Santa Clara Faculty File for Unionization

Adjunct faculty and lecturers file with NLRB to request a formal election process

Several adjunct faculty members and lecturers at the university filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on April 23, appealing for an official election process to found a union.

This effort follows several attempts at unionization over the past six years. Members of the Adjunct Faculty and Lecturers Organizing Committee (AFLOC) have been pleading with the university for increased job security since 2017.

“We’re hired on a per-class basis and have to re-apply to teach as often as every year,” said engineering lecturer Andrew Wolfe in a recent public statement. “This makes it hard for some of us to live in the Bay Area, and takes time and energy away from our ability to instruct our students,” he said. 

If the NLRB approves of the AFLOC’s request by May 4, the labor relations board and union representatives would start the process — over the next 30 days — of putting together a formal election. During this time, the university can still attempt to challenge the election process, according to Wolfe.

Acting Co-Provosts Ed Ryan and Kate Morris confirmed that the university received the petition in a message sent to faculty on Tuesday, stating their plans to uphold adjunct faculty and lecturers' right to pursue a vote to unionize. 

“We are grateful this election will be overseen by the labor relations board in accordance with the National Labor Relations Act and will honor the choice our faculty members make,” they wrote in the message.

After a court decision in 2020 ruled that the NLRB had no “jurisdiction over faculty at religious institutions,” AFLOC members requested that the university allow them access to conduct an in-house vote for unionization. 

Despite the attempts to come to a consensus on the election process, no formal agreement was reached by the two parties, which ultimately ended the petition back in May 2021.

Ryan and Morris responded to faculty members' aggravation following the meeting with a follow-up message addressing the election.

“We understand your frustration,” they said in the statement. “Many people on both sides of this issue have worked very hard, in a spirit of good faith and respect, to reach an agreement that would clear the way for an election this term.”

Additional issues prevented a formal agreement, however, and university officials reiterated that this prohibited a final decision on the election. 

“There were all kinds of obstacles that we felt they were putting in the way of a fair election,” Wolfe stated in an interview. 

After a multi-day mediation to resolve differences, Wolfe said that committee members couldn’t come up with a solution that the faculty felt represented a “fair election.” 

At that point, AFLOC members took a step back and decided to work directly with the union to investigate when the Biden Administration would accept a formal petition. 

Waiting for the Biden Administration’s acceptance and tracking down faculty members whose signatures expired from the previous year were the two biggest delays in the AFLOC’s efforts to move forward.

The committee advocates on behalf of more than half of the faculty at Santa Clara who are non-tenure-track. These roles vary between people who are permanent workers and teach full-time and others faculty members who have to re-apply for their jobs every year, with some not knowing if they have secure employment for fall quarter until Sept. 1.

“We want more stability in our jobs, we want better say in what the rules and regulations are. Today it’s really a situation where each department kind of gets to decide what the rules are on their own. And everytime a new department chairman gets elected, which in some cases is every three years, the rules can change, and that’s a hard way to work,” said Wolfe. 

According to the committee’s website, increases in Bay Area housing prices have pushed some faculty members into poverty and homelessness. 

“Some of the lowest paid faculty are not paid a living wage, or haven’t been in the past. We end up hearing stories of people who would come in here and teach classes every day, but they were really just couch surfing. They couldn’t afford a place to live and it’s tragic,” Wolfe said. 

The AFLOC has seen some progress on this front in the short term, however. The provost office has increased wages for some of the lowest paid faculty members, but has yet to commit to keeping people at a “reasonable standard of living,” said Wolfe. “That’s the next step.”

Despite committing for years to acknowledge and address the various needs of all faculty members through collaborative governance, the university has hired Littler Mendelson P.C. to assist with this process — a law firm well known for their various union-busting efforts with notable clients like Starbucks, Amazon and Apple.

“Those lawyers will advise [the university] to do everything that’s legal to try to break this up, or delay it or stop it,” Wolfe speculated.

For many faculty and community members at Santa Clara, it’s more of a question about what's ethical — not just what’s legal. 

The university referred to Ryan and Morris’ Tuesday statement when asked for a comment from The Santa Clara. They provided no additional comment regarding Littler Mendelson’s union-busting history. 

“We need this union,” said English department lecturer, Maggie Levantovskaya in a public statement. “Despite the university’s stated commitment to social justice, we’ve seen huge challenges in our workplace. College instructors are workers and all workers need unions.”

Wolfe believes the challenges facing lectures are profound. “We have too many faculty who are completely stressed out by low pay, vague job rules, no job security and it’s hard for them to keep doing their best when they’re in that situation.”

“We think that they can be better professors if they have job security and reasonable pay,” he said.