Thousands of Penn State faculty members will soon vote on whether to unionize, and organizers say the university’s administration has broken its pledge to remain neutral on the election. Penn State officials, however, say they are only providing information in response to questions about faculty unionization.
Ballots will be mailed from the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board to some 5,000 faculty members on April 1 and must be returned to the PLRB’s Harrisburg office by May 6, the Penn State Faculty Alliance wrote in an update on Wednesday. Ballots will be counted starting at 10:30 a.m. on May 13.
The election will be open to tenured and non-tenure line faculty at University Park and the Commonwealth Campuses. It will not include the Commonwealth Campuses.
“It’s time to make sure our voices are heard. We’re building momentum, and your vote is crucial,” organizers wrote, adding that forming a union will give faculty “a meaningful voice in decisions at Penn State affecting pay, job security, working conditions, and our students’ success.”
The faculty alliance filed a petition for an election with the PLRB in December after surpassing the necessary 30% authorization cards and is affiliating with SEIU Local 668, which represents 20,000 public service employees across the commonwealth.
Since then, 102 state lawmakers signed a letter calling on the Penn State administration to remain neutral toward faculty unionization.
Then at a state House Appropriations Committee hearing on March 11, state Rep. Tarik Khan, D-Philadelphia, asked Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi if she “will commit not to use any university funds or taxpayer money or any other resources to discourage people from exercising their democratic right to join a union” and to not use resources “on misinformation, on convincing people why it’s not a good idea to join a union.”
Bendapudi replied “yes” to both questions, but faculty organizers said this week that her administration is not upholding that pledge.
On Tuesday, faculty members began receiving invitations to what the alliance called “anti-union meetings” starting next week.
“This union is by faculty, for faculty,” Michael Steward, faculty organizer and associate teaching professor of mathematics at University Park, said in a statement. “We are coming together to improve working and learning conditions at Penn State by using our collective voice. We have an important decision ahead of us this semester. We can choose to have a real say in decision-making at Penn State by voting for our faculty union. I am so disappointed by President Bendapudi and her administration’s reversal of last week’s commitment not to use university resources or public funds to interfere with our union election.”
A Penn State spokesperson described the meetings as informational, town-hall gatherings “in response to questions received about faculty unionization through a variety of channels, including requests from academic leadership to address questions from their colleges.”
“These information sessions are designed to be an optional space to support open, respectful dialogue and provide information as the process moves forward,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to StateCollege.com “The goal is to highlight the process, share information about who will be included in the collective bargaining unit and encourage faculty to educate themselves further about the process and, most importantly, vote in the upcoming election.”
The meeting invitations also included a link to the university’s faculty unionization website, which the alliance says “disingenuously implies that unionization would risk Penn State’s research capabilities, its ability to maintain grant-funded work and the privacy and autonomy of faculty.”
A FAQ on the website says that the majority of the university’s peers do not have unionized tenure-line faculty and a union election “may impact Penn State’s ability to compete against peers to recruit leading faculty and researchers who drive innovation.”
The Penn State spokesperson said that like the upcoming meetings, the website is merely informational.
“The university’s faculty unionization website was developed to provide clear information about the unionization process and related considerations,” he wrote. “As we have stated before, we respect their right to seek union representation, and we worked with the Penn State Faculty Alliance and the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board to finalize the details of the election, which will begin in April and be conducted via mail-in ballots.”
The vote is expected to be “the largest single union election in the public sector in the history of the commonwealth,” Steve Catanese, president of SEIU Local 668, said in December.
On the heels of Penn State’s decision to close some Commonwealth Campuses, the faculty alliance announced in early 2025 that efforts were underway to unionize. They cited a raft of university decisions, including changes to health care benefits, reorganization of university structures, employee buyout programs, new budget models and the Commonwealth Campuses, as the reason for needing a stronger voice for faculty.
It will be the second major organizing vote at Penn State in less than a year. The university’s graduate students in October voted overwhelmingly in favor of forming a union affiliated with the United Auto Workers International Region 9.
