The Temple Association of University Professionals, the university’s faculty union, will negotiate a new contract with the administration alongside adjunct faculty members for the first time
The union will begin discussing the 2019 contract during the second week of April, said Steve Newman, the president of TAUP. The negotiations for the contract, which expires on Oct. 15, will be the first time adjunct and full-time faculty will bargain together. TAUP plans to bring issues such as university-provided child care and tuition benefits to the table.
“Any member of the bargaining unit, if they wish, can come watch negotiations and listen,” Newman said.
“Our membership will have a good sense of what proposals we’re putting on the table [and] what the administrative response is, so that they feel like they’re part of negotiations and we can also benefit from their wisdom,” he added.
TAUP now represents about 3,000 Temple University full-time employees, including adjunct faculty members, who were added to the union in 2015. Adjunct members must be “regular part-time faculty” to be included in the contract, according to the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board’s standards. After discussions with TAUP, Newman said, the university decided that adjunct members who have taught for at least one semester qualify as “regular.”
Sharon Boyle, vice president of human resources and the university’s chief negotiator, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The TAUP/Faculty Senate Child Care Committee, which began formally meeting in October 2016, cited child care as way for the university to attract “young, productive researchers and scholars,” according to the committee’s proposal submitted to Temple administrators. It also states that affordable child care is hard to find.
Sharon Washington, an assistant professor in the College of Public Health, is a single parent and does not have family located in Philadelphia. One time during Spring Break, she brought her daughter to class.
“I applied for this position and interviewed while I was pregnant and then I had my daughter,” she said. “I assumed that there was childcare on campus because we are a large institution.”
“I don’t know if there are rules about…bringing children to classes, but because there’s no support built into the infrastructure, I have to do what I have to do and then say sorry afterwards, basically,” Washington added.
TAUP members also propose providing faculty members with resources for their children to attend schools other than Temple. While TAUP members with more than one year of teaching can send their children to Temple with tuition remission, Newman said, they’d like more options in case their kids want to study a topic the university does not offer.
“Right now, faculty can send their kids to Temple, which is a fantastic school, and we feel very loyal to it,” Newman said. “But sometimes there are things that they want to study at other schools…so we’d like that option.”
CORRECTION: This story incorrectly stated that Sharon Washington is unable to afford child care and that she often takes her daughter to her classes.
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