DA Statements on New Contract -- Summer 2008

Following a unanimous vote in the PSC Executive Council to recommend the proposed 2007-2010 collective bargaining agreement, the union’s Delegate Assembly considered the agreement on July 1, 2008. By a margin of 92 to 13 (with 7 abstentions), the Delegate Assembly voted yes and recommended the agreement for ratification by the membership.

Several delegates (and alternate delegates who voted that night) have asked to explain their votes and allow the broader membership to experience some of the discussion. Those who voted on July 1 were invited to submit 500-word statements for this page explaining the reasons for their vote. The statements submitted by the August 11 deadline are published here, unedited and in alphabetical order (except in the case of three delegates who agreed to combine their space). The occasional factual inaccuracy is noted and corrected in an editorial comment. The 500-word limit is strictly observed; authors exceeding the limit were given the option of revising their text or simply having it cut off when the limit was reached.

[The opinions expressed in these statements are those of the individual delegates and do not necessarily represent the views of the PSC Delegate Assembly as a whole.]

I voted “yes” for the 2007-2010 contract for many reasons. I thought the salary increases (3.15%, 4% and 3%) were the best we could achieve under 1) current economic conditions and 2) until pattern-bargaining is broken in NYC. The additional 3.1% at the top step for full-timers and 5.75% at the top step for adjunct titles provided yet another reason, along with bridging service (part-time and substitute lines) for adjunct titles. In speaking with members at MEC, the work/life advances received very positive commentary: sick leaving banking, family leave and paid parental leave. Everyone needs to work at including these benefits across titles. Indeed, as many will note during this exchange, the contract provided, in part, a map for organizing around future demands.

As to the diversity of our experiences: If you spend time speaking to PSC members across the spectrum of titles, one learns of both unique and shared difficulties. Across ranks, many suffer from indignities that were unimagined until the last administrator arrived (or evenhanded one resigned). As revealed by the Faculty Experience Survey, the level of discontent among full-time faculty at many of our campuses, some considered the “jewels in the crown,” was disturbing.

At each contract (and with each Board appointment), I ask myself whether management’s stranglehold on the restructured university can be reversed. It is not inconsequential that the PSC has stemmed the loss of potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs to contingent ranks. However, I do not believe in miracle reversals, not after watching 5 years of 0% raises at CUNY during the (mostly) go-go ‘90s and the 30-year rush to contingent work across most sectors of the global economy. I do believe that the restructuring itself will eventually create a new set of problems for management that will likewise lead to new forms of labor activism. The starkness of management’s discourse and practice (and the many inversions that are created by “flexibility”) will hopefully lead to greater mutuality among members. In fact, connections among our various burdens are increasingly conspicuous: the bullying and lack of promotion opportunities are rallying points across ranks and attacks on academic freedom are documented publicly, not whispered.

I came of age in a tiered university that seemed to be coming apart just as women, and black and brown people were arriving. I believe this is the time to make cause together and put our energies into constructive activities for the next contract. Reversing 30 to 40 years of resource depletion will not be achieved by returning to the bargaining table at this juncture. We have an imperfect contract but one that helps each of us in one way or another. To claim less is disingenuous at best.

I urge all our members to vote YES and to actively engage with the PSC on the myriad concerns we face.

As a retiree, I do not participate in the membership vote on approval/disapproval of the proposed contract. However, as a delegate to the DA from the Retiree Chapter, I support its approval and I urge my sisters and brothers in active service to vote "yes".

What is absolutely astounding about the concluded negotiations is that a successor agreement has been achieved within one year of the expiration of last Agreement (9/19/07)

I began my career in CUNY at Richmond College in 1968, before collective barganing. In all my years of PSC activity(Chapter Chair, Grievance counselor, Delegate to the DA for 20 years), I have never seen a contract settled with such rapidity.

What advantages did the PSC gain by concluding negotiations in at the end of June?

For a start, the playbill was approved in Albany before adjournment. We have our money.

But now there's another fiscal crisis. Governor Paterson is calling for Draconian cuts in the budget. If we were still in negotiations, would it be likely to reach a settlement before the next semester starts?

Now, many say this is a bad contract, vote it down--we'll get a better one. My experience with CUNY, the City, and the State in regards to budgets tell me absolutely not. They'll drag the process out (as in the past) so that our monetary gains will be diluted by the time it took to achieve them.

What of the process? The negotiating team worked around the clock to achieve a settlement. They recommended it to our executive committee. Their approval was unanimous. The DA voted overwhelmingly to approve. A full debate was held. The membership received the text with enough time to consider it before voting.

With the constitutionally established bodies of the PSC for making policy--bodies representative of the entire membership--recommending a "yes" vote, there is no constitutionally sanctioned method for the PSC leadership to authorize a mailing of literature to the membership urging a "No" vote.

