MARCH 1, 2005
CONTRACT UPDATE
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PUBLIC SECTOR BARGAINING: In the past year (2003/04) New York State government settled contracts with many state government employees, including our SUNY colleagues in UUP (United University Professions). UUP members accepted a four-year contract worth 15% in salary improvements over the life of the agreement, including an $800 cash bonus. |
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HERE’S WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR:
WHAT’S AT STAKE IN OUR CONTRACT?
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DEFENSE FUND
Click below
for
March 31, 2005 Delegate
Assembly resolution creating a union Defense Fund
►As
a printer friendly PDF document
►As
A Web Page
Click
here
to sign up for the contract campaign
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April 22
bulletin Feb. 28 bulletin February 16 bulletin January 27th PSC-DA resolution on Contract State of Emergency January 5 & 24 bulletins December 20, 2004 bulletin December 7, 2004 bulletin on management's contract offer |
CONTRACT FIGHT Why we need a Union Defense FundBy
BARBARA BOWEN From the April '05 Clarion On the night of March 31, the PSC took a major step in our escalating fight for a contract. Union delegates voted overwhelmingly to create a Union Defense Fund. Not since the PSC’s long campaign for a first contract, in 1973, has the union felt the need to take such serious action. Why a Defense Fund – and why now? The answer begins with the developments at the bargaining table in the middle of March. After months of very little movement, CUNY management responded to the pressure you have brought through marches, pickets, phone calls and faxes. Management did what they had vowed they would never do – they gave us a higher offer even though we had refused to lower our own proposal. Five days later, the union made a comprehensive counterproposal. The difference between the two proposals defines our fight. Although management’s March 17 proposal represents significant movement from their disastrous 1.5% offer, it still amounts to a demand for concessions on wages, benefits and working conditions. However much the Chancellor may try to disguise the fact, his proposal suggests we take cuts in benefits, lose ground on salaries, work more hours, and make concessions such as the removal of department chairs from the union. I cannot imagine any reason to accept such an offer. NO SALARY CUT Consider management’s latest proposal element by element. On salaries it offers a total increase of 6.25%, compounded, over four years, with an additional 1% increase to be funded by our own increased workload. I’ll come back to the increased workload, but the obvious fact on the salaries is that they don’t even keep up with the cost of living. An “increase” of 6.25% means that the real-dollar value of our salaries would fall. Despite Chancellor Goldstein’s claim in his e-mail message of March 21 that “our first priority in these negotiations is to apply as much as possible of the economic package to across-the-board salary increases,” what he has actually proposed is a salary cut. It’s the same story on benefits. Although the Chancellor claims that his proposal responds “to the PSC’s concerns regarding the Welfare Fund,” before the end of this contract it would leave us facing the same dilemma we face now. The $200 increase offered by management comes nowhere near the galloping cost of prescription drugs, and thus provides no real solution to the Welfare Fund crisis. Without larger annual increases, that reserve would be spent down in a few years. The third concessionary element of the University’s proposal is on working conditions. Management’s offer includes a demand that we finance 1% of our belowinflation “raises” by adding seven days to the full-time faculty work-year, returning to campus on August 22 rather than August 30, the current contractual date. In addition, it demands that department chairs be removed from the union, along with several other PSC members who currently work in the Chancellor’s Office or in management offices on the campuses. The agenda is clear: increase management control, reduce the power of the faculty, weaken the union. A final problem with the Chancellor’s proposal is its failure of imagination. What’s missing is any concept that our lives at CUNY could be improved: there is nothing in the proposal on paid parental leave, nothing on improved sabbatical pay, nothing on sick days for adjuncts, nothing on improved due process, nothing on equity in annual leave for Library faculty, nothing on health and safety protections. Management’s proposal also fails spectacularly to address the single biggest structural inequity in our workplace: the pay gap for CUNY’s 9,500 part-time faculty, who still teach half of all courses. The union’s counterproposal, on the other hand, calls for a total economic package worth more than 14%, in comparison to management’s 6.25% (plus a one-time amount of $800 and a $200 per increase in Welfare Fund payments). Our proposal would maintain progress on salaries, stabilize the Welfare Fund, and offer creative solutions to equity issues and problems in our working conditions. On adjuncts, capita, it offers a structural remedy for the problem of pay inequity by adding to, rather than subtracting from, the total economic package. There is a similar creativity in other union proposals: we seek recurring increases to the Welfare Fund, starting with the first year of the contract, not just a half-measure that does not solve the structural deficit. We identify a way of providing support for childcare expenses with a proposal modeled on a benefit available at SUNY. We insist that there are funds for improved sabbatical pay and progress on paid parental leave. And we call for a range of non-economic improvements that would make a real difference in our lives without adding a single dollar to the cost of the contract – adherence to fire safety requirements, improved due process, stronger language on non-discrimination. All of these have been rejected by management. UNACCEPTABLE Whereas the Chancellor’s proposal limits salary increases to unacceptable levels, the union calls for increases worth, on average, 10.87%, with an additional $500 added to base salary for some members in recognition of longevity. Our salary proposal, modeled on the settlement reached with SUNY faculty earlier this year, would raise the top salary to more than $103,000. It would also combine percentage increases and dollar amounts to base salary, a mixture that benefits both the higher and the lower ends of the salary scale. While far from a princely increase, the union proposal offers a way to support both salaries and benefits, refusing to sacrifice one for the other, and provides for needed improvements in our lives at CUNY. Perhaps the best way of understanding the difference between our proposal and management’s is that the union presents an alternative to the concessionary framework. Chancellor Goldstein, despite his promise last May that he did not intend to offer “an austerity contract” to the PSC, has done just that. Worse, he has tried to pass it off as the best we can hope for. Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg continues his attempt to brainwash the city into believing that the only possibility for public-employee unions is concessions, and so far, he has kept the unions from breaking through that framework. By the time you read this, the police union may have received its arbitration decision about a contract settlement, but whatever is settled there, the PSC will still face a fight. It’s because of the magnitude of that fight that we need a Union Defense Fund. The ceiling we must break through is political and ideological as well as economic. It’s an artifact of a 30-year history of “pattern bargaining” in New York City. To win a nonconcessionary contract in this political environment is a tall order for any union, but it can be done. One thing that may make it more possible is that this austerity agenda is politically manufactured – by everything from Bloomberg’s corporate ideology to a regressive tax policy to the cost of the war. There is no shortfall in the City budget – in fact, this year there is a surplus of $2.5 billion. SERIOUS FIGHT The Union Defense Fund is a major tool in our struggle. By turning to one of the labor movement’s oldest and strongest practices, we signal that we are preparing for a serious fight. Defense funds typically provide resources for unions forced out on strike, but we have expanded the Fund’s purpose to include several aspects of a public, militant campaign. The PSC has no plan to strike, and we will continue to use every tactic we can short of a job action to win the contract we need. But we would be throwing away labor’s greatest power if we did not become the kind of union that is prepared to take job action, even though we hope never to be forced to do so. The Defense Fund is the logical next step. I ask you to make a contribution. By contributing you empower the union to fight for your interests, you signal your support for the union’s proposal, and you subtly change your relation to the place where you work.
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below for D.A.
resolution
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Fund by clicking
PSC UNION
DEFENSE FUND
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