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We made our voices heard this week and told the nation that LMU non-tenure track (NTT) and Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) faculty are union strong! Whether we were rallying outside campus, demanding answers from top administrators, or speaking to major news outlets, we made it clear that we won’t tolerate LMU’s union-busting and outrageous statements that the university won’t recognize our union and will stop negotiating with us. We made it clear that we’re not going anywhere until President Poon, the administration, and board get back to the table so we can bargain a fair contract that includes living wages, adequate benefits, better job security, and dignified working conditions!
On Tuesday, Sept. 16, we rallied at the entrance of campus on 80th St. and Loyola Blvd. Rally-goers chanted: “Who is the union?” Faculty, students, and community supporters — over 100 strong — responded: “We are the union!” as we marched around the entrance and, eventually, on campus.
Then we made our way to LMU’s Provost Community Conversations event — with student, faculty, and community supporters in tow — where we demanded answers from President Thomas Poon, Interim Provost Kat Weaver, and other administrators about their union-busting. At the meeting, dozens of faculty colleagues, students, and staff spoke out in support of us and cheered us on!
LISTEN TO A LOYOLAN PODCAST ABOUT THE COMMUNITY CONVERSATION EVENT.
Bryan Wisch, a rhetorical arts instructor, said at the event: “Last year, the university agreed to respect the results of our union election, and they said they would bargain in good faith. Last Friday, you betrayed that promise.” Wisch asked Weaver: “Why should anyone believe what you have to say going forward,” prompting many people in the crowd of students, staff, and fellow faculty to cheer.
Arik Greenberg, clinical assistant professor in LMU’s Department of Theological Studies asked Weaver: “If we are a Catholic university, can you please explain the university’s abdication and betrayal of over a century and a half of Catholic Social Teaching towards the unwavering commitment to the inviolability of labor unions? Has the Catholic church changed its stance on labor unions?”, leading to more cheers.
Because we made our voices heard, our fight for justice is getting national attention:
“Our Board of Trustees and our administration [have] abandoned the school’s values to betray the faculty, and it’s very clear that they’re just doing this because they don’t respect their faculty and they don’t want to have to bargain with us,” Wisch told Inside Higher Ed.
“I am so damn hurt. We were here bargaining in good faith…so what I would like to see is for [LMU] to get back to the bargaining table and do the right thing,” Greenberg said in a story from KCRW, LA’s NPR affiliate.
“It’s outrageous,” Mareen Gonzalez, a dance instructor, told the LA Times about LMU’s union-busting.
“The university claims to be acting with Jesuit values [but] in the middle of bargaining, walks away from the table,” Laura Huffman, a senior instructor of French, told the Los Angeles Public Press. “They haven’t bargained in good faith.”
“I am classified as low income in Los Angeles. Because of that, I have to have a second job, and it actively harms my students because it means I can’t be on campus as often as I would like to, I can’t meet with my students and engage in some of the extracurriculars that I would like to,” Wisch told KFI radio in describing the working conditions of NTT faculty.
In a piece for Words about Work, independent journalist Mel Buer quoted Clayton Sinyai from the Catholic Labor Network: “I find the [LMU] administration’s legal stance unbelievably cynical. By claiming a religious exemption from the NLRA to bust the faculty union, they are arguing that LMU is both too religious to fall under the jurisdiction of the NLRA yet not religious enough to honor Catholic Social Teaching in this matter on their own accord.”
We must fight on. Click HERE to use a form to send a message to President Poon and the board of trustees demanding that they return to the table and end the union busting!
Stay tuned for more actions and ways to get involved.
