KU faculty members overwhelmingly approve formation of union; they will seek improvements in pay, job security

An aerial photo of Kansas University’s campus in August 2015.

Story updated at 5:19 p.m. Thursday, April 25:

Faculty members at the University of Kansas have voted by a large margin to form a union to negotiate with administrators for better pay, benefits and working conditions.

The faculty members — including a broad host of professors, instructors, librarians and others — agreed by a vote of 850 to 132 to be represented by the United Academics of the University of Kansas, the union announced Thursday.

The state-supervised election took place over the course of a month via mail-in ballots, and results were counted on Thursday,

With the formation of the union, KU, and by extension the Kansas Board of Regents, now will be required to negotiate with the union on a host of matters, including pay, benefits and working conditions.

“This is a really exciting day for us. By voting overwhelmingly to unionize, we now have a seat at the table to advocate for the needs of our university and the students we serve,” said Lisa-Marie Wright, associate teaching professor in the Department of Sociology. “Our students deserve excellent, well-supported faculty, and that’s what we’ll fight for.”

About 1,550 full- and part-time employees who are considered faculty or academic staff will be covered by the union and will be part of the bargaining group. State law does not require employees who are covered by a union to become dues-paying members of the union, but more than 60% of all eligible employees ended up voting in the election. Among those who voted, nearly 87% voted in favor of the union.

During the course of the campaign, the union cited competitive wages, job security, health and safety issues and several other concerns as reasons for union representation.

A statement from a KU spokeswoman following the vote did not discuss any of the issues raised by the union, but said Provost Barbara Bichelmeyer would be a key member of the KU administration working with the union.

“The Provost looks forward to working with the new union — and with all faculty, staff and students — on initiatives to advance KU’s mission of education, service and research,” KU spokeswoman Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said in a written statement to the Journal-World. “We are grateful to the many Lawrence campus faculty who share our goal to make KU the best place it can be.”

The KU union — which nationally is affiliated with the American Association of University Professors and the AFT, a teachers, health care and public service union that commonly has been known as the American Federation of Teachers — now will seek to begin bargaining with KU administration on a first-time labor contract.

Expect that contract to have an emphasis on wages and compensation. In its announcement, the KU union said that KU salaries rank 34th out of 38 public institutions that are members of the Association of American Universities, which is a group that includes KU and other large research universities in North America.

Wages were a topic of much negotiation with the one other KU union that represents classroom instructors. Graduate teaching assistants at KU have had a union for several years. However, that group largely has had to settle for pay increases that are roughly the same as other nonunionized employees. The group in 2022 agreed to a 5% pay increase, which was consistent with what other university employees received that year. That one-year agreement was struck after about 30 negotiating sessions during a 16-month period.

How and when negotiations between the new faculty and KU will progress is unclear. Neither side announced any dates on Thursday. The new faculty union seemingly will be larger than the graduate teaching assistants union, and also is likely to include some of KU’s top researchers and most senior faculty members. Both of those factors could create new dynamics for the university as it negotiates with the union.

And, then, there is the margin of victory by which employees chose to authorize the union.

“We voted resoundingly to have our voices heard on the critical issues facing our university,” Kate DeJarnette, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing, said in a press release from the union. “We’re eager to get to work making KU a better place to study, teach and perform world-class research.”

The new KU union comes at a time when labor union activity has been increasing on campuses across the country over the past several years. In 2022, about 48,000 employees walked off their jobs at 10 campuses in the University of California system, according to reporting by Inside Higher Ed and other media outlets. In early 2023, a faculty strike at the University of Illinois-Chicago that lasted for about a week resulted in canceled classes and other disruptions, according to the same reporting.

Later in the year, Rutgers — the large public university in New Jersey — experienced a five-day strike that involved faculty and graduate students at four campuses. That Rutgers union, which like KU’s new union also is affiliated with AAUP and AFT, represented about 9,000 employees. Workers there went on strike after working more than 280 days under an expired labor contract, according to local media reports in New Jersey.

Overall, university union members have been some of the most active employees on the labor scene in recent years. In 2022, about 60% of the nearly 225,000 employees who participated in work stoppages were educators, researchers or other similar university professionals, Inside Higher Ed reported.

The university labor actions across the country have dealt with more than just wage issues. Job security has been a frequent negotiating point, and was highlighted by KU leaders in their announcement of the vote. At Rutgers, a key provision that helped end the 2023 strike was an agreement that nontenured professors would receive “presumptive renewal,” meaning they no longer would be required to re-apply for their jobs each year, according to media reports in the New Jersey area.

In Kansas, the job security issues may be different. In January, the Kansas Board of Regents — which creates policy for KU and the other public universities — made significant changes to the process universities must follow when declining to reappoint nontenured faculty members and other similar employees. Chief among those changes is that universities can give no more than 90 days notice that an employee won’t be reappointed. That change will eliminate any practice of giving such employees a full school year or more of notice that their position will be ending.

The new KU union also comes at a time when the university is working on a compensation plan for employees. University leaders have contracted with consultants to gather wage data in the private sector to compare how similar employees at the university are paid. The university also is gathering wage data at other universities for comparison purposes. However, KU has not yet made any major public announcements about how its pay plan will change as a result of the new information.