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On Tuesday, the day of Thomas Poon’s inauguration as campus president, non-tenure track (NTT) faculty and supporters held a massive Day of Action on campus.
Together, with students, colleagues, and community supporters, we denounced the university administration and board of trustees’ MAGA-style union busting and we called for school officials to immediately return to the bargaining table with us.
“We’re here to remind the administration of their commitment to Catholic social teaching,” said Arik Greenberg, a clinical associate professor in Loyola Marymount University’s Department of Theological Studies, at a rally Tuesday outside the campus entrance at Lincoln Blvd. and LMU Dr., where more than 200 supporters and faculty members had gathered. “We’re here to remind them of their commitment to Catholic social justice. We’re here to remind them of their inequities. Shame on you! We will not be silenced!”
Since the admin and board’s announcement that it sought to bust our union with a dubious claim of religious exemption from labor law, NTT faculty, students, colleagues, alumni, and community allies have called on the Jesuit university to return to the bargaining table with NTT faculty and negotiate in good faith. On Sept. 30, NTT faculty voted overwhelmingly to authorize an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike in response to the admin’s union-busting. Students have considered walking out of class in support of union faculty, too, and have marched on campus to denounce the actions of President Poon and Board Chair Paul Viviano, president of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
“President Poon and Board Chair Viviano sent a message when they claimed a ridiculous religious exemption from labor law: They don’t respect the faculty or the school’s commitments to social justice and Jesuit values,” said David Green, president of SEIU 721, at the rally. “But we’re here today to say that we will not stop fighting for those values! We demand that Poon and Viviano return to the table immediately with NTT faculty!”
On Tuesday, we also condemned the authoritarianism taking hold on LMU’s campus and at higher education institutions across the nation.
Over the past few years, LMU’s admin and board have tried to restrict where students can protest, flouted commitments to shared governance between faculty and administrators, refused to be transparent about how they spend tuition dollars and other revenue, dismissed concerns brought by faculty and staff about working conditions, and let go of instructors who have spoken in favor of unionization. Union faculty and students connect these moves to other troubling decisions made by colleges across the nation during Trump’s second term.
Those moves by LMU’s admin and board come as the university has spent millions on flashy marketing and advertising and on properties off campus that most students and faculty will never visit, including a $5.75 million mansion for the campus president to live in. To promote Poon’s inauguration, the school launched a webpage devoted to the ceremony and placed posters, flags, and massive banners all over campus — which some have found eerily similar to the way President Trump promotes his outlandish events. On Tuesday, planes wrote messages of congratulations to President Poon in skywriting.
“In this inauguration, I don’t see my hopes represented,” said LMU sophomore Lincoln Burger, who also spoke at the rally outside campus. “Instead, I see my hopes contested, belittled, or outright ignored. But I can tell you where I do see my hopes represented: I see them here day-to-day, in this audience, in this crowd, in all the students and all the faculty and everybody else who took the time to show up and be part of this event.”
Faizah Malik, managing attorney for housing justice at Public Counsel, who is running for LA City Council District 11, which includes LMU, said at the rally: “I want the west side to be a place where working people have a future, and the best way we can ensure that our families have a future here is to support livable wages for everybody, to support our unions, and to support our unionized faculty here at LMU.”
Faculty and students then marched through campus, chanting along the way in support of NTT faculty!
We finally stopped outside Gersten Pavilion where Poon’s inauguration celebration was being held.