Georgetown Adjuncts Organizing

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Georgetown University adjuncts are organizing to join their unionized colleagues at The George Washington University, American University and Montgomery College in SEIU Local 500’s Coalition of Academic Labor. “We seek to improve working conditions for part-time faculty here at Georgetown and in the Washington metropolitan area, while adding our voices to a new movement uniting contingent faculty across the country to address the challenges in higher education today,” said Pablo Eisenberg, a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute and member of the Georgetown University Part-Time Faculty Organizing Committee. “Many of us have been impressed by the gains made by our counterparts at The George Washington University and Montgomery College,” Eisenberg added. “Through unionization, they have achieved pay increases, improved job security, improved processes for assignments, fair and transparent evaluations, received access to professional development supports and access to more benefits and a platform to make their voices heard.” Georgetown adjuncts complain that they’re paid far less than full-time faculty, get no benefits or job security and are denied respect or support for their work. “Many of us believe that our tenuous employment situation is a threat to academic freedom,” Eisenberg wrote in a post on SEIU 500’s website. Click here for The Georgetown Voice’s report. - photo of adjuncts organizing at American University by Katie Figenbaum