Dive Brief:
- A state labor relations board has certified a union for nearly 500 non-tenure-track faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
- This follows the May signing of the first union contract for tenure- and non-tenure faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
- The non-tenure-track faculty at Urbana-Champaign had voted in favor of forming a union and submitted the results to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board in May.
Dive Insight:
At Urbana-Champaign, the new union includes lecturers, instructors, as well as clinical, visiting, teaching, and research faculty. The union approval follows the adjunct professor unionization trend, with adjuncts voting recently to form unions at Hamline University in St. Paul, MI; the San Francisco Art Institute; Mills College in Oakland, CA; and Northeastern University in Boston. A union vote scheduled in June for Macalester College adjuncts was called off due to a lack of support among the faculty at the St. Paul college. Adjuncts at yet another St. Paul school, the University of St. Thomas, are currently holding a mail-in vote on whether to unionize.