Loyola Marymount University adjuncts are calling for a free and fair election to choose whether to form a union with SEIU/Adjunct Action.

To: President Burcham 

From: SEIU International

We, the organizing members of LMUnified Adjunct Faculty, appreciate your recent email to the Loyola Marymount community. We believe that you have LMU’s best interests at heart, and we wish to convey that we do as well. We labor tirelessly for the University that we love, honor, and serve. We seek the greatest possible good for LMU: to benefit its mission, vision, and students. In the coming days, we have every intention of seeking a peaceable and collaborative relationship with our partners in administration.

We ask you to honor the role that all faculty play in the operation of LMU; to commit to working with us to restore the tenure model; to ensure fair and equitable compensation and benefits for all employees; to assist with career development (for the benefit of all parties); to affirm academic freedom for all; to ensure equal access and eligibility to research and publication resources; and most of all, to allow LMU’s adjunct faculty to vote on unionization unhampered, untrammeled, and un-coerced.

Your email suggests that you are perhaps ready to offer a neutrality statement like that issued by our East-Coast sibling, Georgetown University, during their unionization. We would encourage you to do so and would praise such an action as the mark of a great president of an esteemed Catholic university, committed not only to quality higher education, but to our shared mission of social justice.

We would ask you to send notice on LMU letterhead, to all management staff, college deans and department chairs informing them about the decision to not interfere in the choice adjunct faculty will be making whether to form a union with SEIU. We humbly request that you reaffirm the Church’s centuries-old support of labor unions and demonstrate to our faculty and students your good-faith commitment to LMU’s Catholic identity.

On Behalf of LMUnified Adjunct Faculty,

Timothy Burns, Charlotte D'Evelyn, David Garden, Arik Greenberg, Emily Hallock, John Hartmann, Tania Maync, Kathleen Mclaughlin, Brian Moss, Darrin Murray, Matthew Peterson, Patrick Scott, Corinna Silva da Veiga Jardim, Chiara Sulprizio, Selene Zander