Metro organizing, where we organize everyone working in higher ed as a geographic unit, like a commute range, lends itself to social events. Boston organizers have started a HELU sponsored metro organizing meet-up. – Editor
From Anne Balay, SEIU Local 509 and HELU Delegate from National Writers Union
Contingent academic workers from across Boston had our second meeting on June 18th. Workers from Wellesley, UMass Boston, Harvard, Bentley, Boston University (BU), and Brandeis were there. Building a “wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast” organization begins with dense, metro-strategy organizing by region or city.
Contingency, or lack of job security, undermines every aspect of workers’ power, and therefore is a top bargaining concern. Reports from locals revealed slow progress.
Wellesley is bargaining after their strike, and the union has agreed to confidential, Bargaining Team-only (BT) sessions. UMass Boston has a Tentative Agreement (TA) they are happy with, which brings the “temp” temps closer to Non-Tenure Track (NTT’s) pay and benefits. Harvard has been bargaining for more than a year, and the illogical term caps have finally been relaxed by admin, though there are still hoops to jump through. Also, people being timed out now won’t be eligible, so will be fired.
BU Full time and Brandeis Part Time are bargaining currently, so they discussed challenges and exchanged ideas. Lesley adjuncts have an action planned soon, and people who live nearby agreed to participate.
The group planned ways to address the difficulties that contingent workers face. We want a wider public to know what contingent faculty working conditions are. Boston is Higher Ed central: if we pilot a program, others can build on it. We agreed to generate a *paper* newsletter – very short half-sheet format, that informs readers who we are and asks for key data points from their jobs: pay per credit hour, length of time to benefits and whether they are free or reduced cost at that point, number of classes to be full time, and what counts as a class. We’ll send these flyers (pdf-d) to everyone, who will print them and post them on every campus we can think of around here. We will compile this data on a website open to all and publish something in the print media about this process.
We imagine the newsletter will appear monthly, and we’ll call it “The Scarlet Letter.” Several people agreed to contact non-teaching academic workers and bring them along next time, since contingency affects all workers. People lingered… the conversation generated a sense of possibility that was hard to let go of…