DOBBS FERRY – Mercy College adjunct faculty and students rallied on Tuesday to call for a union contract that would raise living standards for educators and improve the learning conditions for students outside a fundraiser for Mercy College held at the Ardsley Country Club in Dobbs Ferry.
The faculty members were joined by Westchester Deputy County Executive Ken Jenkins and County Clerk Tim Idoni.
“Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions. We need a living wage for adjunct faculty so that we can focus on our students. We need economic stability and job security so that we can provide a stable learning environment for students. The status quo of low pay and high faculty turnover is no way to educate the next generation,” said Katherine Flaherty, a lecturer for Critical Inquiry and Junior Seminar and part of the union bargaining committee.
Adjunct faculty at Mercy College teach a majority of classes, but their pay represents a small fraction of the college’s budget. This is a misalignment of priorities that fails to put money in the classroom, to the detriment of teachers and students, while the college’s top administrators earn more in a day than an adjunct professor might earn in an entire semester, adjuncts and their supporters said.
Mercy adjunct faculty voted to join SEIU Local 200United in 2019 and contract negotiations have been ongoing since fall 2019.
The union said while the faculty union has been negotiating in good faith to improve teaching and learning conditions for Mercy’s students, the administration continues to refuse even to consider reasonable improvements, including:
- Providing a continuous learning environment—instead adjunct faculty are hired only on a semester-to-semester basis where courses can be cancelled at the last minute without compensation;
- Funding professional development for the purpose of improving curriculum;
- Incentives to retain long-term professors who have demonstrated success with students;
- Office space in which to meet privately with students;
