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On June 20, the National Labor Relations Board counted Hamline adjunct faculty mail-in votes, revealing a 72 percent majority in favor of unionization with SEIU Local 284.
According to Adjunct Action, a project of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), adjuncts at Hamline University are the first within a Twin Cities private college to form an adjunct faculty union.
Jennifer Beckham, an adjunct English professor at Hamline, said that she was thrilled, but not particularly surprised. She added that once the organizing group knew there would be an election, they remained confident throughout the process.
“It has been heartening to see support from tenured faculty, students, and other staff,” Beckham said.
St. Thomas adjuncts will be the next group to vote with their votes scheduled to be sent out on July 3.
In a statement to the press, David Weiss, an organizing adjunct faculty member in the Religion department at Hamline, said, “I’m confident that our success today will help empower other workers, including adjunct faculty like ourselves at schools like St. Thomas, to change working and learning conditions in higher education.”
Jhon Wlaschin, Ph.D. and adjunct psychology professor at Hamline, St. Thomas, and the University of Minnesota, called today a “historic day” and that he was “happy to be part of the first wave of adjunct unionization in the Twin Cities.”
This was not Wlaschin’s first experience with unions. He noted that he was once part of Local 52 as a film tech in New York. Wlaschin compared this position to being an adjunct professor because both are somewhat freelance and on a project by project basis.
Though he has been more involved in the Hamline unionization movement, Wlaschin said he is confident St. Thomas, another one of his three university employers, will follow Hamline’s lead. Wlaschin noted that he believes the biggest difference between the adjunct votes at these two universities is the fact that St. Thomas has more adjunct faculty members.
Read more about St. Thomas organizers here.
Hamline’s vote comes at the heels of Macalester adjunct organizers’ decision to cancel their vote to unionize on June 2. “It was clear that folks wanted more time to discuss and process,” stated SooJin Pate, Ph.D. and Macalester organizer. Adjuncts at Macalester have to wait six months before they are able to file for another vote to join the SEIU Local 284.
After the celebration, Hamline adjuncts will have to go through some logistical steps and have a union election before they start the negotiation process with the university, according to Beckham.