Dear Colleagues,

We have just confirmed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 205 has chosen to end its attempt to represent non-tenure track faculty at the Blair School of Music, the Divinity School and Peabody College. The SEIU plans to continue its efforts to represent non-tenure track faculty at the College of Arts and Science.

The next step will be for the NLRB to make a determination as to challenged voters in the Arts and Science election. In Arts and Science, there were 55 “yes” votes and 40 “no” votes with 51 challenged ballots and 193 faculty eligible to vote. As a reminder, the challenge procedure is routine and provides a way for the NLRB, the SEIU, and/or Vanderbilt to question a faculty member’s eligibility to vote.  We expect that the NLRB will hold a hearing to make a decision on the challenged voters in Arts and Science but they have not yet finalized the hearing date.

As we’ve shared since the beginning, our goal has been to approach this election in a way that reflects our values. At Vanderbilt, we’re committed to upholding fundamental values such as transparency, open communication, shared governance and collaboration. As a central part of those values, we urged eligible faculty to participate and provided them with information about the unionization process so they could be informed voters.

The university is gratified that, in addition to high participation in the election on June 6, the process is moving forward and all parties involved agree that the election was conducted fairly.

As this process continues in Arts and Science, we’ll continue to keep you up to date on developments through direct outreach, as well as through frequent updates to our website:  http://vu.edu/faculty-unionization.

As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or Vice Provost Geer with any questions or concerns. Thank you for all that you do for the Vanderbilt community and for your thoughtful participation throughout this process.

Sincerely,

Susan R. Wente

Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs