By Ken Stone / Times of San Diego / April 7, 2024
After a rally and brief march Thursday, a group of labor-union advocates at the University of San Diego entered the Hughes Administration Center and made their way to Room 222.
The office of James T. Harris III, USD’s president. They buzzed for entrance. No answer. “The door was locked,” Meghan Donnelly told fellow nontenure-track faculty and supporters after emerging from the campus HQ facing the stately Immaculata Church.
She reported that an election plan had been slid under the door, so Harris would see it when he returns.
Donnelly is co-lead of a group seeking the private Catholic university’s first labor union — involving the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Soroya Rowley, her co-lead partner, said: “We put a draft election agreement (under the door).”
The plan asks that Harris, board chair Tom Mulvaney and other leaders agree to “abstain from any union-busting tactics” and honor results of a free and fair election — “and to negotiate in good faith with us.”
Where was President Harris? Not in his office, said Tom Skinner, USD general counsel. Nor could Harris hear chants including “We are USD” and “Whose university? Our university!”
“The door is customarily locked when he is not present,” Skinner said via email.
When will USD leadership respond to union organizers?
“Same response as I provided yesterday,” he said. “The NLRB is in charge of the election. The organizers have launched a formal process under the law, and we are respecting that process.”
Theatre Department lecturer Rowley told me she wants to see a union election held “the sooner the better. We want to have this election before the end of the semester” in late May.
At a 50-minute rally starting around 1:10 p.m., tenured faculty members including history professor T.J. Tallie.
They followed 29-year nontenure-track faculy member Eric Cathcart* of the Environmental and Ocean Sciences Department and Ted Falk, a nontenured history lecturer who recited his own history at the school.
“I am on my 10th one-semester contract,” he said. After being told “by accident” he’d teach three classes this fall, Falk learned he’d get only two classes.
“I was very excited to teach three sections of Middle East history,” he said, “until the university realized its mistake and canceled one of those sections before enrollment opened this week.”
His dean told him via email that a third class would “cause benefits,” sparking a chorus of boos.
A different administrator told him financial times are tight, “so we have to tighten our belts — we, we. And so if someone making six figures tells someone making under 30 grand that we have to tighten our belts, we aren’t in this together.”
Falk added: “The university loves to brag about its culture of care. But we, in the NTT union, hope to turn those words into action.”
Also firing up the troops was Marco Briones, political director of the San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council. Other union leaders were present, including from SEIU, helping the USD faculty organize under its umbrella.
Two USD undergrads took turns at the megaphone.
Candice Bell, a junior psychology major, said she transferred to USD when she saw a former teacher on the roster.
“She remembered me, and met me with the same level of support, passion and dedication she had years earlier,” Bell told a crowd of 250, many wearing black T-shirts reading “NTT FACULTY UNION NOW.”
“It is frustrating to see someone who gives so much to her students struggle to make a living at a university that claims to value educators,” she said.
“Many of our favorite professors here at USD are non-tenure track, working multiple jobs to take care of their families. They are the individuals who make up USD, without them there is no University of San Diego to go to.”
Because NTT teachers have no guarantee of job security, Bell said, “we are left unsure if these professors will be able to return to teach next semester, or if they will be forced to take on other jobs to survive.”
Paul Verceluz, a senior studying international relations, stood at Colachis Plaza and called nontenured-track faculty “unsung heroes.”
“They pour their hearts and souls into shaping the minds of future generations. … Yet despite their unwavering dedication and profound impact, they often find themselves overlooked and underappreciated.”
He called for fair compensation and financial stability.
Said Verceluz: “I stand with these individuals because I respect their dedication, passion and steadfast resolve for a brighter tomorrow.”
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Sorry, I meant to address this to students and teachers. think thru what your wishing for and read between the lines of what the Union reps are saying.