Adjunct Faculty At Lesley Vote To Unionize

Just months after adjunct faculty at Tufts University became the first in recent years to vote to unionize, adjunct faculty at Lesley University in Cambridge have done the same.

Lesley University has about 700 adjunct professors. Among their reasons for forming a union, raises have not kept up with inflation and full-time faculty can make $3,000 more per course than adjunct faculty.

But Lesley University President Joe Moore said full-time faculty are expected to advise student groups and help run the university.

"There's a service component," he said. "There's a scholarship component. And there's a teaching component. And that's what yields the full-time work for a faculty member with the salaries that we pay here at Lesley."

Moore said the salaries of adjunct faculty at Lesley are typical of what similar universities pay.