By Michelle Lacey, AAUP Louisiana
On the afternoon of May 1, 2026, a group of Tulane faculty, staff, and affiliates gathered in the pouring rain on Poydras Street in downtown New Orleans, eagerly awaiting the outcome of negotiations that had been ongoing since the fall of 2024. When a representative emerged, they finally heard an announcement that many had never believed possible: the university administration agreed to the terms of a contract with Tulane Workers United, the first union to ever represent higher education faculty in the state of Louisiana.
The journey towards this contract began three years earlier, when representatives from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) started speaking with select faculty about the possibility of organizing non-tenure-track faculty at Tulane. One of their first recruits was Christopher Oliver, a Senior Professor of Practice in Sociology and Environmental Studies who had previously worked as an organizer with AFT at Michigan State University. Others were new to organizing but excited about the possibility, such as Casey Beck, a Professor of Practice in Digital Media Practices: “It’s not like I went around talking about forming a union, but I came from the California state system. I had seen a very high-functioning union, even as an adjunct. So I was part of this powerful union and saw what it did. And, I mean, the first day I came [to Tulane], I said we need to start the union. It was very clear from day one.”
Oliver, Beck, and others gradually began organizing their non-tenure-track colleagues across Tulane’s Uptown Campus, which includes the schools of Liberal Arts, Science and Engineering, Architecture, Business, and Professional Advancement. But as the 2024 presidential election approached, a new sense of urgency set in. According to Oliver, “Initially, we were going to organize all of the non-tenure track faculty, full-time and part-time. And at some point, we decided we were just going to do the full-time. And part of it was because the organizer was telling us legally that if Biden lost the election, there would be a challenge probably to us as full-time [faculty]. They may try to push us in with the tenure track. And the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] might actually follow that…. And so that’s why we decided to do it more quickly.” This led to a decision to part ways with AFT and align with Workers United in the spring of 2024. The new partnership resulted in the formation of Tulane Workers United (TWU), and an election was held in June 2024 with 83% of 175 faculty voting in favor of the union.
Next came the hard work of negotiating, which began in earnest in November 2024. Recognizing that teaching schedules would impact the availability of faculty to attend bargaining sessions during regular working hours, TWU trained over 80 faculty members to be part of the bargaining team. The process was long and challenging, with salary terms proving to be the most difficult issue to resolve. Another highly contested issue was language regarding academic freedom, which the Tulane administration did not want to encode in a legally binding contract. But in the end TWU prevailed, with its members guaranteed the same protections afforded to tenure-track faculty. Other provisions included in the contract include guaranteed minimum salaries with annual increases, clear and consistent grievance and arbitration procedures, and funds for professional development. Looking back on the process, Beck, who is now the inaugural president of TWU, said, “I don’t think there’s a single member who doesn’t want to change something in the contract, but I think we’re all really proud that under Trump’s administration, we won our first contract and held Tulane to account.”
Tulane began its first semester as a union campus this August. Unsurprisingly, there have been some growing pains. Speaking about compliance on the part of the administration, Oliver said, “…it’s getting people to understand the kind of muscle memory thing for the use of the contract. …There are some things that are happening that we’re not even sure about whether they’re grievances or not. We’re trying to figure that out.” Beck also noted that there is a tendency for the Tulane administration to associate the union with any emerging problems on campus: “I heard that an anti-union person at the business school said, ‘We could run out of pens and they would blame the union.’ So I think people know that it’s ridiculous.”
In the meantime, other groups of Tulane employees have joined the fight for organized labor. Tulane librarians, also under Workers United, successfully won an election for union recognition on August 20, 2025 and are in the process of bargaining for their first contract. More recently, Tulane’s administrative, clerical, and operations staff filed for recognition with the National Labor Relations Board on September 30, 2026. And Tulane’s AAUP chapter, which advocates for tenure-track faculty, has recently been awarded a grant from the national AAUP to expand its organizing efforts. Reflecting on what all of this means for Tulane, Beck stated, “At a certain point [the administration] can’t be anti-union because we will have organized everyone.”