Implementation of the first contract between Santa Clara University’s Adjunct and Lecturer Union and the University remains ongoing as union leaders and University administrators work to reach consensus on some of the contract’s stipulations. This consistent dialogue often is due to miscommunications in understanding some of the language in the contract.

**Photo by Dylan Ryu.** Faculty table for Santa Clara University’s Adjunct and Lecturer Union in 2024.

Union representatives meet with members of the administration every two weeks to come to a common understanding of the expectations of the University outlined in the contract. This conversation has been consistent since last May, when the union formally ratified their first-ever collectively bargained contract.

The implementation is a complicated process that involves numerous offices and actors around the University. Some of the contract’s requirements, including title changes and bonuses upon contract approval, were enacted immediately. Other portions of the contract have taken longer to implement.

Over half-a-year later, the contract’s implementation has been generally successful despite these misunderstandings.

“The pieces that are in place to automatically function are functioning,” said Deirdre Frontczak, a lecturer in the management department who serves as chief steward of the union. “Where there has been some drag is in areas where there’s interpretation required of what exactly these terms mean in the contract, what we understand them to mean and what the administrators understand them to mean.”

While efforts to reach consensus on the meaning of this language are ongoing, the two sides have made significant progress.

“Language in the agreements was a little ambiguous, and we’ve been working through those issues. Some of them have been resolved. Some of them haven’t,” said Andy Wolfe, the president of the union and an original member of the organizing team, who is also a lecturer in the computer science and engineering department.

One example of a stipulation that has taken time to implement, according to Wolfe, is the contract’s provision that faculty cannot be evaluated using criteria from student teaching evaluations alone—there must be some other form of data used in the evaluation. This stipulation arose from research suggesting that student teaching evaluations can be biased and therefore unreliable as the sole source of instructor feedback.

“There’s nobody who’s saying they won’t do that, but there are a lot of people who didn’t understand that they were supposed to do it this year,” said Wolfe. “So lots of reminders going out, letting people know they need to schedule stuff.”

“There are disagreements, some of which we can resolve, some which we haven’t been able to resolve, but no breakdowns in communication. There’s been an education process,” Wolfe said.

This “education process” has benefited from consistent dialogue between union leaders and University administrators.

“At the highest levels, there’s been cooperation,” said Wolfe. “There’s been no breakdowns in communication.”

Solidifying ambiguous language from the first contract will be among the considerations for the bargaining team in the next round of negotiations, but the focus will remain on continuing to make progress on fundamental issues.

“Primary focuses are our job security, pay equity,” said Wolfe. “We’re still 40 to 50% below what tenure track faculty get paid in many cases, so that’s going to be part of the focus.”

The next union contract is scheduled to take effect in June 2026. Negotiations are expected to begin this summer, a year in advance of the anticipated ratification date.