Individuals opposed to approval have made their views known. Meetings have been held at each campus. Emails have been circulated. Dissent is heard. No, we didn't get everything we wanted. But, right now--this is the time for a "yes" vote.

I voted “yes” to approve this contract because 3.15%, 4%, 3%, plus 1% in top steps is far better than we’ve done in past decades, and good compared to contracts recently won by bigger and historically more powerful NY unions. For perspective, DC-37 set "the pattern" for this round with 3.15,2,4% (2005-'07). In March 2008, SUNY's UUP got 3,3,3,4% (2007-'11), some one-time
$500 bonuses, and 1% merit pay. (However, SUNY has no salary steps, worth more than 3.5% annually for more than half our faculty.) UFT got 2 & 5% (2007-'09), one-time $750, and one longevity step worth from $500-$1000. Those who urge voting “no” because we didn’t get enough overall must be disregarding the wider patterns in this round of bargaining, as well as the impending state budget crisis that could leave us with less should we postpone settlement to the next legislative session.

Furthermore, a new parental leave fund, a new recruitment and retention fund, a larger adjunct development fund, new conversion lines for adjuncts, better health care benefits, and the greatest percentage increases for adjuncts at the top step, are all thoughtful improvements largely for junior and contingent faculty.

There is a small but vocal minority who argue for a “no” vote despite these favorable terms because: a) across the board salary increases (rather than lump-sum increases) exacerbate inequality, and b) there is no movement forward on adjunct job security. These were demands by the PSC aimed at changing the two fundamental reasons management depends on adjunct laborers: a) they’re cheaper, and b) they’re “at will” employees. Those who urge a “no” vote because these demands were abandoned to achieve a compromise underestimate the intransigence of CUNY’s management on these points, and overestimate the PSC’s ability to leverage these changes in this round without sacrificing all other gains.

Rather than lead our members into a losing battle for a good cause, we need to take our modest winnings, and learn from this round. Regarding adjunct exploitation, it is now obvious that CUNY’s management is more willing to convert part-timers into full-timers than it is to change the basic legal and financial terms of the adjunct position. In the next round, we should press for 1000 conversions for lecturer and professor lines. While long-term adjuncts with full-time jobs elsewhere, and adjuncts retired from other careers, might not benefit from such conversion lines, the truly disadvantaged among us, who depend wholly on teaching, would.

Given the reasonable terms before us, we must decide if we could do better by voting “no” and reopening negotiations. Having watched this process for years, and weighing the political factors, like other union contracts, the state economy, Albany’s current budget crisis, and our memberships’ current mobilization potential, we cannot achieve more in this round and we could lose ground. It is a good deal, at a time of great financial contraction and constraint. I applaud the negotiating team and urge members to approve the new terms.

At 4:00 AM on June 20, the PSC bargaining team took a vote on the settlement we had negotiated that night and over the many months before—and all of us voted yes. That hasn’t happened in every previous round of bargaining. We were unanimous this time not because we all thought the settlement was perfect, but because we agreed it was time to consolidate the gains we had made and develop new strategies for future local action and future rounds of bargaining.

We also understood that the only responsible way to vote “no” is to offer a strategy that has a real chance of gaining more than we had already achieved. Otherwise a “no” vote is an indulgence, an empty protest. With the State legislature planning to recess on June 23 and the State budget picture worsening daily, the bargaining team also had to weigh the consequences of missing the end of this legislative session. Working literally around the clock, we secured both legislative and gubernatorial approval to fund our contract, pending ratification by the PSC membership. I am more certain every day that our timing in Albany was right.

But this contract has more than timing to recommend it. CUNY still needs a raise, but the proposed contract makes measurable progress toward competitive salaries. It also takes the final 1.04% increase—which Chancellor Goldstein wanted to devote to “performance pay”—and transforms it into additional increases to the top salary step at every level. And after trying for eight years, we finally got CUNY to agree to added equity increases for the top adjunct salary step, and for Lecturers, College Laboratory Technicians and Assistants to HEO. The Lecturer title is the only full-time teaching title with more than 40% people of color—yet it is the lowest paid. This contract takes a step toward rectifying that.

It also brings the first agreement for a paid parental leave fund for any public employee union in the state; introduces the beautiful, collective provision for sharing sick leave days; offers a pilot program to mentor CUNY students; lifts the insidious ban on e-mail use by the union; renews the adjunct professional development fund. It leverages two additional agreements: CUNY will create 100 new Lecturer lines reserved for experienced adjuncts, and will provide health insurance for doctoral employees—a major breakthrough. Finally, the settlement marks a deep defeat for Chancellor Goldstein’s agenda of “modernizing” the PSC contract by introducing “flexibility, nimbleness . . . and performance rewards.”

