Non-Tenure Track Teachers Push for Stability and Pay in New Contract

The College of Arts and Sciences Non-Tenure Track Teachers Faculty Forward union hosted a teach-in March 17 in the Mundelein Center. They explained the issues faced by non-tenure track teachers and rallied support among students for their upcoming contract negotiations with CAS.

Faculty Forward co-chairs Matt Williams, an advanced lecturer in the Department of Sociology, and Paige Warren, an adjunct instructor in the English Department, hosted the event and argued NTT teachers are underpaid and under-supported both at Loyola and at other universities across the country. 

They said this hurts NTT teachers and students’ education by stretching educators too thin and creating a difficult work environment. 

At Loyola, NTT faculty aren’t technically professors. They often have larger workloads and don’t receive the same job security, pay and benefits afforded to tenured or tenure-track professors, according to Williams. 

“No sick days, no healthcare, no family leave,” Laura Driscoll, an adjunct piano instructor, said. 

The union’s previous four-year contract with the university is ending, and negotiations for the terms of their new contract with the CAS are ongoing. Their most recent meeting was March 18. 

Faculty Forward’s main demands are for better pay, greater benefits, more comfortable working conditions, greater job security, transparency on work visas and protected free speech in their classrooms, according to Warren.

It took three years of labor action, including protests and strikes, to negotiate the last contract between the CAS, and Faculty Forward expects another difficult negotiation in 2025. 

“Getting anything from them was like pulling teeth from a rabbit,” Williams said. 

Faculty Forward is associated with the Service Employees International Union Local 73 service union, which represents more than 35,000 workers, according to their website. SEIU provides Faculty Forward with legal counsel and helps them negotiate and organize. Though SEIU primarily represents service workers, the needs of NTT teachers at Loyola align with the support provided by the union. 

Many NTT teachers work part-time on short contracts, don’t receive benefits and have low job security because some work on contracts as short as 15 weeks. 

David Chinitz, the associate dean of Faculty Affairs, said the money for paying part-time faculty would have to come from somewhere else.

“Ideally it would be great if everyone had benefits, but what would that do to Loyola’s tuition rate?” Chinitz said. 

Full-time NTT teachers receive benefits and longer contracts, but don’t receive as much pay as tenured and tenure-tracked teachers. NTT teachers also have to teach more classes and don’t have as much time to do outside research and further their scholarship. This makes it harder for them to get published and therefore harder to achieve tenure, according to Williams. 

“Maybe if I wasn’t giving therapy to students in my office hours, maybe I would be writing a book too,” Warren said. 

Warren, who has taught at Loyola since 2008, is an adjunct instructor on a two-year contract and the Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy Faculty Scholar at Loyola. Adjunct instructor is a position recently created in the last round of negotiations between Faculty Forward and CAS. Warren is still a part-time worker and receives no benefits, but she’s paid $600 more than other part-time faculty. 

Part-time teachers are limited to teaching two classes per semester. The university isn’t required to compensate them or provide benefits because they don’t work enough to be full-time faculty. Faculty Forward is demanding the two-class limit be removed in their next contract with CAS so part-time faculty can get benefits and better pay.

Warren said administrators are paid too much and money for benefits could come from their salaries.

“You’re making six figures,” Warren said. “Why doesn’t it come out of your salary? Why doesn’t it come out of your wellbeing?”

Chinitz said Loyola needs to pay high salaries to administrators to compete with other schools and corporations.

“If you’re going to hire a college president or some other high administrator, you are competing to some extent with the corporate world where people like that are paid a great deal more than they are by colleges and universities,” Chinitz said. 

Chinitz also said part of the reason administration has grown is because students’ needs have changed, and Loyola needs to stay competitive with other schools. He said some teachers can be kept on the traditional tenure track while others can’t.

“We can support some portion of our faculty — whether it’s 60% or 40% — some large portion can be there on that old model,” Chinitz said. “If we hire the rest on a different model.” 

Chinitz said he thinks splitting faculty pay into two models allowed more money for administration and greater student amenities in order to make the school more appealing.

Warren, who’s also an executive board member of SEIU Local 73, said NTT teachers have more in common with service workers, like McDonald’s and home healthcare employees, than K-12 teachers because they’re not working toward a pension and are employed on short contracts. 

Williams and Warren said an investment in NTT teachers is also an investment in students because it’ll enable faculty to spend more time planning lessons, grading papers and meeting with students. 

Part-time faculty often teach at multiple schools in order to make enough money, which strains their time and forces them to make sacrifices in the classroom, according to Williams.

“We try not to let it, but it inevitably does,” Williams said. “It’s especially true — I think — for part-time faculty who have to run around the city like a chicken with its head cut off.”

Chinitz said he agreed with Williams that teaching at multiple schools would cause faculty to have less time and said it was unfortunate.

“If a faculty member is teaching part-time at five universities to make a living then they’re going to be less committed — inevitably — to that institution,” Chinitz said. 

Warren and Williams encouraged students to support the union by posting on social media, protesting outside of contract negotiations and reaching out to CAS faculty to voice their concerns. 

“Nine times out of 10 we are doing this in service of our students,” Warren said to the students attending the teach-in. “We want you to have the experience that you are more than paying for and you deserve independent monetary value.”

Full-time NTT teachers get to teach three classes instead of four if they teach more than 190 students per semester. Faculty Forward wants to remove the 190 student requirement for these course releases and provide NTT faculty with full or partial course releases if they’re engaged in service learning classes because they’re more demanding on faculty. 

This will give NTT faculty more time to continue their research and work toward publishing materials to qualify them for tenure.

NTT teachers also want Loyola to ensure they won’t be fired for what they teach. Williams said some teachers are afraid of being fired for talking about controversial topics, especially in the current political climate. 

“If I have some student who says, ‘I want to write my paper on how the Earth is flat,’ I can turn to them and say, ‘Are you going to be able to find peer reviewed sources on that,’” Warren said. “That kid can’t go write a review that has me lose my job next semester.”

Williams said demands for non-discrimination and academic freedom weren’t well-received in negotiations. 

“The administration was completely blindsided that we cared about these things,” Williams said. “It was like, what did you expect in the current climate. They accused us of political posturing and virtue signaling.” 

CAS Dean Peter Schraeder as well as other CAS administrators didn’t respond to requests for comment.