Around 130 people protested in solidarity with School of Museum Fine Arts professors of the practice, School of Arts and Sciences full-time lecturers and School of Engineering graduate workers on Oct. 9. The three groups, all represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 509 union, are engaged in contract negotiations with Tufts for pay increases, among other demands.
The group of protesters, which included professors, students and union representatives, marched by University President Sunil Kumar’s house around 11:45 a.m., following a rally at the Mayer Campus Center. The protest included speeches from Penn Loh, a senior lecturer in the Department of Urban & Environmental Policy and Planning, and SOE graduate worker Vishal Ahuja.
Protesters ended their march in front of Ballou Hall, where representatives from each of the three groups delivered a “solidarity petition” to the administration with over 2,000 signatures.
The FTLs held a bargaining session on Oct. 10, the day following the rally, and SOE graduate workers held a bargaining session the following week on Thursday.
Of the three groups, the POPs have held the fewest bargaining sessions with the university.
Last April, the POPs held their first-ever bargaining session. The POPs had a series of four sessions slated between April and June 2024, but the second was postponed by the administration and the June date was cancelled due to the departure of a union organizer from SEIU. The last time the POPs met with the administration was on May 29.
The university stated that they are committed to reaching an agreement at the negotiating table.
“We are committed to finding a mutually beneficial resolution through ongoing dialogue and collaboration. Our goal is to address concerns proactively and constructively, ensuring we avoid any disruptions,” Patrick Collins, executive director of media relations, wrote in a statement to the Daily.
The FTLs have had eight bargaining sessions with the university but face resistance to parts of their collective bargaining agreement, while SOE graduate workers have been negotiating since Nov. 2023 for what would be their first-ever contract as a union.
A key point of negotiation for the FTLs and the POPs is salary, while for the SOE graduate workers, it is wages.
The bargaining committee for the FTLs performed a salary analysis comparing the salaries of teaching faculty at Tufts to other similar institutions, and the results placed Tufts second to last, according to Katherine Mattaini, a lecturer in the biology department.
“We are not even asking to come up to the median. We are asking Tufts to come up to halfway to the median. We think that is a more than reasonable ask, because many of us cannot afford to live anywhere close to Tufts,” Mattaini said.
However, Mattaini said that the administration has been reluctant to budge on the salary of FTLs.
“The area where we have seen the least movement on is salary, [which] is something that is very important to all of us, especially with inflation [and the] cost of living. People [are] not able to afford to live close to Tufts,” Mattaini said.
The POPs face similar salary-related issues, which have resulted in the departure of multiple faculty members in recent years.
“Since 2016, nine professors of the practice, [a] majority of [which are] people of color, have left the SMFA. We really want to clarify our working conditions and make the SMFA a much more desirable place to work,” Jeannie Simms, a POP on the bargaining team, said.
SOE graduate workers face a similar struggle.
“This is [the] only source of income for a lot of people. I've met a lot of people in our unit who have had to move because they couldn't afford the rent anymore. I've talked to people who can't afford to go back home for holidays,” Ahuja said. “A good chunk of our unit is also international. There's a huge amount of issues when you're trying to afford a plane ticket to go abroad.”
Despite this, the SOE graduate workers’ bargaining sessions have yet to see significant progress towards wage increases, SOE graduate worker Bricker Like wrote in a statement to the Daily.
The groups have other bargaining points aside from salary and wages. The FTLs are asking for titles that reflect the work they do along with more equitable workloads, which is a demand shared by the SOE graduate workers and the POPs in the shared SEIU Local 509 petition for the three groups.
The SOE graduate workers have seen progress in non-salary areas of the negotiation, such as “a tentative agreement on the number of hours expected of a SOE graduate worker, extra pay for extra work, and the right of the SOE graduate worker to say “No” to extra work,” Like wrote.
However, the protest is emblematic of collective frustration among the three groups that many of their most important demands have yet to be addressed by the university.
“I'm [seeing] frustration at [the union members’] current situation and wanting the university to come together with us and actually acknowledge what we're dealing with right now, which is our wages, … our work-life balance,” Ahuja said.
