Bentley U. Adjuncts Reject Unionization, Setting Back a Regional Strategy

Adjunct faculty members at Bentley University have voted, 100 to 98, against forming a union, dealing an early setback to an effort by the Service Employees International Union to organize adjunct instructors throughout the Boston metropolitan area.

The Boston organizing effort, part of a broader strategy by the SEIU to unionize adjuncts across metropolitan areas and use market pressures to improve their pay, moved onto a new battleground on Tuesday with its announcement that adjuncts at Lesley University, in Cambridge, Mass., had filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election. Adjuncts at Tufts University voted last month to unionize, and a separate effort to organize Northeastern University adjuncts is under way.

The counting of votes at Bentley, a private university in Waltham, Mass., had initially been set for October 4 but was delayed until Tuesday as a result of the recent shutdown of the federal government.