Archive ▸ 2014 ▸ 2014-01-13

Policy Order O-2

City Council, January 13, 2014

Councillor Cheung

WHEREAS: There are almost 13,000 non-union and non-tenure faculty currently working at Boston-area non-profit colleges and universities; and

WHEREAS: There are currently over 270,000 students enrolled in four-year non-profit colleges and universities in the Boston area, including at least 44,000 in Cambridge, who increasingly depend on the instruction and guidance of adjunct professors; and

WHEREAS: Students can pay upwards of $50,000 in tuition and living expenses every year to attend a college or university in the Boston area; and

WHEREAS: Adjunct professors should be adequately supported by their institutions for their growing presence and role in the academic pursuits of students in the Boston area; and

WHEREAS: Adjunct professors have little job security and must take on multiple course loads in order to make ends meet; and

WHEREAS: Some Boston-area colleges and universities do not provide health care benefits to their adjunct professors; and

WHEREAS: The cost of living in the Boston area is 32 percent higher than the U.S. average; and

WHEREAS: Adjunct professors in the Boston area should be paid fair wages and benefits that allow them to support themselves and their families; and

WHEREAS: The decision of whether to unionize belongs solely to workers and should not be interfered with by management or their agents, now therefore be it

RESOLVED: That the Cambridge City Council go on record expressing support for fair wages and benefits for Cambridge's adjunct professors, the right of Cambridge's adjunct professors to form a union, and the adoption of free and fair union election principles, similar to those that have been adopted by many higher education institutions in other U.S. cities, which establish the commitment that workers are "free" to make up their own mind under "fair" voting conditions; and be it further

RESOLVED: That the City Clerk be and hereby is requested to forward a suitably engrossed copy of this resolution to SEIU's Boston office on behalf of the entire City Council.

Councillor Carlone Recused Himself From Voting On This Matter

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Recovered record. The city's clerk database (2002–2015) went offline; this page was rebuilt from the Internet Archive's capture of the original page (2014-01-20). Dates and codes are read from the document itself, never from the database's ids.