The hundred-year anniversary of Skidmore College coincides with a moment of substantial change. In spring of 2022, the College community was made aware of the Non-Tenure Track (NTT) faculty union efforts when the union published an open letter on the Skidmore News website. Students crowded in support, conducting and signing their own open letter soon after.
This fall semester, the process of union legitimization reaches its final stages. The NTT faculty union election began on September 12th and will conclude on the 26th. It is increasingly important for students, parents, faculty, and prospective students to understand what a union is, what the non-tenure track is, and what this may mean for the future of Skidmore College.
NTT employees disseminate information through a website called Skidmore Faculty Forward, where one can learn about which professors are involved, the coverage they have received, and their goals for the NTT faculty; it is a platform for them to share their message. The Skidmore College website contains more general information overall on union rules and the events that have led up to the current union election at Skidmore.
The process for forming a union has multiple stages described by the Skidmore Faculty Forward webpage: organizing, commitment, public announcement and response, filing for an election, voting, negotiating, and signing a contract. If successful, Skidmore’s NTT faculty would become members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 200United, a union network in the northeast that strives for labor rights concerning healthcare benefits, wages, and more.
Ruth McAdams, Teaching Professor of English at Skidmore for the past six years, has been a vocal advocate for NTT faculty and provided some comments about the upcoming election. Michael Orr, Dean of Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs, has also commented on the election on behalf of the Skidmore College administration.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jacob Smith: What is a union overall and what is a union to you, in particular?
Ruth McAdams: A union is a structure that allows workers to come together and bargain collectively with their employer. This is a good strategy for situations in which the workers don’t have a lot of power and agency. Unions, at large, are ways for workers to band together to achieve better working conditions, higher pay, and other good workplace benefits that are important to their lives and livelihoods.
McAdams describes the goals of this particular union as “bread and butter issues,” things relating to pay and precarity: the condition of constantly being insecure in a job. This precarity, she shares, is due to her being on short terminal contracts with no mechanism for renewal.
Smith: What brought you to SEIU? What has the support that they’ve given you all thus far been like?
McAdams: We chose SEIU because they represent contingent faculty at several area colleges, private small colleges like Skidmore.
McAdams makes it clear that SEIU’s involvement is limited – professors in the union are “calling the shots,” and SEIU is helping them do so.
Smith: What differentiates tenure track faculty from non-tenure track faculty?
Orr: We have a number of different types of faculty within the [NTT] group, but what unites them all is that they’re not on what we call the “tenure track.” The tenure track is the process whereby faculty are appointed the Assistant Professor rank. Tenured faculty [at Skidmore]have had six years at the College, and have developed a strong portfolio demonstrating teaching excellence, strong scholarship or creative endeavors, and a patent of contributions to the running of the institution through service.
Orr explains that the faculty member's department conducts a thorough review with experts outside of [Skidmore] in order to determine whether a faculty member will be awarded tenure. If the faculty member is not granted this privilege, they are asked to leave the college by rule. If they are awarded tenure, they are guaranteed to be employed by the College, and with academic freedom, until they choose to leave.
When asked about the distinctions between NTT faculty and those on the tenured track, McAdams states that the expectations of the NTT faculty are highly varied from member to member. The Skidmore Faculty Forward website includes testimonies from faculty that state that many of them engage in similar or as much research and service as their tenured colleagues.
McAdams: In general, to the claim that NTT faculty and TT faculty have different job responsibilities and that [those responsibilities] justify these dramatic salary disparities, I would say that the organizers are very skeptical of that claim.
McAdams further expressed her wishes to work with the College to establish clearer criteria for their employees on the NTT, “[the NTT union organizers] would like to have a much longer conversation with the administration about how that works in practice, whether it’s justified, etcetera.”
Smith: When did you realize that starting a union was necessary?
McAdams: There were several eureka moments for me. For a lot of people, the pandemic was a turning point, because it made a lot of people [in general] rethink their relationship to work in their lives. The College asked a tremendous amount from its faculty… and it made certain provisions for the faculty who were on the tenure track to allow them to extend their tenure clocks for more time to produce their scholarship, keep up and keep ahead. And none of those provisions were given to NTT faculty, so the College let go a huge amount of NTT faculty– as it does every year– and made no provision for the way that [COVID-19] implicated everything.
Smith: And how would you say that the pandemic furthered the need for this movement and/or delayed these efforts?
McAdams: I would say that it was hard to reach people during the pandemic, so initially the pandemic slowed our organizing. I think it was a hindrance, but I think that we came out of the pandemic with a real sense of frustration about the way that our workplace was operating. And I think you'll see that as far as the big gains in the union movement all through the summer 2020. I’m sure you’ve heard about what’s happening at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s… and Skidmore is a workplace too, and so I’m really moved to be a part of a larger movement.
Smith: How have the impacts of the current economic recession and COVID-19 virus affected any efforts to meet these needs?
Orr: In terms of the financial impact of COVID-19 on the College, the College has weathered it extremely well. We’re very much assisted by the government [and its COVID-19 relief programs]. In general, the financial situation has been very promising which is one of the reasons why we were in fact able to make this compensation improvement effort last year.
