Seattle University Students Stand Behind Their Faculty
In late May and early June, instructors at Seattle University casted ballots on whether they wanted to unionize. Since then, not a single ballot has been counted. Instead, administrative efforts have invalidated the vote and put the faculty’s unionization status in limbo.
Seattle University employs nearly 700 adjunct faculty members. Adjuncts, along with graduate student and full-time, non-tenured instructors, are referred to as contingent faculty, and make up more than 75 percent of instructors at U.S. higher education institutions, according to a 2014 report by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democrats
The same report states that adjuncts earn an estimated annual median salary of $22,041, meaning many of them “often live on the edge of poverty,” and make less than half the amount of full-time faculty members.
“[O]n most campuses … the majority of the teaching is now done by adjunct and contingent faculty, rather than tenured-track or tenured faculty,” adjunct communications instructor Dr. Louisa Edgerly said.
Contingent faculty also lack many of the benefits offered to tenured instructors, such as job security, career growth and smaller, less varied course loads.
When Seattle University faculty attempted to address these issues with university administrators, the response was less than proactive, according to Edgerly.
The faculty then turned to unionization as a way for contingent instructors to get the same benefits and securities as tenured instructors, and filed a petition for an official vote among campus instructors on the matter to the National Seattle University Students Stand Behind Their Faculty: