research and learning by advocating for equitable funding for crucial resources and shared infrastructure across the NMSU system.
Menu
We are full-time tenured, tenure-track, and college-track faculty across all the campuses in the NMSU system with shared concerns. We have joined together to strengthen our faculty voice and bargain collectively to advocate for workplace improvements across our university system.
By acting collectively, we can promote transparency and equity in workplace decisions
such as salaries, benefits and teaching loads, workplace safety, and grievance procedures that provide legally binding protections for workers and accountability for administrators. Together we will take steps to create an environment that better reflects the values we bring to our HSI, MSI, Land-Grant institution.
research and learning by advocating for equitable funding for crucial resources and shared infrastructure across the NMSU system.
racial equality, social justice, and environmental sustainability by challenging systems of oppression and inequity.
student learning by recruiting and retaining excellent faculty whose diversity reflects the goals of a Hispanic-Serving Institution.
a fairer and more equitable workplace and learning environment.
accountability and transparency in decision-making.
shared university governance.
due process in workplace policies.
academic freedom, open inquiry, free speech, and collaboration.
the economic security of faculty through compensation, benefits, workloads, workplace protections and grievance procedures arrived at via collective bargaining agreements.
and maintain the standards, ideals, and unity of the NMSU faculty.
Unions have a long and successful track record of securing better workplace conditions for workers in general. Concepts such as paid vacation, paid sick leave, social security, minimum wage, employee health care as well as many others were achieved through the efforts of unions. Institutions where faculty are unionized fare better than those who are not with respect to salary, workload, raises, healthcare, benefits, and policies for promotion and tenure and grievances. Unions establish the common ground for a productive working environment for all faculty regardless of changes in administrators.
Although overcoming obstacles to pay equity is a concern we have heard often from NMSU faculty, there are many issues that affect faculty working conditions beyond our salary. Some of our faculty are interested in critically examining workload issues and have expressed interest in reducing our healthcare costs. Others are concerned with writing ironclad policies that hold people accountable for workplace bullying, for providing greater transparency in promotion and tenure decisions, and offering greater clarity in grievance procedures. Still other faculty want to enshrine the notion of shared governance in roles, responsibilities, and outcomes in policies and procedures that stress accountability. By forming a union, we are leveraging the power of a collective voice to ensure that all faculty are treated fairly and transparently and that we promote better working conditions for all faculty by addressing those challenges, rather than waiting or hoping for others to do so on our behalf.
NMSU has been through many administrative changes without seeing progress made on the working conditions of faculty. As we once again transition through an interim administration to a new administration, now more than ever we need a seat at the table to ensure that faculty priorities are understood and honored. The Faculty Senate is onlyremains an advisory body that the administration can choose to ignore. By having a contract that is collectively bargained, we set legally-binding conditions to define our workplace. Unions play an important part in providing stability and a level-playing field no matter who occupies administrative positions.
Our union represents a diverse faculty across many institutions. Our union structure will reflect that diversity. To be effective in responding to the concerns of faculty across NMSU’s campuses and keeping them informed of our progress, we need to have members committed to engaging in communication, sharing their knowledge and expertise as we draft a constitution and bylaws that represent our values of shared governance and fight for the priorities that faculty have identified as critical to include in our collective bargaining agreement.
Our strength is in our numbers. Joining ensures that we are representing faculty across our campuses, disciplines, tenure-track and college-track ranks and ensures you have a say in how you are represented. Membership also means that you have access to enhanced workplace benefits such as legal representation and liability insurance.
Dues are a necessary part of membership. Dues help pay for resources and support that allow us to bargain effectively on behalf of our members. Dues enroll you not only in your local union, but also provide you with membership in your state and national unions. Members decide what due structure is equitable and fair for their members. Union dues are not collected until after we achieve our first collective bargaining agreement.
You can reach out to a member of the organizing committee to fill out a paper form and answer any questions.
By both federal and state law, workers have the right to organize. Employers are legally prohibited from disciplining, firing, demoting, transferring, giving employees new requirements to maintain their job, or making their working conditions less desirable by reducing or withholding pay or benefits, or even threatening to do any of these things, just because they are forming a union. Go to workcenter.gov to find out more about your rights and protections under the law.
