April 26, 2006
Dear Members and Colleagues,
I am happy to announce that the PSC has reached a contract
settlement. We received word from CUNY management at the end of
the day yesterday that the City, the State and CUNY had agreed
to a settlement. The union immediately reviewed and this
morning approved the document summarizing the agreement.
Every PSC member who contributed to the long campaign for this
contract should consider the settlement your achievement.
Welfare Fund Victory
In the final few weeks of
negotiations, we were able to gain a victory that had eluded us
for three years: management has agreed to a multimillion-dollar
increase in contributions to the Welfare Fund. This money is
above and beyond the salary increases. Together with the
additions to the Welfare Fund reserves, funded out of the
settlement, the new contributions by CUNY will stabilize the
Welfare Fund for at least two years beyond the end of the
contract and allow for an improvement in the dental plan.
Improved dental coverage was a primary goal for many members in
this contract, and the union negotiating team was not willing to
settle until we provided for it. It is significant, in the
current political climate, that we were able to secure an
increase in annual contributions to healthcare by management.
Sabbaticals at 80% Pay
The settlement includes
salary increases of 9.5%, on average, over the life of the
contract. Because the State held us to the same salary increases
as the SUNY faculty, the union bargaining team fought to expand
the total economic package in areas other than salary. Your
activism as members, together with the bargaining team's
negotiation over the tenure clock, produced significant
additional money, primarily for two areas: the Welfare
Fund, and research and professional development. The settlement
includes an increase in sabbatical pay to 80%, enhanced
professional development support for employees in nearly every
title, and a doubling of research time for future untenured
faculty. It also removes several past concessions and
resolves some issues of basic fairness, such as CUNY's failure
to provide paid sick days to all employees. Almost as important
as what the contract includes is what it omits: the union
defeated management's demands to remove department chairs from
the bargaining unit and reduce job security for higher education
officers.
There is no denying that this is a settlement within fierce
economic constraints imposed on all public-employee unions by
the City and State. The conversation for the next round of
bargaining must be about how to change the political conditions
that produce those constraints. But the PSC bargaining team
believes that we negotiated the best settlement possible within
a hostile political environment that we have not yet succeeded
in
changing. This is a principled, imaginative agreement that
maximizes the available funds for CUNY faculty and staff.
Salary Increases
The permanent salary
increases in the settlement are as I have outlined in previous
messages. Across-the-board salaries and salary steps will be
raised on the following schedule:
- May 1, 2004 - 2.50%
- May 1, 2005 - 2.75%
- May 1, 2006 - 3.00%
- Sept. 19, 2007 - $800
added to base salary for full-timers; pro-rated for part-timers
at 1%.
For full-time employees, the total salary increase over the term
of the contract will be 8.48% (the three increases, compounded)
+ $800 added to base salary, for an average total of 9.5%. For
part-time employees, the final $800 added to base pay is
pro-rated as 1%, so the total is 9.48%.
A few examples illustrate the salary increases under the
agreement we have reached.
1) You are a professor or higher education officer on the
top salary step, currently earning $93,507. On May 1, 2006 your
salary would increase to $101,435. Your total increase over the
term of the contract would be 9.33%, and on September 19, 2007
your salary would go up to $102,235.
2) You are an associate professor or higher education
associate currently on the penultimate salary step, earning
$74,979. On May 1, 2006 your salary would increase to $81,336.
Assuming you move to the top salary step in
January 2007, your salary on September 19, 2007, the last day of
the contract, would be $84,902.
3) You are an adjunct lecturer at the top of the adjunct
salary scale, currently earning $2,843 per three-credit course.
On May 1, 2006 your per-course pay would rise to $3,084; and on
September 19, 2007 it would go to $3,113. For the large number
of adjuncts who qualify for the professional hour, the pay for
that hour would also increase 9.48% by September 19, 2007.
4) You are a college laboratory technician at the top of
the salary scale who currently earns $46,948. On May 1, 2006
your salary would increase to $50,928; and on September 19, 2007
it would go up to $51,728. For you, the $800 added to base
salary represents a larger percentage of the total salary
than it does for someone at a higher income; your total
contractual increase would be 10.18%.
5) You are an assistant professor or higher education
assistant currently earning $58,558. On May 1, 2006, your
salary would increase to $63,523. Assuming you move up the
normal salary step in January 2007, your salary on the last day
of the contract would be $67,092. The equity effect of the
salary steps emerges when you compare what you were earning at
the beginning of the contract, in November 2002, to what you
would be earning at the end: $48,993 compared to $67,092. The
salary steps plus the contractual increases add up to a total
increase of 37%.
These examples offer a sense of the effect on salaries for
different members of the faculty and staff. The union will
publish a complete new salary schedule as part of the
information members receive as they vote on ratification of the
settlement.
Retroactive Pay
Upon ratification and
approval of the contract, faculty and staff will also receive a
lump-sum payment of contractual increases owed from previous
years. You will receive at least two years of retroactive pay,
or approximately 6% of your current salary (minus the usual
taxes and deductions), in a one-time payment. A portion of the
retroactive money due for the 5/1/04 salary increase, and a
one-time amount of $800 per full-time employee (pro-rated for
part-timers), have been allocated to the Welfare
Fund to rebuild the Fund's reserve. The Fund's reserve has been
depleted through years of soaring prescription drug costs and
CUNY's failure to provide adequate support; it must be
restored. Attributing one-time retroactive money to the Welfare
Fund does not affect the recurring annual salary increases;
these will still be 9.5% on average.
The one-time allocation of retroactive cash removes the need for
the Welfare Fund to increase deductibles or co-pays. When added
to the increased annual contributions by management, it allows
the Fund to maintain excellent prescription drug coverage and
improve the dental benefit.