Yet the union did not defeat the system that keeps the half of the faculty that is part-time underpaid and insecure, or the system that keeps CUNY salaries too low and teaching loads too high. We are chipping away at those systems through successive contracts, while at the same time beginning to remake the University. I voted yes because I know what it took to win what’s here and because I have confidence that we can win more together with this contract to support us.

I have heard it over and over again. The strategy of the present PSC leadership is to raise the cost of adjuncts in order to remove the incentive that low-cost part-timers offer the university. This way, there will be no further reason to have half or better of the faculty functioning as an underclass of adjuncts. This, after all, is viewed for many reasons as poor policy for both faculty and students, and thus the present day multi-tiered faculty system needs to be replaced with the long-standing system of full-time professorships.

It follows then that once the strategy finally starts to kick-in, the university would now begin to hire full time faculty again. After all, this is the ultimate goal that the present leadership and faculty generally want, along with all around greater funding for the university. But how would all this happen? Simple: unity among the full and part timers, the students and the wider community which we serve. After all, this is in all our interest and together we have a chance.

But what has actually happened in the eight years the present leadership has been pushing their strategy? Let’s start with the raising of the cost of adjuncts. To raise the cost of adjuncts, one must raise their cost relative to full-timers. This has not happened. In fact, due to our contract agreements with management, we adjuncts have actually become cheaper relative to full timers!* Furthermore, to replace adjuncts with full timers means we adjuncts are suppose to join into an effort that leads us straight to the unemployment line. Nevertheless, we adjuncts have joined in this effort because we know that the ultimate goal of proper staffing and funding for the university is the right one. But full timers cannot expect part timers to unify with them without some quid pro quo.

Adjuncts require and deserve job protections/security so that they are not just leading themselves to the slaughter houses, should the strategy ever start to be properly applied. If we were ever to do this properly, adjuncts would simply be replaced over time with full-timers as part timers leave. Full timers cannot expect adjuncts to work with them to get what full timers want, without giving us something in return, and respecting us as the human beings we are.

Regarding unity with students and the wider community, virtually no effort has been put forth in this area, and this has doomed our strategy from the start. We must go out to our students and the wider community and explain why politically the university is being staffed more and more with over-exploited adjuncts and why this is not good for them. We need an army of speakers to explain that the university is not a factory and we should not be treated as such. In fact, we should explain that no one should be treated that way. We should argue for what education says it stands for. And what is that? Let’s talk about it.

*Editorial note: The union's position is that part-time faculty should receive wages and benefits on the basis of parity with full-timers. While we are still very far from that goal, the cost to CUNY of a part-time faculty member relative to a full-time faculty member has been increased for the thousands of adjuncts who are eligible for paid professional hours. The current proposed contract also provides part-time faculty at the top step with a greater percentage increase (5.75%) than that of full-timers at the top step (3.1%).

The vote at the DA was whether or not to recommend the contract to the membership for approval. I really believe that this proposed contract is very close to the best possible contract that was achievable in the political and economic climate in which we find ourselves. The city and state placed us into an economic box from which there appeared to be no escape. They, in effect, place a pot of money on the table and watch carefully that the settlement does not exceed the offer. We were equally diligent in not leaving any money on the table. The financial settlement provides for some equity for some of our lowest paid members as well as some relief for those members at the top of our salary schedule who have not had the benefit of annual salary increments for many years. While those members who are not at the top yet do not immediately benefit, they will ultimately benefit and will continue to benefit by the enriched step at the top for the rest of their careers and indeed for the rest of their lives via an increased pension.

The biggest disappointment was the failure to achieve a measure of job security for our adjunct faculty. There was, regrettably, not even an incremental improvement as CUNY management was extremely resistant in the same way that we resist elimination of salary steps and removing department chairs from the bargaining unit.

Early in the negotiations we heard from members that a quick settlement was high on their priority list. While a settlement that was “only” nine months late could hardly be considered quick in the real world, in the surreal world of CUNY/City-State negotiations in which we exist, it was the “quickest” settlement ever. The negotiating team made the assessment that to delay settlement at this time would place us in serious jeopardy of losing some of the money set aside by the state budget office for labor settlements and might delay any pay increase by up to six months. From the recent statements by Governor Paterson, that appears to have been a correct assessment.

For these and other reasons, I voted YES at the DA. The consequences of the majority of members voting against the contract would be, in my view, devastating. Just look at what happened to the Transit Workers union a few years ago. In addition to delaying a contract settlement for perhaps a year or more in a very unfavorable economic climate, we would find ourselves seriously divided and in a climate of finger-pointing and reproach for the contract’s defeat even though it would not be knowable who voted against the contract. I strongly urge a yes vote on the proposed contract.

1. I think this is the best contract we can get in this economy at this time. If we delay our contract, I fear the continuing economic downturn will make for something worse, not better.

2. Most of my colleagues at York who conveyed their sentiments to me, urged me to vote yes.

3. Though I was very disappointed, like others, that we did not get as much as we hoped we would as to adjunct security and equity, I was also certain that Barbara Bowen and our negotiating team did everything to get the best contract they could as quickly as possible. I have been at negotiating sessions. I have seen Barbara and others speak passionately for what we deserve. I have seen CUNY's ugly intransigence--unjust as it is--when it comes to adjunct issues. We are nothing but fortunate to have fighters like the current PSC negotiating team on OUR side, but no one should underestimate what they are up against: the desire to destroy public education in America. That desire is real and in my 37 years in CUNY, I have seen the lessening of CUNY year by year, including its increasing exploitation of adjunct labor.

4. The PSC held the line on many things CUNY hoped to take away from us--things that other unions might have given back in exchange for relatively small pay increases that would permanently weaken our position with management. I respect our current leadership and am grateful to them for not bargaining away our right to salary steps, HEO job security, Departmental Chairs in the union and other things that would centrally change the relation of PSC members to CUNY. Once lost, these things would never be regained.

5. I respect the choice to give additional salary increases to the top steps, and as a person who has been at the top step for about twenty-five years, I am personally grateful.

6. The PSC got new benefits, even in this climate of taking things away: I think the sick leave bank is a beautiful thing. As a person who has lost hundreds of unused sick days in my 37 years at CUNY--and also, as a person who has seen what a hardship it can be for a new colleague who has a serious medical emergency--I think the sick bank is wonderful. The days one colleague will likely never use can now be given to another colleague less fortunate as to medical matters.

7. For members, including retirees, to have a contractual right to use college e-mail for union communication is a very important achievement the full significance of which will become clearer as time goes by.

8. Like many of my colleagues, I favor adjunct equity with full-timers, but it is going to take far more than a NO vote on this contract to change the adjunctification of CUNY.

I am strongly urging the membership of the PSC to vote "Yes" on the contract. By “all the members” I mean every single constituency, including part-timers. I genuinely believe that the contract we are ratifying is the best contract that we can get in this moment.

I have seen the leadership negotiate at the bargaining table. As a member of the Executive Council and the PSC Organizing Committee, I have participated regularly in contract conversations. I have heard reports and been part of PSC supported activities directed towards building the kind of solidarity with labor and community organizations that is necessary if we are to win the public funding CUNY deserves. This broadened coalition is what we will need if we are to address the issues of part time labor, and the ever expanding workload of full time faculty and staff.

As LaGuardia Chapter Chair I have experienced first hand the Machiavellian tactics of management when it prohibited me, and other chapter officers and members from having access to email to announce union meetings and have union discussions. I have also experienced the unconditional support of the leadership in our battle to overturn this arbitrary, discriminatory management fiat. They did what good leaders should do - encourage political organizing at the local level and mobilize every part of the union’s legal machinery, from grievance officers to lawyers. They recognized, however, that our most powerful weapons were the unified voices and determined opposition of LaGuardia’s own faculty and staff. This combination led to a victory, the right of all PSC chapters to use email communication.

I have seen extraordinary dedication to the cause of justice for part-time labor on my own campus. The part-time organizer George Walters, an active member of the Chapter EC, has spoken of the incredible challenges of fostering the activism of part- time faculty and the need for full-time faculty and staff to take more responsibility for building this kind of unity.

Are there ways that we can learn from the issues that are being raised about prioritizing the issue of the two-tier labor force? Can we do better if we open up the strategic thinking and decision making to a larger group? Yes. Should we? Absolutely. We must in this moment when the elites who dominate all levels of government are calling for more cuts in public services, including the cost of labor, secure our future and come together as one union.

A lot has been said about 'the union of my dreams.' I would like to share with all of you what 'the union of my dreams' means to me. The union of my dreams is one that clearly identifies CUNY as the responsible for the established two-tier system and calls it for its name. The union of my dreams is one that besides recognizing each other's responsibility in mobilizing their colleagues, each one of its members works towards that mobilization through effective organizing. The union of my dreams has to be one that uses all the energy that we have seen in this debate in creating a common goal at each campus, starting now: educating and organizing its membership about the needs of each member, the adjuncts, the CLIP and Cont. Ed. members, as well as the CLT's and HEO'S at every level ; the Lecturers: the recently hired, as well as the ones that have been in the CUNY system for many years without any movement within their lines, and the members in professorial ranks.

We have started in our campus. As part of our plan of action, we have already a calendar of meetings to create forums and opportunities of real dialogue to make our entire membership aware of the needs of the others. We will conduct a survey to ensure contract enforcement specially dealing with adjuncts' rights. For these past three weeks several of the executive members in our chapter have had serious discussions about the two-tier system. We clearly understand the great need that we have to outreach all our adjuncts and make them full participants in our union. We see all this as a necessary and worthwhile process and we are committed to make it happen.

