Contract faculty at New York University are one step closer to securing a union.
A group of faculty members in full-time, non-tenure track positions are organizing a union affiliated with United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 7902. In early January, the union – known as Contract Faculty United – reached a deal with university administration to hold a fair and neutral union representation election later this winter. Under the agreement, the 950 faculty members who comprise the bargaining unit will vote in an election where they will decide whether CFU-UAW will be their bargaining representative. According to a union official, if the unionization effort succeeds, Contract Faculty United would be the largest union of full-time faculty in non-tenure track positions at any private university in the United States.
Contract faculty hold approximately half of the full-time faculty positions at NYU. They are the only group of faculty at the university without protections either from tenure or from union representation. Adjunct faculty at NYU are already represented by UAW Local 7902.
A flag flies at a building on NYU’s Greenwich Village campus. Photo by Richard Lu via Unsplash.
The organizing campaign at NYU is part of a wave of unionization efforts at campuses across the country. Increasingly, workers are pushing back against universities’ expanding reliance on contract faculty. For faculty, contract positions often mean worsened financial stability, diminished bargaining power, and less influence in university governance compared to tenured positions.
The election agreement builds upon years of organizing by CFU-UAW. Faculty in the Expository Writing Program in NYU’s College of Arts and Sciences began organizing in 2017, and by 2020, a majority of contract faculty at the university had authorized the union to represent them. Last February, the union presented the university with a petition signed by more than 500 faculty demanding that the administration recognize the union. The petition, followed by a series of demonstrations by union supporters, eventually forced the university to agree to an election.
Faculty members I spoke with say that a large part of the election negotiations focused on who should be included in the bargaining unit. “There's a lot of discrepancy between what the administration understands being our positions based on the titles and what they actually entail,” says Benedetta Piantella, an Industry Associate Professor in the Integrated Design & Media program, “so it took a lot of … back and forth to ... educate the university around what those titles actually meant.”
Dibner Library, part of New York University's Brooklyn campus. Photo by Ajay Suresh | CC BY 2.0 DEED
Under precedent established by the Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling in National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University, full-time faculty at private universities are considered managers, and, thus, they are not entitled to the right to organize a union under the National Labor Relations Act. While the Board has since carved out exceptions for some faculty, universities have continued to use the Yeshiva ruling as justification for refusing to recognize faculty unions.
Originally, the administration wanted to exclude from the bargaining unit faculty whose positions include supervisory or managerial duties, such as program advisors or department directors. “For a lot of us, those things are only a minor component of our job, and our primary duties are really teaching,” says Asli Peker, a Clinical Associate Professor in the International Relations program, “Many of us take on those positions, those responsibilities, as service to our programs. And we are not really compensated fairly for the amount of time we often spend on those things.” Peker notes that faculty members who take on service responsibilities – such as advising on hiring or firing decisions – often do not have decisionmaking authority, with committees or administrators having the final say.
Organizers and the NYU administration eventually agreed upon a bargaining unit which includes contract faculty who take on service work for the university in addition to their teaching responsibilities, while establishing a set of criteria that excludes those in primarily managerial or administrative roles. “We've been talking to each other across the university to try and make sure that we've got as large and inclusive and as accurate a bargaining unit as we can,” says Elisabeth Fay, a Clinical Associate Professor in the Expository Writing Program.
Under the agreement, the election will be administered by the American Arbitration Association. By agreeing upon a set of steps to verify majority support for the union, the union’s organizing campaign can bypass the standard process for certifying a union in which organizers would file a petition with the NLRB to hold an election administered by the Board. “I think we would have followed whatever path was available to us to lead us to a union, but we're very happy to be able to come to voluntary agreement with the NYU administration,” Fay says. “So far, the talks have been productive. I hope that’s something that continues into bargaining [for a contract].”
CFU-UAW representatives signed the neutrality and election agreement on January 3rd, 2024. Photo courtesy of CFU-UAW.
Organizers with the union campaign expect to hold the election prior to the university’s spring break in mid-March.
Contract faculty I spoke with believe that the union can win the representation election. “I think we're all really, really excited about the opportunity to finally vote ‘yes’ on our union,” says Benedetta Piantella, “...Collectively, we're confident, especially given sort of the ongoing and constantly growing majority support that we're receiving from contract faculty across all campuses in New York City.”
Elizabeth Fay is optimistic about the election, given the work that the organizing campaign has done to grow support among faculty. At the same time, she is prepared for a fight. “I think we're gonna be facing a lot of the same fears and doubts that any American workplace would probably encounter in a union election like this, "Fay says, “...We're all going to be working really hard to make sure that every single member of our bargaining unit has had a conversation with a colleague about the things that we hope to do with collective bargaining.”
By gaining union recognition, and engaging in collective bargaining with the university, faculty members hope to win fairer pay, more stable working arrangements, and better job security. But for faculty members, the benefits of union membership and collective bargaining go beyond material gains. “What kind of motivates me is the fact that having a more secure position and having more benefits ultimately really benefits our students,” says Benedetta Piantella, “...I really see this as NYU investing in us, so that we can continue to make it the institution that it is, and continue to kind of provide best services to our students.”
Elisabeth Fay notes that the gains often brought by winning new contracts – such as improved benefits and job security – take on additional importance in the university context, because these wins represent an alternative to the status quo, where the administration charges students tens of thousands of dollars in tuition while trying to pay professors as little as possible. “Unions are a way to say, like, ‘It doesn't have to be like this. None of it has to be like this. And in fact, we have to begin doing things differently.’”
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