Some classes at Tufts University were canceled Monday and Tuesday as dozens of full-time lecturers carried out a two-day strike, The Boston Globe reported Monday. 

According to SEIU Local 509, 94 percent of the 121 full-time lecturers they represent at Tufts’ School of Arts and Sciences voted for the strike following 10 months of stalled contract negotiations. The lecturers, who don’t have tenure protections, make about 80 percent of the area’s median income and are demanding better pay and reduced workloads. 

The university has offered full-time lecturers a 2.5 percent salary increase, but a union representative said that offer “has remained stagnant without a cost of living adjustment, threatening to make Tufts full-time lecturers the lowest-paid lecturers among Tufts’ peer institutions.”

Tufts told the Globe Monday that lecturers received a 2.5 percent salary increase in September. 

According to Patrick Collins, a university spokesperson, Tufts and the union are “engaged in good faith collective bargaining toward a third contract for the bargaining unit” but remain in “disagreement over compensation and workload.” He added that the university “has a compensation and merit increase philosophy that it applies to all faculty and staff,” which is awarded “with attention to the relevant external market and internal equity, among other factors.”

Additionally, Collins told the Globe, any full-time lecturers who canceled classes during the walkout are also expected to “take steps to ensure the academic integrity of the classes, similar to when faculty miss class due to illness or other conflicts.”