A union is an organization of workers who join together and work as a team to bargain for salary, benefits, and working conditions. A union is also able to enforce the collective bargaining agreement.

United Academics of Northwestern University seeks to represent non-tenure eligible (NTE) teaching faculty of all ranks and adjuncts across the six undergraduate-serving schools on the Evanston campus.

In the National Labor Relations Board vs. Yeshiva University (1980) decision, the Supreme Court ruled that tenure-line faculty at private universities are considered “managerial employees” because they help to govern the institution. This decision prohibits tenure-line faculty at Northwestern from organizing.

We do. The union is not an outside group that shows up and tells faculty what to prioritize, it’s teaching faculty at this university, organized to bargain collectively instead of individually. We will set the priorities through surveys, meetings, and an elected bargaining team made up of faculty from across the unit, including adjunct, part-time, and full-time colleagues. That team negotiates directly with the administration, but the demands they bring to the table come from what we all say matters most.

Ten years ago, non-tenure and adjunct faculty voted not to unionize by a very narrow margin. Since then, we’ve lived through years without raises, austerity measures because of financial mismanagement, the suspension of retirement contributions, the erosion of benefits, and threats to academic freedom. The issues that drove the first unionization effort remain unaddressed, including disparities in pay, salary compression and inversion, and lack of transparency in promotion and renewal. Teaching faculty remain without a meaningful voice in the conditions impacting our own work and our students’ education.

It’s the duty of a union to represent the interests of its members, and the bargaining team representing NTE faculty will surely propose raises for everyone. Faculty unions at other universities have negotiated across-the-board raises, minimum salary floors, and compression adjustments. 

For pay and benefits to be slashed, the administration would have to choose to propose that in bargaining, our bargaining team would have to agree, and faculty would have to ratify such a contract. Without a union, admin could choose to do so at any time and faculty would have no legal check on that power. Indeed, the administration unilaterally suspended retirement benefit payments during COVID.

Currently, the Faculty Senate and Assembly are the bodies through which faculty participate in shared governance of the university. Their influence is limited to making recommendations and passing resolutions, which the administration and Board of Trustees are free to ignore. A union contract is a legally enforceable agreement between the NTE faculty and the administration. Once it is agreed upon, the administration is compelled to follow through, regardless of changes to the economic outlook or pressure from the government.

Right now these processes vary by department and can be unclear or not followed. NTE faculty, in particular, are at the mercy of teaching evaluations, which often display gender and racial bias. A contract can establish defined criteria and timelines for reappointment and promotion, and a transparent process for how decisions get made. Depending on what language faculty and administrators agree to in bargaining, this may or may not guarantee any individual outcome, but it could guarantee a knowable process and recourse to make sure it’s applied consistently. Rather than complicate reappointment and promotion, clarity around the process could make it more straightforward.

Academic freedom protections currently exist mostly as language in the faculty handbook. A union contract puts academic freedom language into a legally binding agreement that can’t be changed without bargaining. This can include a defined process the university must follow before disciplining or dismissing a faculty member over course content, teaching methods, or research findings, so that faculty aren’t left exposed to unilateral action in response to outside pressure or complaints about their teaching or research.

Excellent teaching is integral to the university’s mission. Improving pay, benefits, and working conditions for NTE faculty can help ensure continuity of instructional experience, appropriate class sizes, and academic freedom protections.

A group of faculty from departments across all six undergraduate colleges at Northwestern have been working together for the last 24 months. You may have talked to one of us!

The Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) is a union with over 100,000 members and 200 local chapters in K–12 schools, colleges, and universities across Illinois. IFT has supported faculty organizers at Northwestern with advice, strategy, and outreach. IFT is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). The AFT represents almost 1.9 million professionals nationwide. AAUP and AFT combined have more than 400,000 members in higher education and decades of experience representing university professionals. The AFT has been involved in lawsuits against the Trump administration related to education. The AAUP has been leading the fight to protect academic freedoms, helping to define the larger vision for higher education in America.

Dues amounts vary by union and are set through the union’s own bylaws, not by the employer. 

Other IFT higher ed locals tend to have dues rates between 1–2% of salary. The exact rate for our union would be decided by us once our union is formed. Dues typically start when the first contract is ratified and you receive your first union raise.

Dues fund our union’s operations: staff who support bargaining and grievances, legal representation, research on comparable contracts and pay data, and the costs of negotiating and enforcing the contract.

Members and non-members both benefit from the union contract, and the union is still required to represent a non-member in a contract dispute. While members pay dues as described above, non-members at private institutions in Illinois can pay “fair share agency fees” equal to member dues.

Adjunct faculty are included in this bargaining unit alongside full-time and part-time faculty with benefits. Adjunct pay-per-course has often stayed flat for years, and adjuncts frequently find out about their teaching assignments and contracts very close to the start of a quarter, with little advance notice. A union gives adjunct faculty a formal way to bargain over per-course pay increases and to push for clearer timelines and communication around when appointments are offered and confirmed. Adjunct faculty at other universities have also used their unions to bargain pathways to health insurance eligibility, tuition waivers, and funding for professional development.

Adjunct appointments are often tied strictly to the academic term, which means access to university email and NetID can be cut off right after a class ends, even while a former student needs a letter of recommendation or a grade dispute is still open. It can also be slow to reinstate NetIDs, making it difficult to access resources like Canvas in advance. This is a specific issue adjuncts have raised, and it’s the kind of working condition that can be addressed directly in a contract.

All three groups—full-time, part-time with benefits, and adjunct—are part of the same bargaining unit. Many priorities overlap across all three, including raises, health coverage, and fair evaluation processes. The organizing committee and eventual bargaining team will include members from each group, and the contract can include clauses specific to each as needed. Being in one unit means more combined bargaining power, not that one group’s issues crowd out another's.

Reach out to uanu@uanorthwestern.org! There are a lot of ways to plug in—let’s talk about the best fit for you!