You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Faculty members at Notre Dame de Namur University field 15 wage claims against the institution with the California Division of Labor Standards and Enforcement, saying the university is keeping their overload pay from them. The professors say that Notre Dame de Namur has abruptly decided to withhold overload pay, or compensation for extra courses taught, until the end of the year, in violation of a state labor law saying that work must be paid as it is performed.
“The university’s solution to its financial challenges is to dump ever more work for the same pay on faculty’s plates,” Jean Nyland, a professor of psychology, said in a statement Monday. “There’s a limit to how much faculty can be expected to sacrifice before student learning suffers. Delaying payment for our work means we are essentially loaning the university money for the year.”
Professors, including tenure-track and tenured professors, at Notre Dame de Namur are part of a union affiliated with Service Employees International Union. Nationwide, few tenure-line faculty members on private campuses are unionized, due to a longstanding legal precedent saying they are managers and therefore exempt from collective bargaining.
John Allen Lemmon, interim provost, said in a statement that the university and its faculty union are in the early stages of their new collective bargaining relationship. In the area of overload pay, he said, “We have made constructive compromise that I believe will lead to continued progress in this new venture.”
He did not elaborate.
