September 29 Message from Mercy College: Update on the College's Negotiations with the Adjunct Faculty Union

Dear Mercy College Adjunct Faculty and Lecturers,

As we return to campus for the fall 2020 term, we want to provide an update on Mercy College’s ongoing negotiations with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

In May 2019, our adjunct faculty voted to have the SEIU represent them for collective bargaining. In October 2019, the College’s bargaining team began meeting with representatives from the SEIU team to negotiate a first contract.

We continue to negotiate in good faith toward an overall agreement. This is typically a lengthy process. Most first contracts take more than a year to negotiate and sometimes they can take several years, particularly for large groups of employees with diverse backgrounds and work duties. One nearby example of this is the adjunct faculty contract at Pace University, which took more than four years to negotiate. This process is inherently difficult and time-consuming—and these negotiations have coincided with the CNR transition and the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Since last October, we have had 12 bargaining sessions. These sessions continued during our time working remotely this spring and summer. We entered these negotiations with a willingness to listen, give serious consideration, and respond thoughtfully to any ideas, proposals, and supporting arguments that their team may present.

The College's goal is to reach an agreement that treats our adjunct faculty fairly and that strikes a proper balance between interests both of the College as a whole and of our adjunct faculty, consistent with our mission and with the understanding that every member of our community benefits from the College's continued success.

We have made significant progress toward reaching an overall initial labor agreement. During the course of negotiations thus far, the parties have exchanged proposals on 20 issues and topics and have memorialized in written and signed Tentative Agreements about half of the proposed articles, including Defining the Parties, Labor Management Committee, Bargaining Unit Lists, Equal Opportunity, Employment Records, Nature of Agreement, Duration, Academic Freedom, Health and Safety, and Assignments and Paychecks. In addition to the listed agreements, the parties have continued to seek compromises on certain issues and to narrow their differences on many other topics through mutual exchanges of revised counterproposals.

The College will continue to engage with SEIU and its bargaining team in a good faith effort to build a first contract over the course of the new school year—and for as long as it takes to achieve our final goal. As this important process moves forward, we will provide you with regular updates on our progress.

We recognize and appreciate the important contribution our adjunct faculty make to the education of our students. And we look forward to continuing to work together to advance Mercy’s academic community.

Sincerely,

Mercy College Management Bargaining Team

Kristen Bowes
Saul Fisher
Jessica Haber
Lauren Mackenzie
Annette Piecora