In the meantime we have a proposed contract, that in lieu of the fiscal situation in the city and the state, it looks like the great majority of the members in our campus will ratify, as they have clearly indicated to us through different venues.

So, at this point I sincerely urge all my fellow delegates to move forward. Let's have the contract discussion in the forum/webpage that it is now given to us. Let's not curtail the discussion pointing out at what would have been the perfect forum. Let's be creative in terms of how to include the fellow members' points of views, who will not be able to officially participate in this forum, as part of our written presentations as official delegates. Let's keep using the discussion to strengthen us. Let's keep writing and expressing our points of view, but at the same time let's keep working towards the expected changes and goals at each of our campuses. Something I have learned is that at the end, no matter how much we write and talk, it comes down to how much we do, what makes the real difference.

And after all, the union of my dreams is all of us: the PSC.

In solidarity/ Solidariamente,
Lizette Colón, Eugenio Ma. De Hostos C.C.

I voted "yes" to recommend ratification of the contract because I was convinced that there is nothing to be gained and much to lose by rejecting it. Representatives of the negotiating team made a compelling case at the DA for accepting a less-than-perfect agreement as a practical and responsible acknowledgement of the political climate and of CUNY's intransigent support of the "two-tier" system.

At the DA, Marcia Newfield gave an eloquent, unblinking explanation of her reasons for recommending approval. She and Diane Menna are fierce, feisty, and ultimately realistic, long-serving representatives of, and advocates for, part-timers on the negotiating team. I trust their considered judgment. They have articulated, at the DA, on the list-serve, and in the Clarion, what the agreement offers part-timers and what where it falls short.

It is unfortunate that time-constraints and the DA's procedural rules left so many part-time faculty without an opportunity to speak their minds on July 1. Nevertheless, the arguments I've read on the extensive list-serve discussion were all clearly expressed by the delegates and non-delegates who did speak. Those of us who voted took them into consideration and then voted to recommend ratification by a wide margin. Nothing I have read since then would have changed my vote.

I understand the frustration of contingent faculty. I now co-direct the Freshman Year Initiative at Queens College, after nearly 20 years as an adjunct. I believe that the PSC must continue to challenge the inequities of a "two-tier" system that serves neither full- nor part-timers.

Yet voting down this contract would only divert much of the time, energy and good will of the membership that are essential if the union is to build constructively on our adjuncts' outrage, and work strategically to challenge the status quo.

Last winter I spoke with a range of our chapter members while collecting petition signatures. Along with some heartening responses from new faculty eager to be included in the union's activities, I encountered too many adjuncts who feel too vulnerable to risk being active, and too many full-timers who identified themselves as "pork chop unionists," interested only in their pay raises.

A national discussion about the "two-tier" system has begun in the academy, and once this contract is ratified, the PSC should mobilize the membership to actively participate.

It's essential that the faculty and staff engage with and expand the debate that has begun this summer with a legitimate adjunct grievance. I hope it will lead to all faculty becoming well informed about the needs and expectations of our colleagues, and participating in devising our strategy for the next round of bargaining.

The considerable logistical obstacles of separate campuses, departments, positions, and schedules will make this a difficult challenge; Lizette Colon, Hester Eisenstein and Nancy Romer have helpfully offered specific suggestions for organizing, educating, and fostering debate among the various PSC constituencies. It's a beginning.

As an elected officer, a member of the Higher Education Officer series, and a first-time bargaining team member, I wish to share with our members why I support ratification of the proposed contract.

As discussions got underway between CUNY management and the PSC, it was clear that the scales were not balanced. Management sought to assert its authority through demands that focused on expanding its power, restructuring the University and imposing fiscal restraint on CUNY’s workforce. No members of the bargaining unit-- adjuncts, full-time faculty, college lab technicians, or other professional staff-- were to be spared.

These draconian and regressive proposals ranged from so-called “merit” pay to undermining HEO job security to weakening the grievance procedure. The fact that they did not stand is due in large part to the unselfish commitment of time, effort, and close attention to the nuance of contract language by members of the bargaining team. With the avid and enthusiastic assistance of the membership, we successfully pushed back management’s demands.

Collectively, the bargaining team and the union’s membership successfully advanced large parts of the PSC’s bargaining agenda. We created a paid parental leave fund; established a sick leave bank and the use of accrued sick leave for family care; and won salary increases for equity. Union membership rights were expanded through guaranteeing the use of college e-mail for union-related communication, as well as retirees’ access to college e-mail. New support was provided for mentoring, research, and professional development. Enhancements for adjuncts included new money for the Adjunct Professional Development Fund; creation of 100 new full-time Lecturer positions for experienced adjuncts; graduate health insurance; and enabling service in a full-time substitute title to bridge or count toward adjunct eligibility for contractual benefits.

