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Provost Message E-Newsletter [Vanderbilt University]

March 2017

Dear colleagues,

During the last two days, I testified at a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing about the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 205 petition seeking to unionize some non-tenure track faculty and postdoctoral fellows in five of our schools and colleges (the College of Arts and Science, the Blair School of Music, the Divinity School, the Graduate School, and the Peabody College of Education and Human Development).

I write to assure you that Vanderbilt will provide you with accurate and timely information about this process as it unfolds.  We will continue to post all of our correspondence and information on the website: http://vu.edu/faculty-unionization.

I’d like to reiterate that the university fully supports the right of its adjunct and part-time non-tenure track faculty to vote on whether they wish to be represented by the SEIU.

We are proud of our model of shared governance, which is different and more robust than many of our peer institutions.  Our full-time non-tenure track faculty have the opportunity to participate and share in university governance through their schools/colleges, the Faculty Senate, and/or through their appointment to strategic committees and leadership roles. According to U.S. Supreme Court precedent, that opportunity to participate in our shared governance makes it inappropriate for full time faculty to be included in the union petition.

We are also concerned that the union’s proposed bargaining unit will be problematic because our full-time non-tenure track faculty do not share an appropriate “community of interest” with our adjunct and part time non-tenure track faculty.  Unlike adjuncts and part-time faculty, our full-time non-tenure track faculty receive full employee benefits, they are appointed to renewable terms of 1, 3, 5 or 7 years, they may only be terminated for cause during their appointments, they are regularly and routinely reappointed, they have the protections of due process and the ability to file grievances under the Faculty Manual, and they participate in our shared governance.

We worked hard to resolve these concerns with the union before the hearing, but could not reach a resolution.

I also wanted to respond to questions about the university’s engagement of outside legal counsel. The filing of a petition for employees to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board requires an employer to comply with numerous obligations under the National Labor Relations Act, and for an employer to prepare for evidentiary hearings before the Regional Director of the NLRB.  This is a highly specialized area of the law.  As is customary in legal proceedings before the NLRB, both the university and the SEIU are using outside counsel to provide representation during the hearings and to advise on the respective rights and obligations of the parties.

I am committed to keeping you fully informed and will continue to communicate with you throughout this process.  I am available to meet with faculty to discuss this process.  Please feel free to contact me to schedule an appointment. We believe that faculty can only make an informed choice with all of the information and should have the opportunity to engage in open dialogue.

Sincerely,

Susan R. Wente
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

 

 

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