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Non–tenure-track faculty members at two more private universities have voted to unionize.
At Tulane University, full-time teaching faculty members voted 146 to 29 to unionize, the university said. The new union, Tulane Workers United, is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The votes were counted Tuesday.
After the election, a university official wrote to faculty members that the new union seeks to represent instructors, lecturers, professors of practice and visiting professors in five schools. But the number and types of workers that will be represented isn’t fully clear yet: The official wrote that the university allowed the vote to go forward in a “stipulated election agreement … even though some questions remain concerning who is eligible under federal labor law.” In a separate statement, a Tulane spokesman said “Tulane fully supports the rights of employees to vote on whether they want to be part of a union or not.”
At the University of San Diego, the National Labor Relations Board said the vote to unionize was 169 to 14. The union there is also affiliated with SEIU. The vote, tallied Tuesday, was among both full- and part-time non–tenure-track faculty members in the Catholic institution’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS).
More than 300 faculty members will be represented, according to SEIU Local 721, which they have now joined. “Faculty members in CAS seek better pay, improved job security, more support for professional development and robust worker protections,” the union said.
A spokesperson said in an email that the university, over the past decade, has “made significant efforts to enhance and support the work of our NTT [non–tenure-track] community members, and have prioritized those efforts across the university.”