Yes, we were unable to move CUNY management to provide job security for adjuncts, who constitute more than half the teaching faculty at CUNY. Yes, we were unable to convince management that members of the professional staff are entitled to reasons for non-reappointment. But despite these cruel setbacks, I am not willing to reject this proposed contract, particularly in light of the current economic climate. I will not reject a proposed contract that holds harmless our existing benefits, and adds hard-fought victories from the latest negotiations.

Collective bargaining agreements are living documents, for they stand on the shoulders of all members. Through our collective action over time, we ensure that the current contract is respected-- and we organize, educate and agitate for new gains in the future. Through renewed strategy and commitment, our agendas can continue to advance. For all of us, the battle continues.

Aside from the gain of 100 conversion lines, the proposed settlement contains very little for adjunct members of our union.* Neither seniority rules, decent health care coverage, nor pay equity has been won. In fact, the gap between the poorest members and those on top scale has widened. Winning a parental leave benefit for some PSCers is a step forward. But it is adding insult to injury to be told that the parental leave benefit will not apply to adjuncts!

Many of us may have suffered unemployment or been through periods where we held jobs but faced the threat of insecurity. But it is hard to imagine how it must feel to work for a decade or two not knowing what the next semester will bring.

However, the root cause of the problem is not our bargaining team, nor our top leadership, but the capitalist system we live under. The Chancellor and the Trustees serve the interests of corporate America.

One of the criteria for measuring any action we take is will our action result in greater unity within our ranks? Will we be more prepared for the next battle we face?

Layoffs and cutbacks are on the horizon for all city workers. Faced with decreased revenues from Wall St. and real estate sales, etc., large deficits will exist on the state and city level. Governor Paterson has called for an emergency session of the legislature and has called for 10% budget cuts and a hiring freeze.

The emergency measures that CUNY instituted because of the 1975-76 crisis led to the layoff of about a 1000 full-time and as many as five thousand part-time professors. But today, the situation threatens to be even worse. US capitalism is reeling under the stress of sharp inter-imperialist rivalry with China, Russia, and various European powers. The U.S. is engaged in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and threatens to attack Iran and/or Pakistan. Our enormous national debt will be increased by either McCain or Obama who both call for expanding the military. The bosses’ plan is to make the workers pay for the costs of wars and their shrinking profits.

Some of my fellow delegates have argued that there is a risk in rejecting the contract proposal because if we do so management may offer us even less. They are right, it is possible.

But if it seems difficult to draw a line in the sand with management now and say we need a job seniority system for adjuncts now and a parental leave benefit for EVERY member in our union, what makes us think that it will be any easier to do so three years from now?

In any case, let us commit ourselves to starting the new semester with the goal of building a stronger and more unified PSC.

This contract falls far short of the improvements urgently needed by adjuncts at Sweatshop U. I share their completely justifiable anger which hopefully will be mobilized in the future to deliver a more just agreement and has already initiated a serious discussion of the strategies necessary. However, I voted YES for the following strategic reasons.

Governor Paterson is determined to slash the education budget. Frankly, I think the idea that a return to bargaining will produce a better contract is a vain wish. Management consistently, intransigently, contemptuously refused fundamental change to the adjunct system, They are equally adamant against any reconfiguration of full and part timers’ benefits. Racing against the coming budget crisis, we got our pay bill passed just in time. If the contract is rejected, EVERTHING will be back on the table, everything we won, including the modest gains for part timers, and even more frightening, the give backs we successfully rejected. When the transit workers rejected their contract, they got a worse offer. Those urging a NO vote seem to underestimate our opposition’s resistance and overestimate the present ability of the PSC to overcome it.

I believe this resistance and not any failing by our leaders has denied adjuncts improvements long overdue. Barbara Bowen and our negotiating team have been brilliant, creative and committed. However, we progressives in the PSC understand that, contrary to right wing critics of the union, able negotiators alone cannot produce better contracts, And frankly, in 40 years of activism I have observed (and painfully learned myself) that in one’s frustration it is often easier to launch one’s attack against other progressives than against the real enemy.

Rather, only massive mobilization of the PSC can break through the current impasse. We have not carried on anything like the kind of campaign which is necessary. And we must admit that beyond our valiant minority of activists, our members, full time and part time, have not yet been ready or organized enough to undertake such a struggle. In addition to leadership from our officers, initiative must also come from below -- from Chapters, the DA, our committees and from adjuncts themselves. Ultimately to fully tear down the two tier system would require job actions, but who, full or part time, is ready for that? Still, we can take on a fight for part timers’ just demands. We need to organize more adjuncts and increase their participation, and we do need more adjunct organizers. We must educate full timers and enlist more of them in the struggle. We need to be more militant. We need to put mass pressure on management, Albany, City Hall and reactionary Trustees. We need to shame them by exposing publicly the disgraceful situation of our part timers. We need to build alliances with alumni, students, their families and the wider community. We have a lot of work to do and it will not be accomplished in a short time; we should ratify this contract and get on with it.

