Howard Adjunct Faculty Close To Going On Strike Over Unfair Wage Practices
Howard University adjunct faculty rallied Wednesday (March 16) to call attention to what they say are unfair labor practices at the historically Black university. University Business reports that they’ve threatened to strike on March 23 if negotiations fail.
About 500 faculty and students gathered on campus to support the non-tenured professors whose grievances include low wages and a struggle to teach enough courses to obtain health benefits from the university.
So far, negotiations have stalled between the Howard Teaching Union, represented by Local SIEU 500, which has reportedly issued several demands for the university to meet, and Howard.
The university stated Thursday (March 17) that it has “remained diligent in our engagements with union representation and consistent in our efforts to reach an agreement.”
“Our commitment to a peaceful bargaining process has not changed, and we will continue advancing good faith efforts to reach an agreement with the union and address the needs of adjunct and non-tenure track faculty and the University,” Howard’s statement continued.
There are currently 150 non-tenure-track, full-time teaching faculty and more than 200 adjunct professors on Howard's campus, NPR reported. Many of them vented their frustrations at the rally.
“University leadership has made clear that a better working environment and a better learning environment is unimportant to them,” Cyrus Hampton, Contingent Faculty leader who teaches full-time in the English department, said at the rally.
“They have gone silent. We have been left with little choice. These have been individual fights for far too long. And we have not seen the movement any of us need. So now we all need to come together and get the movement that we require,” Hampton, a Howard alumnus, continued.
In addition to earning low wages, the adjuncts have one-year appointments that are capped at seven years. Consequently, they face job insecurity because they can be “arbitrarily fired at the end of seven-year of teaching, no matter how effective their teaching,” University Business quoted a union statement. Many of them are also forced to work additional jobs to financially support themselves.
Howard said more than 600 non-union faculty received salary increases in January 2022 to meet the median salary of faculty at our peer institutions. There are 1,194 full-time and adjunct faculty at the university.
“As we continue negotiations with the faculty union in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement, we have made proposals for wage increases for union faculty and continue to bargain in good faith,” the university stated.
The adjunct professors are threatening to walk out five months after Howard University students protested what they said were poor housing conditions, including moldy buildings and vermin in the dorms, and a lack of student representation on the Board of Trustees. Some of the students demonstrated by sleeping in tents outside the Blackburn University Center in October 2021. The university and the student protesters reached an agreement in November.
