WELLESLEY — Wellesley College professors walked off their jobs on Thursday in response to unsuccessful contract negotiations amid the private women's liberal arts college facing a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall.
The college's non-tenure track faculty, who are represented by the United Auto Workers (which represents more than 100,000 academic workers nationally), first unionized in January 2024 and have been bargaining since last May.
Annie Brubaker, a faculty member on the organizing committee, explained that the union has a few sticking points, including workload, compensations, child care benefits and medical leave.
Professors picketing told the Daily News they want to maintain a four-course-per-year workload, and said non-tenure track employees do not have access to other benefits such as mortgage assistance and do not advance at the same rate as tenure-track faculty.
"I think for a women's college to have a set of second-class citizens is a bad look for many reasons, most of them historical," said Diego Arciniegas, a senior lecturer for theater.
Anthropology and religion lecturer Holly Walters shared that she's been with the college for six years and is struggling to afford living in Greater Boston.
"I don't make enough money to survive," she said. "My home has been here for the past six years. I love the college, it's been a wonderful experience, but I would like to do it without living in poverty."
College officials say union has rejected multiple offers
Stacey Schmeidel, Wellesley's director of media relations, referred the Daily News to an email sent to the Wellesley College community from President Paula Johnson and other administrators.
In it, college administrators said the union has rejected multiple offers, including offering the union the professorial titles the union wants; agreement with the union's demand for fewer years for promotion eligibility; and a 30% increase in compensation for bargaining unit employees over the next four years in exchange for teaching five courses a year.
In addition, the email says the union is proposing an average increase of 54% in compensation in the first year of the contract, along with average per-person raises of $54,000 for those with 10 to 20 years of experience, and average per-person raises of $64,000 for those with more than 20 years of experience. The college called this "unreasonable."
"First contracts take, on average, more than a year to negotiate," the email from administrators states. "The College has been working hard over the past 10 months in good faith to try to negotiate a fair agreement with the union that also takes into consideration the needs of our entire community. The union’s refusal to go to mediation and to instead call for a strike is arbitrary and premature."
College says it faces large deficit for upcoming fiscal year
Meanwhile, Wellesley College is projecting it will have a more than $8 million deficit, requiring it to make significant changes to its spending and budget for fiscal 2026.
"We are living with increasing economic uncertainty in the U.S. and globally, and we face challenging public conversations about higher education," Wellesley administrators said in the email shared by Schmeidel.
The email states that the administration's goal is to focus on areas for permanent spending reductions rather than one-time savings to address the deficit.
According to the email, the deficit is caused by a number of factors, including slow revenue growth from increases in the student comprehensive fee; the college's endowment funding 45% of its budget; building investments; and taxes on its endowment.
In addition, other factors that could affect finances include the potential enforcement actions from the Department of Education, the possibility of rescinded grants and an increase in the endowment tax.
"If the College experiences any or all of these events, we will have to seriously examine how we go about providing a Wellesley education," the email states.
Founded in 1870, Wellesley College has nearly 2,300 undergraduate students.