About Us

About AFT Higher Education

The AFT represents higher education faculty (including both full- and part-time), professional staff and graduate employees, in all sectors of higher education—public and private, two-year and four-year institutions of higher education. MORE

History of the AFT

Learn the history of the AFT, including the union's founding in Chicago in 1916, its affiliation with the AFL-CIO, its battles for workers and human rights and its continued work to uphold the proud traditions on which the union was created.

AFT Mission Statement

The American Federation of Teachers is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.

About the AFT

Learn more about the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which was founded in 1916 to represent the economic, social and professional interests of classroom teachers and is an affiliated international union of the AFL-CIO.

Welcome

Welcome to the website for the Rhode Island College Adjunct Faculty Chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. We hope these pages will give you a good sense of who we are and how we support part-time faculty at RIC.

If you just happen to glance at our union local number, AFT 1563, it seems pretty nondescript, but early Adjunct Union members smile whenever they see it. Here's why: as you know the first step in organizing a union is rounding up supporters who will vote to establish the union as their bargaining unit. When, after months of organizing with the vital assistance of staff