Research and Professional Development Support Contracts are
about time, as well as money. This settlement makes a major
investment in time for professional development and research.
When CUNY management, very late in the bargaining, demanded that
we agree to an increase in the time-to-tenure, the union
responded that we would not agree unless they provided some of
the support that typically accompanies a longer
tenure clock. After very tough negotiations, we doubled the
full-paid research time for future untenured faculty, to 24
hours, and increased sabbatical pay from 50% to 80%, including
for full-year sabbaticals. Both of these changes will take
effect when the legislation changing the tenure clock becomes
effective, possibly as early as fall 2006. Together, they
create a significant change in the research climate of the
university.
Support for research and professional development in this
contract extends beyond full-time faculty. The settlement
creates a new fund of $500,000 for professional development
grants for adjuncts, and increases the maximum professional
development grant for HEOs and CLTs to $3,000. Between this
contract and the last, the union has won research and
professional support for almost every category of instructional
staff: adjuncts, HEOs, CLTs, tenured faculty and untenured
faculty.
An Array of New Provisions
Attached to this message
is a list of the additional elements of the
settlement. In chapter meetings and a special issue of Clarion,
the union will provide complete information about each one.
Two elements deserve special mention. One is a breakthrough
that creates 100 new full-time lecturer positions for which only
experienced CUNY adjuncts will be eligible to apply. The
application process will be as usual, through the department and
college faculty committees, but the new lines mark the first
time CUNY will move in the direction of converting part-time
positions to full-time, instead of the other way around.
Nationally, this will make our contract one of the few in higher
education that creates new full-time positions and goes against
the grain of increasing contingent labor. There is still a long
way to go before CUNY offers anything like parity to the
thousands of part-timers whose underpaid labor has kept the
university afloat as funds were being slashed. CUNY's abusive
reliance on part-time labor hurts all of us; it's clear that we
will need an even greater level of mobilization in future
contracts to break them
of this bad-employer habit.
The other element to mention here is the agreement the union
made with management to allow fall semester classes to begin
three weekdays before the contractual start-date of August 30.
The number of weeks of classes will not change -- there will still
be 15 Mondays, 15 Tuesdays, etc. -- but we allowed this flexibility
in part to accommodate the years when many of the Jewish holidays
fall on weekdays. The City has insisted that all municipal
unions "increase productivity"; the PSC argued that CUNY faculty
and staff have already increased productivity through years of
increased enrollment and that the three-day change in the
academic calendar was the extent of what we were prepared to
do. In addition, the bargaining team refused CUNY's
proposal that HEOs and CLTs "increase productivity" by giving up
annual leave days.
Ratification
If the PSC Delegate
Assembly votes on April 27 to recommend this settlement, it will
be offered to you for ratification shortly thereafter. I ask
you to consider it carefully, to participate in the chapter
discussions on campus, and to reflect on what we can learn from
this round of bargaining. I believe we have achieved a
reasonable settlement, given the economic limits we faced and
the punitive proposals from CUNY. The discussion about
ratification should include strategizing collectively about how
to build a campaign that succeeds in changing the political
conditions that made this fight so hard.
Meanwhile, I thank you for your patience and commend you on the
most aggressive contract campaign in the union's history. I
hope you will give the contract your approval.
In solidarity,
Barbara Bowen
President
SUMMARY OF NEW CONTRACT PROVISIONS
IN ADDITION TO SALARY AND WELFARE FUND
More Time: Support for Research, Professional Development,
Workload Equity
►Sabbaticals increased to 80%
(effective when tenure change is effective)
►Total of 24 hours full-paid reassigned time for untenured
faculty (with
tenure change)
►Support for legislative change in the tenure clock from 5 years
to 7 years
►Reduction in New York City College of Technology courseload to
24 hours
►Creation of Adjunct Professional Development Fund, with $3,000
maximum grant
►Increase in professional leave for Library faculty, from 4
weeks to 5 weeks
►Reduction in workweek from 35 hours to 30 for Counseling
faculty hired post-1998
►Restoration of annual leave for Counseling faculty hired
post-1998
►Ability for management to hire higher education officers as
psychological counselors, at HE Assoc. and HEO rank
►Increase in maximum HEO/CLT professional grant, from $2,000 to
$3,000
►Stipends of $3,000 per year for HEO/CLT grant selection
committee
►Increases in total PSC/CUNY grant fund, travel funds, HEO/CLT
fund,
fellowship leave fund and Distinguished Professor stipend
Basic Fairness: Salary, Leave and Working Conditions
►Increase in minimum salary for CLIP faculty, to $32.50 per hour
►Paid sick days for non-teaching adjuncts and adjunct CLTs
►Timely notification of pay rates for adjuncts
►Ability for adjuncts to claim back-pay from the beginning of
the semester in case of underpayment Adjunct access to college
e-mail, voicemail and listing in faculty directories
►Same salary increases for faculty and staff at Educational
Opportunity Centers as for other CUNY faculty and staff
►Library privileges for Continuing Education faculty
►Catch-up pay for Assistant Teachers at Hunter Campus Schools
New Positions, Other Changes
►100 new Lecturer lines, open only to experienced CUNY adjuncts
►Increase in permitted number of Distinguished Professors, from
125 to 175
►Ability to start fall semester classes three weekdays before
August 30th
►Inclusion of Medical and Law Schools in PSC contract provisions
on grievance and discipline
►Ability for management to hire Distinguished Lecturers in
Medical and Law Schools
►Exclusion from the bargaining unit of HEOs in Chancellor's
Office and Office of Secretary of Board of Trustees
►Changed contract language on suspension in case of conviction
of a felony
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