From Joe Ramsey (Chair, HELU Contingency Task Force; Delegate from FSU/MTA and HELU Steering Committee)
Our March 16 zoom event embodied HELU’s coast-to-coast and wall-to-wall aspirations, with speakers from across the country representing higher educators across ranks, from tenured and tenure-track faculty to graduate students, adjunct and full-time contingent faculty. Seventy event participants hailed from over a dozen US states (including MA, AZ, NY, PA, NY, NJ, CA, OR, IL, FL, MN, and NC), and following a panel, stayed late on a Sunday night to participate in member-driven break-out sessions and further group discussion.
The discussion represented a wide variety of union structures and experiences, in HELU and beyond: from same-rank-only bargaining units, such as the Boston University Graduate Workers Union (BUGWU) who recently waged a seven-month strike, to the United University Professions (UUP)’s 40,000 membership in the SUNY system, spanning staff and faculty at universities as well as hospitals.
Spirited exchanges made clear that unions may differ in terms of how responsive they’ve been to precarious faculty concerns. Justine Hecht (United Campus Workers-Arizona), detailed how the contrast between two union approaches made the difference between losing and saving their very own teaching job at Maricopa Community College after anti-“woke” forces came to delegitimize degrees in Justice Studies. Inspired by Civil Rights organizer Ella Baker, UCW’s participatory democracy helped Justine creatively confront emerging threats.
Speakers made clear how union democracy can mean more than ‘one person one vote,’ or simply having formal elections. Anne Balay (SEIU 509) defined union democracy as a matter of cultivating active and meaningful member involvement in union decision-making, something that requires reaching places and supporting spaces where workers feel comfortable to participate; only then can they tell organizers and leaders what they really think. A typical union mass meeting, she argued, though formally open to participation, can in practice be far from welcoming; members can be intimidated by perceived majority sentiment or leadership momentum. Anne also made the case for union staff learning from rank-and-file workers—even or especially when it goes against reigning union “common sense.” Doing so, she underlined, was key to the success of the BU grad student strike.
Faith Ericson (MSCF & IFO) defined democracy as majority rule, with protections for minorities, including marginalized groups like contingent faculty, who, though a large plurality or even a majority at most campuses, often are seriously under-represented in union leadership and on bargaining teams. She further underscored the way that the heavy teaching loads of many contingents make it hard for them to be as involved in union efforts as they otherwise might. Do their schedules allow them to make the meeting? Does the union survey get lost in their flooded in-boxes? Speakers generally addressed the challenge of cultivating active participation from vulnerable groups within unions (from LGBTQ+ folks, to people of color, to international student workers, to adjuncts), and detailed efforts to prioritize the precarious within the broader union mix.
Equally important was Bret Benjamin’s call for union leaders to make efforts to represent the whole picture to its particular members, helping workers confined to one dimension of the workplace to see how their labor and their interests relate and connect to others. This, he emphasized, is crucial for creating solidarity not only across faculty ranks but between faculty and staff ranks as well.
While airing plenty of contingent faculty concerns, our CTF event returned to a fundamental point: that the need for union democracy is based in the need to build union power for *all* workers (not only the most marginalized). While increasing fairness and justice internally is crucial—and the inequities that exist often glaring—achieving maximal inclusion and involvement from the contingent faculty majority, now over 70% of all higher ed faculty, is crucial if Full-time/Tenure-Track professors themselves are going to build the workplace power needed to defend higher education. How can a direct action or a strike succeed, if only 30% or so of the actually existing professoriate is on board? And how can we organize public outrage in the face of threats to fire established tenured faculty, if letting educators go for no reason at all has been normalized via everyday non-renewals for tenure-excluded colleagues?
In this dangerous moment when more and more higher ed workers (staff and grads as well as faculty) are finding once-secure positions—and even entire academic programs—on the chopping block, this lesson is crucial. To defend rights to tenure—including job security, just cause, and academic freedom—for some, we must fight to extend these rights for all.
Finally, it was clear from our CTF event—from panel speakers but also our many thoughtful event participants and our six thematic break-out sessions—that the power of union democracy is not just in the way it helps build union numbers, but also how it can generate new knowledge—bottom-up strategic wisdom that can empower our unions and our movement. The most precarious workers among us often have valuable contributions to make: a key part of the whole that too often gets lost if we don’t actively seek it out. HELU’s Contingency Task Force welcomes you and your ideas as well. For more information and a recording of the March 16 event, contact Joe at jgramsey@gmail.com.