We’re Joining Together for a Better Columbia!

As non-tenure track faculty, we are coming together as a union so we can bargain collectively with Columbia. We are joining the thousands of NYC academic workers at Barnard, Fordham, The New School, and NYU who are seeking a better future through collective bargaining. We are part of the growing movement in private institutions like Boston University, Harvard, Princeton, Tufts, the University of Chicago, and many more, where unionized faculty have negotiated meaningful improvements to salary, benefits, and working conditions.

Without collective bargaining, we have experienced stagnant salaries, increasing amounts of uncompensated work, vanishing benefits, and threats to job security and academic freedom. With collective bargaining, we can negotiate a binding agreement so that Columbia cannot change the terms of our employment without our consent. Our students’ learning conditions are our working conditions. When we are able to communicate and negotiate as equals with Columbia, and as a result live more securely, we will be able to focus more on quality teaching.

We, non-tenure track faculty across Columbia, have formed a union in order to improve our working conditions and to make the university a more equitable and accessible institution for teaching and learning. Like tens of thousands of faculty who already have unions at institutions across the US, we deserve the voice and respect we gain through collective bargaining.

Use the form to sign a union authorization card and be counted in the majority!

Without a union:

• Columbia unilaterally determines our working conditions and can change them at any time without our consent.

With a union:

• We elect a bargaining committee that gathers input from faculty across campus to develop our priorities.

• Our bargaining committee negotiates on equal footing toward a fair agreement with Columbia.

• We decide democratically, through a vote, whether to approve any agreement as our contract.

• That contract secures our terms and conditions of employment and is binding and enforceable, usually through appeal to a neutral arbitrator.

Some of your colleagues among Columbia University Contingent Faculty:

A.L. Hu, GSAPP

Bora Chang, Climate School

Bill Bower, MPH, Population and Family Health

Chris Eckdahl, A&S, Chemistry

Dana Lok, SOA, Visual Arts

David Auburn, SOA, Theater

Ege Yumusak, A&S, Heyman Center

Gregory Herrera, LAW

Harry Schiffman, SW, Social Work

Jackie Dugard, A&S, Political Science

Jelisa Blumberg, GSAPP

John Robertson, SW, Social Work

Liza Featherstone, SIPA

Nara Altmann, SPS, IKNS

Natalie Adler, A&S, English

Nicole Rochat, SW, Social Work

Paula Span, JRN, Journalism

Ralph Whyte, A&S, Music

Raymond Farinato, SEAS, Earth and Environmental Engineering

Russell O’Rourke, A&S, Music

Salonee Bhaman, A&S, History

Seth Cosimini, A&S, English

Shar Simpson, SOA, Film

Susan Sivard, A&S, Art History

Talha Siddiqui, A&S, Chemistry

Thanassis Cambani, SIPA

Tim Michiels, GSAPP, Preservation

Tim Wyman-McCarthy, A&S, Sociology

Tyler Rowland, SOA, Visual Arts

Victoria Sanger, GSAPP