For decades, non-tenure-track faculty have come together to ask for better working conditions: fair compensation, improved reappointment guidelines, consistent contract lengths, reasonable teaching loads, membership on committees, recognition within the Strategic Plan and a more secure future at Wellesley. Our collective action over the years has resulted in measurable gains, yet the system that exploits our labor remains intact and relatively unchanged. Now is the time to protect ourselves, to clarify our relationship to the institution, and to change the exploitative system that higher education has come to rely on for so long. Now is the time to form a union. No longer defined by what we are not, we are proud to call ourselves the WOAW faculty – the Wellesley Organized Academic Workers!

Thank you for helping form our union, WOAW-UAW. Collective bargaining means more rights and more power to shape our lives at Wellesley. Collectively, we have more power to negotiate with Wellesley than we have as individuals. No one will be expected to pay any dues or fees until we have democratically approved a contract with Wellesley.

Without a union:

• Wellesley 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.
• Our bargaining committee negotiates a contract on equal footing with Wellesley administration.
• Our contract can only be approved democratically, through a vote by our members.
• Our contract determines our terms and conditions of employment and is binding and enforceable, usually through appeal to a neutral arbitrator.
• We gain a stronger voice, working with tens of thousands of UAW members in our region and across the country to protect and expand funding for education and research.