This statement is a common form of misinformation shared by employers to discourage employees from starting a union.
Starting at the most general level, unions have achieved the five-day, forty-hour workweek, down from about a 72-hour workweek in the 19th century. They have worked for safer workplaces, to end child labor, to provide health benefits for workers, to provide pensions for workers in retirement, and to raise the status of working families over many decades.
In the state of New Mexico, teachers’ unions have raised starting salaries for teachers in ways that are beginning to have an impact. Higher-education unions have achieved some tuition remission for graduate students and raised average stipends, raised faculty salaries across the board, even for contingent workers, guaranteed parental leave, and addressed workload issues.
Our union is composed of college track, tenure-track and tenured faculty of all ranks across our different campuses. They are people you know and have worked with. We are all in this together.
Our constitution and bylaws will represent faculty across our campuses and ensure all have a voice in how the union conducts itself. Being local means we advocate for issues that are important to us while having the backing of the resources of a national organization. Our union is at its best when its members are actively engaged. Adding your voice and taking an active part helps the union be effective in its formation and functioning.
These statements represent common misperceptions about unions.
Faculty unions work to define transparent, fair policies concerning what types of conduct are inappropriate and what procedures and recourse is available when those policies are violated. Accountability is key to ensure fair and equitable workplace conditions. Consider what policies and procedures are currently in place that protect faculty from coworkers that engage in misconduct and what policies and procedures you would like to put in place. We can identify practices that are not fair and transparent and work to change them. When both faculty and supervisors are informed, aware of, and held accountable for their treatment of individuals seeking promotion and tenure, there is less opportunity for mistreatment and greater opportunities for faculty to create working conditions that allow them to thrive.
Workplace tension and adversarial relationships thrive in conditions where employers and employees do not have equal say in defining working conditions. Faculty unions ensure that faculty priorities are on equal footing with those of the administration.
Negotiations are all about finding common ground and making progress toward agreement by both faculty and administrators. Sometimes both sides start with visions that are far apart from each other and have to work through several rounds of negotiations to arrive at an acceptable conclusion. As a union, we will engage in collective bargaining carrying the interests of the faculty we represent in mind.
In March of 2024, NMSU-NEA submitted authorization cards to the New Mexico Public Employee Labor Relations Board (NMPERLB). In June of 2024, the NMPELRB will hold a status hearing to resolve conflicts the NMSU Administration has with the definition of the bargaining unit in order to recognize the union. The NMSU-NEA has already reserved the right to initiate the collective bargaining process this year once the recognition steps are completed. Currently, the Organizing Committee of the NMSU-NEA is undergoing training in collective bargaining, reviewing faculty input on priorities, drafting a constitution and by-laws, recruiting faculty for committees to draft articles, seek input, communicate progress, and assist in the collective bargaining process. If you have not yet been contacted, reach out to us at nmsunea@gmail.com to lend assistance.
We are already seeing change. Faculty are excited to hear that we will have a voice in the decision-making on our NMSU campuses. We continue to build strong bonds, dispel misconceptions about activities on different campuses, and share best practices for improving the workplace environment. As we collectively craft our constitution and bylaws, democratically elect representatives from each unit, and learn of our members’ concerns, we will continue to be transparent in the representation of the diverse voices and interests of our faculty.
NMSU-NEA includes full-time tenured, tenure-track, and college track faculty and department heads with less than 60% specifically allocated to administration on all four NMSU campuses (NMSU-Las Cruces, DACC, NMSU-Alamogordo, NMSU-Grants). Units need to represent individuals with a shared “community of interest“ and are able to establish a definition of who is included and excluded in the unit. Any challenges to the definition are brought before the Public Employees Labor Relations Board when the union is seeking recognition. The PELRB examines various factors such as similarities in funding sources for salary, benefits, supervision, and employee evaluations to demonstrate that the bargaining unit is appropriate. The findings of a PELRB hearing in June of 2024 rejected the NMSU administration’s attempts to extend the boundaries of our bargaining unit, and instead, upheld as appropriate the definition included in our original petition.