Current Leadership

President

Susan Ladd, adjunct instructor in Journalism, School of Communication. sladd2@elon.edu susan.ladd@gmail.com

How we got here

In 2018, adjuncts at Elon were struggling with the problems adjuncts face everywhere – low pay, no job security, limited or no access to health coverage, and limited opportunities to advance as teacher/scholars.

Adjuncts at nearby Duke University had turned to Faculty Forward, the SEIU organizing group for educational institutions, to improve their working conditions. After voting in their union and ratifying their first contract in 2017, Duke adjuncts had received a pay raise, longer contracts and access to professional development funds.

The first discussions between Elon adjuncts and members of Faculty Forward began early in 2018. After building support among their peers, adjunct organizers filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board on Nov. 29, 2018, to hold a vote on unionization.

The response from the university was simple and adamant: no union. The administration argued (as Duke University had in its unsuccessful opposition to a union) that Elon had shared governance through the Academic Council, and that was the place where any concerns should be addressed. The administration said that bringing in a union would be detrimental and “not the Elon way.”

The university also filed an objection to the vote, saying that all non-tenure track faculty were managerial, that some categories of non-tenure track employees should be excluded from the vote, and that any election should be held on-site instead of by mail-in to the NLRB.

Adjunct organizers agreed to exclude continuing track and lecture track faculty from the bargaining unit, as those faculty members did have some managerial responsibilities. The modified petition was submitted, but Elon continued to file objections, leading to a hearing at the NLRB office in Winston-Salem Dec. 7, 2018. The NLRB ruled in favor of the adjuncts, and the election ballots went out on February 19, 2019.

The union effort had the support of the Academic Council, the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), an active student group (Boldy Elon Solidarity Collective) and an alumni group. Tenured and tenure-track faculty were broadly supportive as well. 

The union was voted in by an overwhelming majority, 112-68, in March 2019.

A week later, the university filed an objection, saying the election was not free and fair, claiming “SEIU organizers posing as students to gain access to faculty conversations, threatening the integrity of the election by promising ballots only to those who favored the union, coercing faculty members into supporting the SEIU with false information, and undermining the university’s representative and transparent shared governance system.’”

The NLRB held a hearing in April and overruled the university’s objections on May 15, 2019. The university then appealed that decision to the regional office of the NLRB in Atlanta. The NLRB certified the union Sept. 3, 2019, but the university announced its intention to appeal the certification to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C.

The Request for Review filed by the university on Sept. 17, 2019, also named 12 tenure-track professors who had not demonstrated “undivided loyalty” to the university with their public support of the unionization effort.

On Friday, October 4, a regularly scheduled Faculty Town Hall was dominated by a lengthy discussion of the appropriateness of calling out tenure-track faculty by name in a public document for their union support. After significant blowback, the section on the disloyalty of tenure-track professors was removed Dec. 4.

At a rally on campus the following day, John Kernodle III, whose family name already graced two buildings on campus, announced that the Kernodle family would halt all contributions to the university until it recognized the Elon Faculty Union.

The COVID-19 pandemic that began a month later would change the game. To make up for losses incurred when classes went online in Spring semester, the university ranked its budget-cutting priorities, with the employment of adjuncts ranked well below providing a promised 2 percent raise to permanent faculty.

The university used the opportunity to reduce its adjunct faculty, including two members of the union organizing committee. Some long-term adjuncts active with the union were replaced with new adjuncts or those with less experience and seniority.

It would be February 2021 before the National Labor Relations Board unanimously voted in our favor, fully certified our union, and informed the administration of its obligation to negotiate. 

When contract negotiations began nearly 2 years after the union vote, many early organizers were no longer there. The remaining founders and others who joined in the interim hammered out a contract with the administration that included pay raises, increased job security, a professional development fund, and expanded roles for adjuncts, such as mentoring.

That contract went into effect at the beginning of the semester in Fall 2022.

But the university’s war of attrition had reduced the ranks of adjuncts and whittled down the number of union memberships. For the last two years, the leaders of the union have worked to rebuild membership and reenergize members.

As we enter bargaining for our second contract, it is more important than ever to build our strength and numbers to keep improving working conditions for all adjuncts.

Vice President

Mark Iwinski, adjunct assistant professor of Art. miwinski@elon.edu, iwinski.mark@gmail.com