AACC’s full-time faculty members are deciding this month whether they will unionize.
Professors who support joining the Maryland State Education Association have said the union will advocate, on behalf of faculty, for more paid parental leave and for more of a focus on teaching than on administrative tasks.
“We need to be represented,” history professor Rita Gomez, one of the union organizers on campus, said. “We need to have a voice, and we need to be recognized as competent professionals who know what they’re doing and do not need over-management.”
Gomez added: “We don’t have a say, and this is something that I take very personally.”
Psychology professor Matt Patton, another organizer, said faculty have an important perspective that should be included in the college’s decision-making.
If 50% of faculty members—plus one person—sign membership forms saying they want to join the union, the union can be certified. If fewer faculty members sign up, the union effort will stop.
Faculty members can get membership forms from union advocates like Gomez, Patton, English professor Suzanne Spoor, history professor Frank Alduino and about 15 others who have been working behind the scenes to bring a faculty union to AACC for more than two years.
Spoor said the group hopes to collect enough membership forms to have the union certified before Thanksgiving.
In 2021, a vote in the Maryland Legislature allowed community college faculty and staff to unionize.
Since then, four community colleges in Maryland have unionized or have unions. An effort for faculty to unionize at Prince George’s Community College is reportedly underway.
AACC’s adjunct faculty unionized in October 2023.