UDC Faculty Union has Deep Roots

Faculty members at the only public institution of higher education in the District of Columbia organized a union soon after the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) was chartered in 1974. The latest affiliate of the Metro Washington Council, the UDC Faculty Association – a National Education Alliance local – represents just over 200 faculty members at the only urban land-grant institution in the nation. Leslie Richards – a UDC sociology professor – is in her third and final term as President of the local. Richards says the local’s greatest achievement was winning a fair agreement in 2003, after ten years without a contract. During the city’s budget crisis, the UDC faculty took pay cuts, kept working and struggled with the challenge of negotiating with very little leverage. “We tried to organize grade strikes,” Richards tells UNION CITY, “but it failed because so many of our own members wanted exceptions for their students.” Richards began her career at the Federal City College, one of three institutions of higher learning that were merged into UDC, a graduate and baccalaureate degree granting institution that’s also a community college for the District. The UDC Faculty Association – one of the very first NEA locals granted an AFL-CIO charter – faces many of the issues affecting other area locals, including a trend toward more “permanent temporary” hires, “Some of whom have now been teaching for upwards of ten years,” says Richards. Richards loves to swim, travel and knit, and her daughter Mariama is a diversity officer at Georgetown Day School. Photo by Chris Garlock