Adjunct faculty at BU seek union election

Mary Moore

Reporter- Boston Business Journal

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Adjunct faculty at Boston University have notified the National Labor Relations Board of plans to hold an election and decide if they will unionize, the Services Employees International Union said Wednesday.

If the union election is successful, BU's part-time faculty members would join SEIU's Local 509, which represents more than 17,000 human service workers and educators in Massachusetts, according to its website.

The adjuncts at BU and at other universities in Boston have been organizing as part of Adjunct Action, a project of SEIU. They now are being folded into Local 509, an SEIU spokesman said.

In order to file with the NLRB, at least 30 percent of the part-time faculty at BU had to indicate on an authorization card that they wanted to proceed with a union election, according to the SEIU. The union estimates there are about 800 adjunct faculty members at BU, all of whom will be eligible to participate in the pending election.

The news follows the ratification this week of a union contract between the adjunct faculty at Tufts University and university officials. Those adjuncts are now part of SEIU's Local 509, the SEIU said. The election effort is separate from the labor-organizing campaign involving BU's property-service employees.

A BU official could not be reached for comment.

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