BY CAROLYN BETENSKY
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And now for a happy story about the power of a union!
Mason Richards, the new president of the AAUP chapter of the Los Angeles campus of Emerson College (ELAF-AAUP), met with me to discuss his chapter’s recent success, achieved with the help of the national AAUP staff, in securing a vastly better contract than they had previously had.
Richards, like most of his colleagues on the Emerson campus, is a contingent faculty member. He is a writer, director, and filmmaker with many years’ experience in the film industry, but he also has a deep background in education. Since 2018, he has worked with Emerson students from the Boston campus who spend a semester in Los Angeles to pursue internships in Hollywood (the new, $110-million Emerson LA campus is located geographically right between the headquarters of Netflix and Paramount Studios). Richards is only the second president of ELAF-AAUP. His predecessor, Jennifer Vandever, led them since they formed a union in 2015 and ratified a first contract in 2016.
Emerson Los Angeles is an unusual college campus in that it largely centers on fostering internships, primarily in creative fields. Its faculty are mostly working professionals in these fields; they communicate their hard-won knowledge to students who are new at navigating their labyrinthine practices and expectations. They are teachers of craft as well as liberal arts and interdisciplinary course educators. They also supervise students in their acquisition of professional and life skills.
According to Richards, Emerson LA competes with University of Southern California, American Film Institute, and Chapman University in national rankings of film programs. Over 80% of the programs’ graduates stay in the industry. Yet despite the high quality of instruction that Emerson LA faculty provide, the Emerson administration had underpaid them for years. Hours of unpaid labor characterized the lives of their faculty. They were paid less than their peers at the main Emerson campus in Massachusetts. They held frequent events and provided community for the students, often without compensation. On their own time, they wrote letters of recommendation and worked in other capacities usually associated with full-time faculty. The fact that they supervised students in highly specialized courses and also mentored them outside of classes was often not taken into consideration.
Richards, alongside lead negotiator Vandever and the rest of the negotiating team, bargained hard (and at the height of the COVID pandemic) for eight months with a law firm hired by the Emerson administration (Jackson Lewis, known for its aggressive tactics against organized labor). Eventually, they went into arbitration. At all stages of the process, the staff of the national AAUP (primarily Sarah Lanius) were there for the negotiating team. Richards expresses gratitude to them for their invaluable training and assistance in strategizing.
Ultimately, the Emerson LA chapter of the AAUP won a contract that reflected the high caliber and high impact of their labor. They achieved a substantial increase in their wages, retained an annual cost-of-living increase of 2-4% and established retirement matching for the first time. Other highlights include improved access to medical/dental benefits, a $1500 professional development fund, and two- and four-semester contracts for senior faculty. The contract provides for improved protections for an equitable workplace. Having taught from their living rooms during the pandemic, they even negotiated assistance for home WiFi costs. In virtually all areas, they achieved parity with their affiliated colleagues in Boston.
Another way the CBA has had an important impact on faculty and students at Emerson LA: it has created more favorable conditions for recruiting and retaining BIPOC faculty. Richards used to hear from his students that he was the first Black professor they had ever encountered. Since the contract was signed, he has been joined by several new faculty of color, an encouraging development for an institution that has seen several high-profile resignations among Black faculty and administrators in Boston in past years and struggled to create an inclusive environment for faculty and students of color.
This Labor Day, members of mighty little ELAF-AAUP will be reflecting on the many ways their union has made their lives better. When we work together, we are powerful!
Contributing editor Carolyn Betensky is professor of English at the University of Rhode Island, a former AAUP Council member, and a cofounder and executive committee member of Tenure for the Common Good.
