Since full-time lecturers at Howard University originally voted to unionize, they have spent nearly four years bargaining with the university administration to get their first contract. On March 23, just hours before lecturers and nearly 200 adjunct professors, who have been fighting for their second contract, were set to strike, the union secured a historic tentative agreement with the university and called it off. Union members will be voting on whether or not to ratify the tentative agreement in the coming weeks. Even though the strike was narrowly averted, Howard has a long way to go to adequately address the long-running systemic problems that brought non-tenure-track faculty to the point of hitting the picket line.
In this episode of Working People, recorded the day before faculty were set to strike, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez talks to Dr. Aisha Bonner Cozad, an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Howard School of Social Work, and Dr. Sean Pears, a Lecturer in Howard’s College of Arts & Sciences, about the long contract fight for non-tenure-track faculty at one of the most storied HBCUs in the country.
Additional links/info below…
- Dr. Bonner Cozad’s LinkedIn page
- Dr. Pears’s Twitter page
- Howard Teaching Faculty Union Twitter page and Instagram
- Peter Lucas, Jacobin, “Howard University Faculty Are Ready to Strike“
- Rashad Grove, Ebony, “Howard University Faculty Threaten to Strike Over Working Conditions“
- Higher Ed Labor United statement: We Stand with Howard University Non-Tenure-Track Faculty and Adjuncts
Permanent links below…
- Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
- Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page
Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive at freemusicarchive.org):
Jules Taylor, “Working People Theme Song”
Pre-Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The transcript of this podcast will be made available as soon as possible.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.