By Peter Schmidt, Washington
Officials of the Service Employees International Union are touting their effort to unionize adjunct faculty members at all colleges in this city as a model for similar campaigns in other metropolitan areas, and envision using such an organizing strategy to greatly improve the pay and benefits afforded such instructors in those labor markets.
At a forum held here on Saturday at the union’s national headquarters, organizers for the SEIU’s Local 500 discussed how they had unionized adjunct faculty members at two of this city’s largest private colleges, American and George Washington Universities, and appear poised to do the same at Georgetown University early next year.
They described such locally focused organizing strategies as a means of getting community groups behind their cause and using the market forces that previously had worked against them to their advantage.
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