Adjunct faculty at New York University announced an agreement Thursday between their union, Adjuncts Come Together-United Automobile Workers, and NYU administration to hold a union election.
The election, which will be supervised by the National Labor Relations Board, will provide faculty with the opportunity to unionize. The NLRB will mail ballots to eligible voters on May 17.
To be eligible to vote in the election, NYU adjunct faculty will need 40 contact hours of classroom instruction in an academic year or 75 contact hours of individualized instruction in a semester.
“The ability of our union to settle this election process quickly is very impressive,” said Martha Bordman, and adjunct professor at NYU’s American Language Institute. “We are seeing the results — even sooner than we thought possible.”
Adjuncts and part-time instructors at NYU comprise more than 70 percent of the approximately 5,600 faculty members.
The UAW and NYU settled the first contract between a private university and a graduate employee union in January, which gained the right for graduate teaching and research assistants at private universities to join and form unions.
The UAW represents over 15,000 teaching staff at universities nationwide.
-Yale Daily News