though people may have different specific situations, the underlying theme of those might be the same, whether it’s about job security, or compensation, or research funds availability or whatever it might be.” 

Sharp noted that the bargaining unit’s lead negotiator Larry Alcoff, an SEIU representative who was previously involved with unionization efforts at Tufts University, has been helpful in identifying common concerns. 

Matteo Gillebi, a lecturing fellow in the department of romance studies and another DTF representative, said that union members are also determining who will participate in the bargaining process. If more faculty are present at negotiation meetings, school officials may feel greater pressure to meet DTF’s demands and reach an agreement, he noted.

“It’s going to be a little time-consuming for people,” Gillebi noted. “They have to be there on their free time. So we need a lot of people who could just go for an hour or two hours to a bargaining meeting. The more people, the easier it will be to build this dialogue with the administration.”

In addition to forming the bargaining committee, DTF wants to encourage other faculty members to become involved in the negotiation process. Gillebi said that several of the 29 faculty members who voted against union representation during the elections have become more willing to participate in DTF’s bargaining efforts.

Although adjunct faculty at several universities—including Tufts, Georgetown University and the University of Chicago—have negotiated collective bargaining agreements, DTF has not tried to base its efforts on other college union campaigns. Sharp said members’ concerns about working conditions are unique to Duke and do not relate to the bargaining campaigns at other schools.

“Every situation is really a custom job,” Sharp said. “Duke is a very particular institution with things that are really great and things that we want to change.”

However, Gillebi acknowledged that he and other DTF members have had to learn about the different nuances of bargaining and managing a union. For example, he said he only recently became aware that because North Carolina is a “right-to-work” state, employees are not required to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment.

Gillebi and Sharp said that they are hopeful that the bargaining committee and administration will reach an agreement. Gillebi added that at the end of the day, both sides have “the same goal in mind: better working conditions for teachers and researchers, that will result in better learning conditions for students.” 

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