Dear Colleagues,

I’m writing today to share an update on the union election for non-tenure track faculty in the College of Arts and Science that was held in May of 2017.

Today, National Labor Relations Board Regional Director John Doyle Jr. denied Vanderbilt’s exceptions to the Hearing Officer’s Oct. 19 report on challenges. We filed the exceptions on Nov. 2. Against our objection, and despite the union specifically excluding administrators from the proposed bargaining unit, the regional director found that NTT faculty holding administrative positions were eligible to vote in the union election. The regional director ordered that the challenged ballots should be opened and counted.

As we’ve said since the beginning, the university is committed to protecting our model of shared governance. Over the coming days, we’ll be evaluating the impact of the decision regarding whether NTT administrators can be part of a bargaining unit represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 205. The deadline for the university to appeal the regional director’s post-election decision on challenges to the NLRB in Washington, D.C. is in two weeks on June 12, 2018.

Tomorrow, we will file a separate appeal to the NLRB of the acting regional director’s May 2017 pre-election decision in which she held that full-time Vanderbilt NTT faculty are not “managerial” employees as set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in NLRB v. Yeshiva University. Vanderbilt is also appealing the acting regional director’s ruling that full-time and part-time faculty share sufficient communities of interest to be included in the same bargaining unit.

Our position since the start of this process has been that we will not oppose a bargaining unit comprised of only adjunct and part-time faculty.

We have previously shared that we believe allowing full-time, non-tenure track faculty to be represented by a union and to engage in adversarial collective bargaining conflicts with our robust model of shared governance. We are also troubled that some categories of faculty members that the regional director now finds are part of the unit and were eligible to vote during the union election were not notified they had an opportunity to vote.

We understand this process has been lengthy. The university has moved quickly during each step of the process to meet requirements and deadlines. The current delay was caused by the regional director taking months to rule on the pending matter since the university and the SEIU filed their legal briefs in November.

I will continue to update you as new developments occur, but please don’t hesitate to reach out in the meantime with any questions or concerns. The faculty unionization website will be updated with the latest information. We will continue to advocate for all our faculty and to protect the shared governance model that makes our academic community so effective, innovative and strong.

Thank you for your patience throughout this process. Vanderbilt is a better place to work, discover and learn because of your contributions.

Sincerely,

Susan R. Wente

Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs