Earlham College community protests Wednesday for better pay and benefits for professors

RICHMOND, Ind. — Dozens of Earlham College professors, faculty and students descended onto the "Heart" of campus Wednesday afternoon in protest.

The protest saw around 100 people show up in support of the Earlham chapter of the American Association of University Professors unionizing, as a way to "up the pressure on the administration" of Earlham College after the group filed a formal and legally-binding request to begin collective bargaining but say they have received no answer from the college.

Six professors and four students took to the microphone to speak on how unionization would better the college community.

Ryan Murphy, president of the professors' union organizing campaign and associate professor of history and women's, gender and sexuality studies at Earlham, spoke on the optimism he has that the professors at the college will unionize.

"Seeing all of these beautiful, amazing people out here just makes my heart feel really full and really excited," he said. "It also makes me feel like this is real and this is going to happen. This is not a pipe dream. This is a union. This is going to happen this semester."

Murphy went on to talk about the history of the union movement across the United States for the past 200 years, including when formerly enslaved women organized a Laundry Workers Union in Atlanta in 1881, when eastern European Jewish garment workers in New York City unionized in 1958, and all the way to the baseball players and teachers fighting for more rights in recent years.

"We're at that phase where stressful emails are going to be coming out every single day about why we shouldn't have a union," he said, "and what those emails tell you is that you shouldn't dream to have more, that what we have now is the best that we can do."

Murphy added after the protest that although professors are very much ready to begin collective bargaining, he feels like the school is intentionally trying to delay the decision.

"My read of the administration's position is that the longer that they can talk internally, the longer the delay will be and that it benefits them because they don't have to negotiate pay and benefits with professors," he said.

Reece Axel-Adams, leader of the Student Solidarity Movement for the Union at the college, was one of the students to speak.

"The administration often says that the students are the body of the college, we're literally called the student body," he said. "But if we're the body of the college, then the teachers and professors are 100% the blood and the bones of the college."

Axel-Adams continued by saying he is in support of Earlham having a teacher's union as a way of preventing turnover among the college's faculty.

"When a teacher leaves because of not good pay and because they've gotten better offers in other states or other schools in Indiana, we don't just lose a teacher," he said. "We lose a mentor. We lose an uplifter. We lose a friend, and I'm done losing friends … The way we ensure that they don't leave is by having a teacher's union who can sit with the administration and say, 'Hey, you weren't looking out for us; we're going to look out for ourselves. We're going to advocate for better pay. We're going to advocate for better health care benefits and better childcare benefits.'"

Jennifer Calderón, a Bonner and Presidential Student Scholar at the college, recited a letter called "A love letter for good-A love letter for my professors" from her phone.

"… We seek different things for multiple others, because one solution for various adversities do not come instantly," she read from one of her excerpts. "But they exist. A solution for all, a hand for many, our professors rise to this challenge in their words more than just a lecture but a grand opening to a new adventure and ideas."

She continued later on in her letter by saying that Earlham's professors are "more than average to be asking for average pay."

"My professors are my Earlham experience," she read. "My professors are the reason I am at Earlham … My professors are the reason Earlham has been a part of the colleges that save lives and change lives. But if the institution cannot recognize them, how can the world and future students? … As students we can only do so much as we come and go in a four-year cycle, but Earlham can do so much and should if they want to be a worthy institution. Because Earlham is nothing without our professors."

What are the main issues?

One major issue that the union supporters are fighting for is higher pay. In a PowerPoint provided to the Palladium-Item from Murphy, 2021-22 data provided by the institutions themselves, it shows that Earlham College ranks either the lowest or second lowest among its peer institutions in the Great Lakes College Association for average salary earned by assistant, associate and full professors.

Shannon Flaherty, assistant professor of art and art history at Earlham, echoed another one of the union's chief concerns that were brought up multiple times throughout the protest: childcare benefits.

"We need support for basic necessities like childcare," she said. "There's this phrase in labor-organizing history that says 'Bread for all and roses too.' … I'm really dedicated to the Earlham teaching faculty union because right now our bread and our roses our insufficient. Without these, how are we going to do the work of a liberal arts institution? Of a Quaker institution?"

What is Earlham College's perspective?

Prior to the protest at the "Heart" of Earlham, the Palladium-Item interviewed Kristen Lainsbury, vice president of marketing and communications at Earlham and Brian Zimmerman, assistant vice president of strategic communications to understand the college's perspective of the professors' unionization attempts.

"We were presented with a formal request for union recognition of Feb. 9," Lainsbury said. "At that time, the expected or requested response was a short period of turnaround. We have not denied the request, and I think there's a perception that we have."

As a Quaker institution, Lainsbury said that consultation and commitment to community have "been a huge part of Earlham's identity" since its 1847 founding, which is part of the reason why they said they have responded, but have not made a recommendation to the board regarding a decision.

"For us to make any decision without consulting the broader community would be sort of antithetical to who we are," Lainsbury said. "So we are taking the time to understand and collect feedback from all members of our community."

The feedback collected from the community will be done at three separate sessions on Earlham's campus on Feb. 22, Feb. 27 and Feb. 29. Lainsbury said these sessions will be open to the campus community.

"They're not question and answer sessions," she said. "They're just question sessions, and we're just trying to get a better sense of what the campus community is [thinking] so that we can advise our Board of Trustees when they ultimately make the decision."

Another reason Lainsbury said that the school did not respond in the union's specified time is because the decision could have a large impact on not just the finances and operations of the college but to "the fabric of who Earlham is as a campus culture."

In response to the union's concerns about pay, Lainsbury said that not just faculty but everyone employed by the college has their salaries closely tied to enrollment numbers at the school, which has seen a decline over recent years. On that issue, she said, the college has a plan in place to grow enrollment quickly.

Regarding childcare, she echoed the union's statement about the scarcity of it and the challenges to find it in Richmond. Earlham does have the Trueblood Preschool on campus that's affiliated with Richmond Friends School but no resources for early childhood, an option that Lainsbury said the college is exploring.

After the information sessions, the conversation will then head to the 24-member Board of Trustees, which will continue holding discussions on the topic.

"We have one of the most committed and accomplished teaching faculties in the country," Lainsbury said. "We're very fortunate to have that, and any concern that they raise is something we're going to take seriously."

Evan Weaver is a news and sports reporter at The Palladium-Item. Contact him on X (@evan_weaver7) or email at eweaver@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Earlham College Professors protest in support of unionization