‘Long overdue.’ Penn State faculty members are in the process of unionizing
Penn State faculty members are in the process of forming a union.
The Penn State Faculty Alliance is forming a union likely for all Penn State faculty, including tenure-line and non-tenure line, and both full and part-time, across all campuses, according to its website, although the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board determines of who is in the final bargaining unit. It will be affiliated with SEIU Local 668, a social service employees union that represents 20,000 workers in Pennsylvania.
The group has started handing out union authorization cards and collecting the signed cards, the second “official” step in the process to unionize, according to its website. Once they have 30% of eligible faculty in support via signed authorization cards, they can file for an election with the PLRB.
If that happens, the PLRB will likely hold a hearing to determine the exact group of faculty eligible to vote, the website states, and after that, a union election will take place. If they win the election, the process to negotiate their first contract will start.
“For now, we must continue talking with our colleagues in order to build strong union support; our goal is to speak with every faculty member across Penn State and build a majority,” the website states. “We will continue to grow our organizing committee and to seek representation from each department/unit on each campus throughout the Commonwealth to the extent possible.”
“Throughout the process we will always act in solidarity with our colleagues, being vocal and taking action on issues as they arise.”
The group said a faculty union is “long overdue” and now is the time to act.
“Over multiple administrations, we have experienced summary changes to our healthcare benefits and premiums, reorganizations of university structures, a hastily launched VSIP, new budget models and processes that have sown confusion and fear throughout our community, and an “othering” of our Commonwealth campuses. What we need instead is stability, transparency, and a guaranteed voice in shared decision-making,” the website states.
It goes on to say that each new university administration has asked for the faculty’s “good will” but there haven’t been any results of that.
“The issues are structural; as such they can only be addressed through structural changes that will come with an empowered faculty. If anything, a faculty union is long overdue. The time to act is now,” the website states.
The public awareness of the unionization efforts comes during a week of massive news at Penn State. Earlier this week, President Neeli Bendapudi announced the university will explore closing several of its commonwealth campuses.
Penn State has more than 7,600 faculty across all campuses, as of the fall 2024 semester, according to Penn State data.
The union site states it will include all groups of faculty partially because of public sector labor precedent. But it goes on to say that regardless, many academic unions that formed in recent years include both tenure-line and contingent faculty because they both share many workplace concerns.
“For example, all faculty have an interest in annual salary increases, comprehensive health insurance coverage, clear and equitable processes for evaluation and promotion, measures to redress gender and racial inequities, safe workspaces, clear and just management of cases related to sexual harassment and assault, and transparency regarding decision-making at the university,” the website states.
“Of course, certain issues remain specific to contingent or tenure-line faculty, which is why our organizing committee and eventual bargaining team will include adjunct, full-time non-tenure-line, and tenure-line faculty, and our contract will include clauses specific to each.”
The website says that as a state-related university, Penn State is actually an outlier for not having a faculty union. Lincoln University, Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh, all state-related schools, have faculty unions. Other Big Ten schools, like Rutgers and Oregon, have a faculty union.
A separate unionization effort is also underway for graduate student workers. Graduate student teaching and research assistants from all colleges and departments across Penn State are trying to unionize with the United Auto Workers.
