by Faith Ericson, delegate to HELU from the Minnesota Inter-Faculty Organization (IFO)
After serving in two educational unions, I have seen real work to improve conditions for contingent faculty. My roles have included executive committee service, contingent faculty committee work, bargaining, and legislation.
One obstacle is encouraging contingent faculty involvement. Not because unions do not care, or contingent faculty do not care. If that were the explanation, the solution would be easier: offer incentives, tell heartfelt stories, and show what the union can offer.
The truth is elsewhere. Most unions were not built with contingent faculty at the center, so they often struggle to make room for them. To understand why contingent faculty remain outside the union, we have to look where structure and culture meet: governance, bargaining, information flow, and the invisible norms that shape who feels able to enter, speak, and stay.
In many unions contingent faculty can serve in some governance roles. That representation matters and shows other contingent faculty the union is invested in them as leaders. But formal inclusion does not always mean meaningful access. Meeting times may fall during the day, when many contingent faculty are piecing together course loads, commuting, or working other jobs. Contingent faculty leaders may not have access to current lists, or those lists may be incomplete or outdated. Governance documents may include old eligibility requirements that unintentionally exclude contingent faculty from all roles or the highest leadership positions. Even when procedures can be changed, the process may be difficult for people kept outside the system. These barriers become cultural when everyone treats them as normal: meetings happen when they happen, information moves through familiar channels, eligibility rules remain untouched, and participation is easiest for those who already know how the union works.
Bargaining is another place where priorities become material. If contingent faculty are not present when proposals are developed, debated, ranked, and defended, their working conditions can remain peripheral even when the union broadly supports them. In some unions, the same members are re-elected or reappointed each round, and contingent faculty may not have had the time, access, or opportunity to become known to local leaders. Their absence may be mistaken for lack of interest, when it may actually reflect lack of access.
Creating a designated place for contingent faculty on a bargaining team can be vitally important. Even at the very low end, contingent faculty might make up 20 percent of current membership, or 45 percent of potential membership, and still have no representation on the bargaining team. It affects what gets raised, what gets written into proposals, and what becomes enforceable in the contract. Over time, those omissions harden into the very structures contingent faculty are later asked to organize within.
Once contingent faculty are on the team, the question is whether their issues can actually be heard. If there are only one or two contingent faculty members on a large team without allies, they can be treated as difficult, narrow, or disruptive when they repeatedly raise contingent faculty concerns. They may feel pressure to decide which issues are “worth” the political capital, and which must be softened or set aside to preserve team dynamics. Inclusion requires rethinking not only who sits at the table, but how the table decides what matters.
Information flow is another structural problem. When unions do not have reliable ways to keep track of contingent faculty, invite them into the work, or bring them into the rooms where decisions are made, contingent faculty miss more than announcements. They miss context: the vocabulary, history, relationships, and assumptions that allow people to act effectively. In my union, knowing the difference between “concurrent enrollment,” “dual credentials,” and “seat sharing” can have big implications, especially for contingent faculty. But it can be hard to admit you are missing that context when everyone else seems to already know it.
Here, I want to pause and be clear: I do not believe contingent faculty are usually excluded out of bad will. More often, the problem is a misunderstanding of bandwidth, investment, and what it actually takes for contingent faculty to see themselves as effective participants in the union. Information being technically available is not enough. They need pathways into the work, and access to the knowledge, relationships, and processes that allow people to act.
Finally, invisible norms are woven into the structure of many unions. Contingent faculty who become early leaders may be described as “committed” or “brave,” but also as “difficult,” “too intense,” or “wild cards.” Many may not feel free to speak openly because their employment is precarious. There is little protection for many of us. I am hired semester to semester and can simply not be rehired. Speaking up can feel like a professional risk.
This tension shapes what it means to be a good union member or steward. Too often, contingent faculty are asked to wait their turn while raises for all take center stage, even when targeted changes could make a lasting difference. And when they raise concerns about how the union itself functions, they may be told to “fight the employer, not the union,” as though internal critique is a threat to solidarity rather than one of the ways solidarity becomes real. It can be hard to honor solidarity while also fighting for health insurance, enough classes, enough income to pay rent, and some assurance that we will still have work next semester.
Unions weaken themselves when a significant portion of current and potential membership is sidelined. Faculty are facing threats to academic freedom, the erosion of tenure, and standardization that could leave faculty with less say over curriculum. The idea that many tenured faculty could someday experience conditions closer to contingency is not far-fetched. Strengthening contingent faculty participation strengthens tenure, academic freedom, and intellectual property for everyone.
Lack of engagement is not laziness, lack of investment, or lack of devoted organizers. It is a structural design flaw that has seeped into union culture. Most importantly, it can be changed. Real seats for contingent faculty must come with information, support, influence, and respect. Bringing contingent faculty into the union is not asking them to show up. It requires building a union where their participation is possible, their leadership is expected, and their concerns are central.