Clearly, the recent contract agreement makes some important gains on issues like parental leave, top-step pay rates, and the rejection of management goals such as removing department chairs from the union. However, I, probably like many others, voted "Yes" on the contract, in the Delegate Assembly and in the ratification vote, not because I love all of what it does (or, worse, what it doesn't do), but because I remain convinced that our organized strength cannot at this particular moment win a political battle of the magnitude that it will take to turn around CUNY conditions, especially for part-timers. Hopefully, we all know that CUNY's commitment to "flexibility" in hiring euphemistically disguises a profoundly exploitative two-tier employment system that benefits none of us, whether part-time faculty, full-time faculty, professional staff. What needs to be said more often and more publicly is that this "adjunctivication" of academic labor also hurts our students and our city, not because of any questions about the quality of part-time teachers but because the university uses this decades-long restructuring of academic work to strengthen a centralized corporate administrative model and, hence, to weaken comparatively more democratic and decidedly more professional and intellectual forms of academic decision-making in areas as important to higher education as hiring and curriculum.

Public higher education is in a crisis, no doubt, but what we need are not merely speeches about inequality, but political strategies to fight deep social conditions in the university and in the public sphere more widely. I am interested in being part of a union fight that can win; I do not want to lead our members into a particular battle that--as it seems to me--we are not yet organized to win, given the economic and ideological forces we are up against, especially at this moment of economic "crisis." (Obviously, the crisis has been going on for the lower rungs of this economy for a long time.) I, for one, can only vote down a contract when I am convinced that we have a real chance to win a prolonged political struggle and that we have a membership organized and ready for the possible sacrifices of such a struggle.

I would like to see us have a deeper conversation over the next months about where the interests of particular constituencies in our union are identical and where they may diverge. A full and honest discussion of differences is not a route of division, but rather the beginnings of more meaningful solidarity, one based on seeing the complex terrain of shared and divergent interests and on making political choices based on that knowledge. Let's ratify this agreement and instigate much greater discussion, inside the union and in the city, of the reasons why part-timers' working conditions and salaries should matter to all of us, particularly full-time faculty. Let's start public campaigns that risk embarrassing the university for its appalling "flexibility" with our lives and our students' educations.

In reaching a contract settlement, a push pull always exists between a membership’s long term aspirations and the moment when it is clear that maximum leverage for a settlement has been reached. That moment is the most powerful confrontation with the real politics of negotiations. What we achieved in this round was won through both focused organizing and tough negotiations. In the end, this is a solid settlement that meets many of the needs of membership. Most specifically, as a member of the bargaining team, Executive Committee and Delegate Assembly, my vote turned on the following points:

(1) We were able to achieve an economic settlement that provides members with a minimum salary increase of 10.5% compounded over the next 25 months. An additional 1% will be used to increase the value of the top step for members who otherwise would not see a step increase. Full time faculty and staff at the top step will receive an approximate 6% increase in the last year of the contract, while part time faculty at the top step will receive an 8.75% salary increase. For part time faculty at the top step, the value of this settlement will be more than 16%. It is important to note that CUNY resisted redistribution of any part of the settlement to part time faculty. This economic settlement is both creative in its equitable redistribution of resources and reasonable in its maximization of dollars given the present constraints of the “pattern,” the fiscal meltdown of the state and our degree of political capacity to wage a fight that would yield more.

(2) A number of very important benefits were achieved: (a) we are the first public union in the state of New York to negotiate a parental leave benefit for its membership with management, and (b) employed doctoral students at CUNY will be eligible for health insurance benefits that achieve parity with SUNY for the first time in 43 years. For part time faculty, new benefits include but are not limited to a development fund and 100 new conversion lines. Importantly, each of these advances defies national trends which continue to shrink and eviscerate worker benefits.

(3) We won this package of economic and non economic benefits despite the intensifying downward spiral of the state’s finances. The negotiating team moved quickly when it was clear that we had reached the limit of what PSC power could deliver. That is always a hard call, but it is one as a leadership we are elected to make. In my estimation, any call for additional benefits and a no vote must be accompanied by an explanation of how such aspiration is to be accomplished and a calculus of potential benefit and cost to membership. Anything less in my estimation is neither responsible nor useful. I made my decision on the basis of the complex facts before us and urge the membership to vote yes on this settlement agreement.

I voted “No” at the Delegate Assembly because I felt, and still feel, that it is important to convey a message to union leadership, and indirectly to CUNY management, that a large number of union members (particularly adjuncts) are extremely disappointed and dissatisfied with the terms of the proposed settlement. I feel that the union’s decision to focus on “competitive salaries” resulted in a contract that does nothing to address the exploitative two-tier system that has many of us so-called “part-timers” teaching essentially “full-time” workloads and still not earning a decent income, nor having any form of job security, academic freedom, or the benefits and working conditions that all members and fee-payers represented by our union should have. I know this situation is not the fault of the union, but it’s the union’s responsibility to address it rather than to reinforce it by agreeing, in this contract, to widen the gap between its most and least advantaged workers.

