LEWISTON – An independent organization with more than 45,000 academic members across the country recently urged the National Labor Relations Board to allow nontenure track professors and adjunct faculty members at Bates College to join a proposed staff union.
The nonprofit American Association of University Professors said in a brief submitted to the federal agency that “faculty and staff employed at institutions of higher education have much in common and that, at certain institutions, they can share a ‘community of interest’ sufficient to render their joint inclusion in a single bargaining unit appropriate” under federal law as long as faculty members are given “a meaningful mechanism for registering their desires on the issue.”
“Faculty and staff at colleges and universities generally have much in common,” the group said in its brief. “In certain instances, these similarities can support a finding that they share a community of interest” and ought to be allowed to join the same union if they wish.
Bates has argued that about 85 faculty members eyed for union membership should not be able to participate in the same union as the rest of the college’s staff, assuming employees voted to form a union in January in an election where the ballots have not yet been counted.
The professors’ association said that while the NLRB “should reject” the bid by Bates “to create a new, categorical rule barring faculty from being included in a unit with staff,” it is important to have a...
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