Orr did mention that because of the pandemic’s spontaneous emergence, some of the concerns from the NTT faculty weren’t met as soon as they had hoped.
Smith: Where do you see inconsistencies in the way that unions are being described on the College’s website from the way that the NTT faculty bargaining unit wants them to be?
McAdams: The College’s website is engaged in some anti-union strategies that are very concerning. One is that they are stoking fear of change… to divide the NTT faculty that have decent working conditions and pay from those that absolutely don’t– to try and convince those that have slightly better pay and working conditions that if there is a union they will lose those benefits. It’s not going to happen.
She states that the NTT faculty members who are treated well with decent conditions and those on the committee want those to either go unchanged or continue to improve. She hopes to make the conditions for those who aren’t treated “as well” better than they are currently.
Orr elaborated on some of the wording on the College’s web page. He described the College’s motivations as making the public aware of the union, and what it means for Skidmore to state that they aren’t pro- or anti-union.
Orr: In our position, we’re neither pro-union or anti-union, meaning that as an institution we’re not advocating for a particular outcome from the election. We certainly fully support the right of employees who are eligible to organize to do so and want to follow up with those faculty who are affected by the unionization interest. If the majority of those vote in favor of the union, then we will enter into the good faith negotiating process that is called for, absolutely. If on the other hand, the majority of those voting elect not to pursue a union, we have an agenda of concerns that we are already aware of that we will continue to move forward with.
Smith: What, if any, are the former or current initiatives to improve terms and conditions of employment at Skidmore for the faculty?
Orr: This past academic year (2021-2022), we spent much of the year working with the faculty advising committee working on a compensation study focusing on all faculty (NTT and TT). That process was launched the previous May (2020); May of 2021 is when we announced we would do this study. We had both TT and NTT faculty [working] on the advisory committee. Just after the committee made its recommendations, that is when we became aware that there was an interest in unionization. But as a result of that compensation study, we’ve made a number of significant adjustments in compensation for faculty, particularly for NTT faculty.
Smith: What would you say to the students who have shown support for the union and who may be impacted by the decisions made?
McAdams: I was really moved by the students' letter. Our working conditions are your learning conditions. There’s a point at which the extreme financial stress that some of the NTT faculty at Skidmore are living under eventually gets in the way of our being fully committed. NTT faculty are incredibly dedicated teachers who work heroically to teach their students; but if we can’t pay our rent, it gets harder. We’re doing this because we believe that these kinds of workplace improvement for us will impact you all.
McAdams gave a specific example of how it has affected her students in the past — she felt as if she had to deny a First Year student her advising for their college career in the English major because she had no idea if she would be working at Skidmore for the four years of the student’s career. “[The college] won’t remotely say if you do a good job, your contract will be renewed. These terminal contracts come to an end and you’re given a new contract if your contract chair approves... it’s really hard to see your future at Skidmore and your future working with these students, when the College won’t give you any reason to expect that.”
Smith: What would you say to be the philosophies of Skidmore College in relation to learning and education?
Orr: Skidmore’s entire reasoning for being is the education of an undergraduate audience and that’s what we’re committed to: we want to bring the best and strongest faculty, provide the best support and services, whether it be on the academic front or in residential side and student life. Our commitment to the education experience, the mission of the College, drives the decision making that we do.
Smith: Who is eligible to vote on NTT faculty unionization?
McAdams: All NTT faculty are eligible to vote. We have been split into two groups: the full-time faculty and the part-time faculty. So there are two elections going on. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is sending the votes to our houses. We fill them out and [mail] return them. They will be counted on the 27th. It’s a secret process, no one will ever know how you voted.
Orr and McAdams both gave final comments on their trajectory, and whether the decision will be in favor of the union:
McAdams: This has been one of the most meaningful things I have ever done. Getting to know my colleagues better than I did before has been really moving. I do think we’re going to win, and when we do, we will set up a bargaining committee to begin bargaining with the College collectively. The group will be diverse, will represent people from different walks of life, different departments, different types of contracts, different backgrounds to try and make sure that the collective bargaining agreement makes improvements for everyone.
McAdams concluded by saying “For a lot of the most vulnerable people, I think we’re going to see big improvements. My focus as an organizer has always been about not raising the ceiling on NTT working conditions, but raising the floor. The College’s reliance on NTT faculty is not going away, and the activism of NTT isn’t going away either. The College really needs to deal with this issue in an ethical and fair way and I hope the NTT faculty unionization will bring that.”
Orr: Regardless of the results, our NTT faculty are essential for realizing the mission of the College. We will continue to support, value, and do whatever we can to support our NTT faculty, because as it is true to all of our faculty, it is essential to realizing our mission. I think the idea that we’re an educational community that is dedicated to ensuring the success of our students will not change regardless of the outcome of the election.
The Non-Tenure Track faculty unionization election will conclude in less than a week. Whether the vote approves the union or not, it is safe to say that these labor efforts are going to be in the conversation indefinitely, a reality that will affect the entire community, hopefully for the better.