Dear Mercy College Faculty, Staff and Students,
As we wind down the academic year, I write to provide an update on Mercy College’s ongoing negotiations with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which our adjunct faculty selected to represent them for collective bargaining.
I’ve noted before that we entered these negotiations with a willingness to listen, give serious consideration, and respond thoughtfully to any ideas, proposals, and supporting arguments that they may present. Since bargaining commenced in October 2019, we have held regular bargaining sessions. We exchanged proposals on nearly 30 topics and have reached agreement on half of them. This is typically a lengthy process – most first contracts take over a year to negotiate and many take several years.
While we continue to make good progress toward reaching an overall contract, there are still many topics on which the parties remain far apart in our positions, including issues of compensation and appointments.
After careful study and analysis, the College presented a wage proposal at our most recent bargaining session that is competitive with the national and regional marketplaces. This proposal provides for future pay increases for adjunct faculty at the same rate as those for our full-time faculty members, as well as a fee if a course they are scheduled to teach is canceled. The parties remain far apart on this issue, however, because the Union is proposing drastic wage increases of up to 125% more than their current earnings.
The College also presented a proposal that gives adjunct faculty the ability to earn titles and promotions in rank based upon their level of degree attainment and longevity of service to our students. We necessarily distinguish these academic titles and criteria from those of our full-time faculty, owing to different expectations of their roles and contributions to our community, and following a standard generally upheld in American higher education. We remain far apart on these issues because the Union is proposing a schema that would tie such rank to guarantees of appointments and course assignments across multiple terms or years, which would hamper the College’s capacity to maintain flexibility across curricular offerings and as program enrollments shift.
The College has the utmost respect and appreciation for the important role our adjunct faculty members play in the fabric of our institution. Yet, we cannot agree to proposals that are outside the norm for institutions of higher education or that would jeopardize Mercy College’s mission of providing an exceptional education to students while maintaining our low tuition price point and solid financial position.
Please be assured that the College remains committed to bargaining in a good-faith effort to resolve our differences with SEIU and to reaching an overall collective bargaining agreement as soon as possible that maintains compensation levels and general working conditions that are competitive with those of our private college peer institutions.
I close by thanking the entirety of the Mercy faculty – part-time and full-time – who have labored under challenging circumstances for the past year to ensure our students were able to continue their educations uninterrupted. Beginning last March, when the College swiftly pivoted at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to a largely online format, faculty accessed targeted support to help them navigate remote and hybrid courses. As a result, next week we will celebrate the 3,000 graduates who continued to experience the high-quality education that they have come to expect from Mercy College.
I continue to be grateful to our community for your steadfastness in this last year and wish you a restful summer.
Sincerely,
Tim Hall
President