Howard University faculty member Anthony Jackson lives in Woodbridge, Virginia — 25 miles away from where he works. He earns just above the average salary for non-tenured, full-time lecturers, which his union says is roughly $50,000 per year. He says he knows colleagues who earn below that and live as far as Philadelphia, where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $723 less.

“There are people that live considerably far away from D.C. because they can’t afford to live in the city and they make the commute because of the love that they have for the university, because of the love that they have for the students,” Jackson tells DCist/WAMU. “It’s not just about the money. It’s about being engaged in the community, but having the resources to be able to live while we do it.”

Jackson says he and dozens of his colleagues plan to strike next week because their efforts to increase pay for non-tenured full- and part-time lecturers, as well as ensure job security through collective bargaining, have stalled due to their employer. According to their union, Service Employees International Union Local 500, Howard University engaged in bad-faith bargaining during contract negotiations — including canceling or walking out of sessions and refusing to change or modify initial proposals.  A union representative says the university also declined to provide them information relevant to the bargaining process. SEIU Local 500 filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board earlier this month, alleging the university refused to bargain and to furnish information.

The majority of the 350 unionized members are expected not to teach during the unfair labor practice strike between March 23 to 25, the representative says, and some will even picket at the university. According to the school’s site, there are currently 1,194 full-time and adjunct faculty members.

In a statement on Howard’s website, the university effectively denied the union’s accusations. “Our commitment to a peaceful bargaining process has not changed,” the statement reads, “and we will continue advancing good faith efforts to reach an agreement with the union and address the needs.”

In an open letter to staff, Provost Anthony K. Wutoh said that courses would continue as scheduled despite the strike, and that non-unionized faculty will lead those courses. “The University will implement contingency plans to lessen any adverse impact on our students,” he said.

The SEIU Local 500 representative tells DCist/WAMU that the union entered contract negotiations nearly four years ago for the 150 non-tenured, full-time lecturers, and nearly three years ago for 200 adjunct faculty members who are part-time. That it’s taken full-time lecturers three and a half years to negotiate their first contract is unusual — the average time for that process is just over one year, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis. (Contracts for the education sector take an average of 466 days.) The representative says the university is being represented in bargaining by Jackson Lewis, a well-known anti-union law firm. According to the law firm’s website, Jackson Lewis taught a “Remaining UNION free” training as recently as 2019, where participants were taught to counter organizing strategies.

English senior lecturer Cyrus Hampton, who’s been a member of the union since its inception, says he is deeply disappointed to see how his alma mater treats its workers, who are hoping to secure a living wage. He earned $45,000 annually when he started in 2017, and only received one raise since, bumping him to $50,000 annually. He says people are continuing to be paid these low salaries but the union cannot do anything about it until leadership stops slow-walking bargaining.

“It is jarring that a university with this history, a university with this mission statement built into its charter, would so clearly work against educators, work against Black educators, and work against — many of us are Howard alums — its own alumni,” Hampton tells DCist/WAMU. “We care about this university — care about these students — and the fact that we do seems to be one of the biggest weapons used against us.”

Through collective bargaining, the union is hoping to increase pay for both non-tenured full-time lectures and adjunct part-time faculty. Howard University lecturers earn below the average salary of this job position in D.C., according to 2018-2019 school year data from the Chronicle of Higher Education. That year Howard lecturers averaged $49,879, while Gallaudet University lecturers averaged $62,642. About 75 % of the lecturers are Black, according to their union. (According to the Post, unionized workers were excluded from recent pay raises, deeming them ineligible; the union disagreed and viewed the tactic as undermining their efforts.)

Meanwhile, the union representative says they’re trying to improve pay parity for adjunct part-time members, who earn $4,000 or less for teaching a course each semester (meaning, no more than $16,000 annually) and is significantly less than underpaid lecturers make for similar work. These workers, even if they are qualified, are also not offered teaching positions first as they become available, something the union aims to change.

Howard outlined how the university supports staff on its website, noting they moved an additional $80 million from the endowment to fully fund the faculty retiree plan, as well as avoided pandemic layoffs. The university also says management offered proposals for wage increases during collective bargaining.

The union also hopes to secure job security for faculty. Currently, the representative says the overwhelming majority of full-time faculty who are off tenured tracks have to reapply for their job every year regardless of their teacher effectiveness. They are also capped at seven years of teaching, so some full-time faculty become part-time consequently.

“Toni Morrison fell victim to the seven-year rule,” says Jackson, referring to the late author’s time teaching at Howard starting in 1958. “One of the students said it when we were at the rally yesterday — Erica England — she asked ‘How many Toni Morrisons are out here?’ Right? How many total Toni Morrisons is the university looking at as disposable people to be used and thrown away when we don’t need them anymore. Right? No matter the impact that they have on students.”

Wutoh suggested the university would not budge on the seven-year rule in his letter to staff. “Eliminating the seven-year rule would have significant implications on our University, including escalating costs for students, limiting the number of future temporary faculty openings, and eroding the tenure system for tenured and tenure track faculty,” he said.

Jackson called his employer’s practices “trauma-inducing.” Hampton, Jackson and the SEIU Local 500 representative all say the university has lecturers like Jackson reapply every year, meaning they won’t know whether they’ll be employed and therefore afford housing every year. He is anxious about having to reapply given his experience with the hiring there: He was first offered a position within the Department of Sociology and Criminology in August 2021 but did not receive a finalized contract until October 2021. He also relocated from Richmond to Woodbridge because he was told he’d be teaching in-person, however he only ever taught his 240 students online. He still does not have access to Blackboard, the educational technology service needed to communicate with his students. He hopes collective bargaining enables institutional support.

“I honestly have a love for Howard,” says Jackson, who got his start at the university as a student in 2015. “How can I be the change that I want to see in our students, in our university, in our communities, at large? And so joining the union was a big part of that for me.”

He sees his organizing efforts as an extension of what he learned from Howard University and a continuation of what he hopes to teach to his students. Howard students have recently organized as well, protesting last fall for improved housing.

In a letter to Wutoh and President Wayne A. I., dozens of tenured faculty expressed solidarity with their unionized colleagues.

“Howard University can make a different choice in its policies toward these faculty members—one more consistent with our mission and commitment to students, and to the Black community and African Diaspora writ large,” the letter reads.

This story has been updated to include response from Howard University.