Following the unionization of non-tenure track (NTT) faculty in the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts (BCLA), College of Communication and Fine Arts (CFA), and the School of Film and Television (SFTV) with SEIU Local 721 last June, members of the NTT faculty union bargaining team have been engaged in a drawn-out and challenging process to negotiate a new contract with the school.
On December 20th, university administration held its first meeting with the NTT faculty bargaining team to begin negotiating a new contract. This meeting followed a lengthy semester-long effort by the NTT faculty bargaining team to bring the university to the table.
One reason for the delay in commencing negotiations was the university’s change in legal counsel. Last Fall, LMU hired Garcia Hernández Sawhney LLP (GHS), a firm that specializes in representing employers in contract negotiations. In contrast to the $145,000-248,000/year salaries made by GHS associates, members of the NTT faculty bargaining team are not compensated for their time spent in negotiations or preparing contract materials.
“It’s important to understand that our bargaining team is not being paid to write contract articles or to negotiate them,” wrote senior studio arts lecturer and bargaining team member Brian Moss in an email interview. “We are working for free to help the 450 members of our union, plus all the other NTT faculty at LMU who didn’t get to join the union yet.”
Now that negotiations are underway, the process of finalizing a new contract is shaping up to be fairly tedious. Contract negotiations may only take place during in-person meetings. Hoping to come to an agreement before the end of the Spring semester, members of the bargaining team proposed meeting with administration once every two weeks. The university responded to this request by proposing a meeting in February. After applying additional pressure, the bargaining team managed to schedule a second meeting for Friday January 31st, with subsequent meetings scheduled for Feb 14th and 21st.
During their initial meeting on December 20th, school administration spent a substantial portion of the allotted time discussing ground rules. The bargaining team, who found many of the proposed ground rules excessively prohibitive, rejected them. In the interest of moving the negotiations along, the bargaining team presented six of up to 25 articles they intend to bring forward over the course of the negotiations.
“We began by presenting some of the non-economic articles that we felt were of focus for sure, but maybe less disruptive for the administration,” said SFTV instructor and bargaining team member Leslie LaPage. However, LaPage noted that the administration has yet to provide any feedback. “Since that meeting, the administration has chosen not to give us any notes, red lines, comments or negotiation points on any of the articles we have presented so far. They are choosing to hold off.” Despite this, the bargaining team intends to continue moving forward, and hopes to present their next six articles in the upcoming January 31st meeting.
“Our goal is not to have this drag on for a year. Our goal is to get this handled and to move on in a proactive way, allowing some of the more hard hitting questions, which are the economic questions, to be our focus– and to hopefully raise the salaries of the faculty to meet living conditions in Los Angeles,” said LaPage.
Reaching a contract agreement that accommodates the cost of living in Los Angeles is the primary concern for the NTT faculty bargaining team. Currently, more than 65% of LMU’s faculty are non-tenure track. Full time NTT faculty are employed on one to two semester renewable contracts, with salaries typically ranging from $60,000-75,000/year– an income that hardly covers living expenses. However, the vast majority of NTT faculty work under non-renewable part-time contracts, generally earning less than $30k annually from the school and lacking certain benefits. Those teaching fewer than six units per semester are excluded from healthcare coverage. Some LMU faculty have been employed under these precarious single-semester agreements for decades on end, including Moss, who is now in his 27th year at LMU.
In late November, part time faculty received notice of a $12 per unit pay raise for the 2025 calendar year, or a 0.5% raise. This marked a significant step backwards from previous part time faculty pay raises, which have ranged from 2-3% over the past 25 years.
“This raise translates to $69,600 total divided by maybe 500 people. Compared to President Snyder’s recent 33% pay raise, this is absurd and outrageous,” wrote Moss.
The recent decline in university-issued pay raises for part-time faculty, coupled with the rising cost of living in LA and the administration’s lack of initiative in finalizing a new agreement has been deeply concerning for NTT faculty. Despite these challenges, resolve among the bargaining team remains strong.
“It’s frustrating, but we will try to keep pressure on them and put more pressure on them– and frankly, we need student help in that respect,” said Moss. Rallying student and community support has been a central focus of the NTT faculty union effort, from the April march on President Timothy Law Snyder’s office—where hundreds of students participated—to the numerous public teach-ins and panels the NTT faculty union team held throughout 2024.
LaPage emphasized that securing a fair contract is an issue of equity and justice that concerns the entire LMU community. “Our job as faculty is to prepare students to be working professionals with incomes that allow them to prosper. If an LMU student returns as an NTT faculty, their salary would not be enough to even survive in Los Angeles. It is just substandard,” she wrote.
In the coming weeks, the bargaining team intends to ramp up their community engagement. The team plans to hold public union meetings regularly and launch a petition demanding a new contract by the end of Spring. They will be posting updates on these initiatives via their instagram account: @lmu_nttfaculty.
