Importance of Union Membership Meetings

By Sara Silverman-Smith, ARC History Faculty

Union membership meetings serve a distinct and essential role in our union’s work. Unlike other union events—such as the Union Power Hour or social gatherings—membership meetings provide an organizing space.

At membership meetings, members can put forward proposals about projects to organize around—and vote on them! These might include:

• Contract education and know your rights campaigns
• Improving job security and compensation for part-time faculty
• Class size issues, and connecting large class sizes to undermining the quality of education for our undergraduates
• Workload creep from student use of AI—as professors, we’re developing new course policies and investigating student use of AI, and we aren’t being compensated for this additional work

Membership meetings are where we address critical questions like: How can we organize in between contract cycles? How can we organize for a stronger contract?

Union membership meetings give members a voice and an opportunity to get involved in union organizing, which we really don’t have in other spaces within the union. This is what sets them apart—they’re not only informational or social, though these facets of our union work are very important. They’re where we build power together.