Why We Can’t Continue to Make Progress Without a Union

With 33% or more of its faculty non-tenure-track (NTT) in any given year, Wellesley’s proportion of NTTs is much larger than any of its peer institutions. In balancing the budget on this “discount faculty,” Wellesley contradicts its mission as a change-making institution committed to equity and the empowerment of women. 

In 2019, FIP faculty mobilized to demand salary adjustments after starting salaries were lowered during the financial crisis of 2008 and remained unchanged for twelve years. The Administration responded with a ~9% raise in base salaries for FIPs affected by the salary freeze. While we saw this adjustment as a first step towards a larger goal of financial security and structural change, the Administration saw it as a problem solved. In the ensuing years, our vision for change has been met with incremental improvements at best, and silence at worst. This approach costs us time, energy, and earnings. Deliberate slowness may be effective when it comes to policy but not people.

Our most recent efforts to improve FIP salaries has been met with silence. Last year, the FIP Advisory Committee (FIPAC) sent a memo to the Budget Advisory Committee (BAC) to advocate for a benchmarking mechanism to evaluate FIP salaries. A benchmarking mechanism, which was recommended by the Budget Advisory Ad-Hoc Committee (BAC-plus) in a 2019 memo, would prevent the egregious twelve-year salary freeze that the College openly admitted was a mistake. To follow up, several FIPs met with Provost Shennan and shared our proposal, which shows our salaries lagging behind peer institutions when adjusted for cost-of-living. Piper Orton never showed up for the meeting, and the Provost never got back to us. 

Other actions by the Administration last spring indicate that we no longer have leverage, that in the big picture of the College we don’t really matter. In the May 2023 Academic Council meeting, the Provost stated that the FIP salary issue was resolved. In June, the College raised the starting salaries for Assistant Professors to $90,000, or 42% more than the starting salary of $62,500 for  Visiting Lecturers and Instructors in Science Laboratories (ISLs).

The time has come to put an end to the multi-decades long unjust labor practices of the college by taking action to form a union to protect the rights of FIP faculty.

What A Union Can Do For Us

In short, a union gives workers the legal authority to bargain collectively and negotiate the terms of our employment, including salary, benefits, cost of living adjustments, promotion ladders, and grievance procedures. A union is not an outside organization that negotiates for us; we are the union. We elect representatives from our group to negotiate the contract. We vote to ratify the contract. 

Over the past several months, our Organizing Committee has spoken to several unions and to faculty in the Boston area who are unionized. Our colleagues from Harvard, Tufts, Boston University, Barnard, and CUNY enthusiastically support their unions and feel they have changed their lives for the better.