Non-tenured faculty at Skidmore College are continuing to push for a labor agreement as negotiations drag on.
Last year, non-tenured faculty members at the private college in Saratoga Springs voted to unionize with SEIU Local200United.
After another negotiation session earlier this month, Skidmore Faculty Forward organizing committee member Professor Ruth McAdams says union members want to see faster progress toward a contract.
“I do think that at the past session there was a subtle but palpable increase in tension. I think that we are beginning to grow frustrated with their slow pace of response. And not just the slow pace, but sort of the failure to provide kind of any cogent justification for their ongoing insistence upon policies that we’ve argued over and over are very difficult and problematic for us,” said McAdams.
McAdams says Skidmore’s use of one-to-three-year contracts to fill long-term instructional needs, what the union calls “serial terminal contracts,” is one example from recent negotiations.
“Finally, the college is at least nominally saying, ‘we’d like to end that practice too, we’d like that people who fill long-term needs should have a path to have more security over time.’ And we were, of course, delighted to hear this after years and years, I can just speak from personal experience I was trying to draw attention to this problem in 2018. So, to hear the college say at least nominally that they agree was wonderful. But now, we’re sort of haggling over the number of years that is too many years to be strung along on these perennially insecure contracts,” said McAdams.
McAdams says the union is seeking greater job security in the form of a uniform three-tier promotional structure for all non-tenure track faculty.
Non-tenured Artists-and-Writers-in-Residence, for example, are one group of NTT faculty that have access to a third-promotional tier.
“So, we have proposed consistency and transparency across categories of NTT faculty and that’s what motivated our proposal and not only have they repeatedly rejected it, but they’ve never really provided a reason why it wouldn’t work. They just sort of are saying things like, ‘well, we don’t think it’s suitable,’ and other kind of nothing answers there. So, that’s been kind of frustrating,” said McAdams.
Skidmore’s counterproposal included eliminating the third tier from the Artists-and-Writers-in-Residence.
SEIU spokesperson Sean Collins says this would drive faculty away and hurt students.
“This opportunity for a third promotional tier is a good thing that should be extended to all the teaching faculty. And thus far the college has been resistant to that for reasons that aren’t super clear to us. They raised the concern that it makes them more proximate to tenure-track faculty. We dispute that characterization,” said Collins.
In a statement to WAMC, Skidmore said it could not comment on specific proposals, adding the school is committed to good faith negotiations with the union.
Collins acknowledges that first contracts take time.
“We’ve made a lot of progress. We have 17, 18 tentative agreements on various articles of the agreement. The college has agreed to just-cause as the disciplinary standard. They’ve agreed to provide office space not just for full-time faculty but for part-time faculty. And even agreed to one of the big points of contention when we were organizing is the college’s desire to split the two groups, the full-time and part-time faculty, into two separate bargaining units. And they’ve agreed to one contract that will cover both bargaining units,” said Collins.
Union representatives remain optimistic that a collective bargaining agreement can be reached before the start of the fall semester.
The next negotiation session is scheduled for June 5th.
By way of disclosure, WAMC operates its Southern Adirondack News Bureau on the Skidmore College campus.