I understand that these are tough times economically, but my complaint is not about the proposed below-inflation increases* conferred by the city- and state-supported financial package but about the 1 or 2 percent of the finances available that seemed to offer some “wiggle room” for negotiation, and how that amount got distributed. An across-the-board percentage increase obviously widens the already yawning gap between the top and the bottom, but the proposed contract doesn’t stop there. It provides additional financial benefits such as $2,225,000 for “paid parental leave” (“for full-timers only”), and another $2,225,000 for “recruitment and retention enhancements” (which we can assume is also “for full-timers only”)--all money that I feel could and should have gone to those who need it most.

At the July 1 DA meeting, Barbara mentioned that she was proud of being in the vanguard of unions providing “paid parental leave,” which most people in our country don’t have. Although I certainly believe in the concept, I feel it’s also a luxury in a settlement which doesn’t even provide others (I know there’s since been some improvement here for doctoral students) with basic health care insurance (for themselves and surely not for their families). Other issues are essentially non-economic; for example, the proposed contract establishes a “sick bank”—“for full-timers only” (even though it’s adjuncts who, being ineligible for cumulative sick days, desperately need this benefit).

As I said at the DA, I feel that the PSC leadership is concerned about oppressed people everywhere, except those right under their own noses -- meaning the adjuncts, graduate students, and continuing education teachers who are supposed to be colleagues, who pay fair dues to be represented, but who continue to be regularly subjected to gross underpayment, second-class benefits, lack of job security, and miserable working conditions.

A contract that offers special advantages to the same people who are already relatively advantaged and no gains for those who are relatively disadvantaged** is, I feel, not one to which I can respond with anything but a “No” vote.

*Editorial Note: Calculations of inflation are notoriously slippery. In late
June, the City projected inflation for fiscal year 2009 at 2.7% (other sources are projecting higher inflation rates) and large parts of our bargaining unit exceed this rate. For example, full-time members of the bargaining unit at the top step will receive salary increases valued at 13.6% for three years. Additionally, part-time faculty at the top of their salary scales will receive salary increases valued at more than 16%. Full- and part-time members at the top of their salary step represents
about a third of the PSC membership. Additionally, the equity enhancements
targeting the Assistant to HEO, Lecturer and CLT titles ensure that for those who are eligible, salary increases will exceed the rate of inflation. Finally, members not yet at the top step are likely to continue receiving salary step increases which, on average, have a value of 3.5% per year. When step increases are added to the value of our contract, annual additions to salary substantially outpace the rate of inflation.

**Editorial Note: It is incorrect that the proposed contract offers "no gains" for those who are relatively disadvantaged. The proposed contract includes a higher-percentage increase for adjuncts on the top salary steps than for full-timers on the top step; $1.5 million for the adjunct professional development fund; better provisions on counting service in substitute titles for adjuncts who seek movements in salary steps, tuition waivers, access to health insurance, and completion of the required number of teaching observations. The proposed contract also contains additional funding to create salary enhancements for faculty paid on an hourly basis in the College Language Immersion Program. And the proposed contract is accompanied by two side-agreements that include substantial gains for the part-time and contingent employees: health insurance for doctoral employees and 100 new Lecturer lines exclusively for experienced adjuncts.

The most serious responsibility that I face as a member of the bargaining team is making the call as to when to seal the deal. This is the third time I’ve been part of this process, and reaching closure is always a gamble. Is this the best we can do? Is waiting longer too great a risk? Is holding out realistic, smart, responsible, reckless?

Ultimately, this is a collective decision. The bargaining team spent endless hours of discussion and debate - in team meetings, at the bargaining table, at the Executive Council, Delegate Assembly, in chapter meetings, in one-on-one conversations with members. Based on our judgment of the local and wider political and economic contexts, the team recommended this proposed settlement to the EC. We voted a unanimous “yes.”

This is a good contract. Among its advances are salary raises, 100 conversion lines and bridging of seniority for adjuncts, parental leave, equity adjustments and additional money at the top steps of all titles. We beat back all but one of management’s regressive, punitive and union-busting demands. Even this provision, for a clinical professor, was sharply limited to protect tenure.

Does this contract do everything that all of us want? Of course not. Do some of us feel disappointment, frustration, anger? Yes.

Our goals are monumental and the forces lined up against us are equally, if not more so. Neither President Bowen nor the bargaining team ever promised to win a specific demand. We promised to fight – at the table and in every venue that impacts our settlements – with our best efforts.

Each vote on this contract is not about what should have or could have been done. It is not about sending a message about what went wrong, who did or didn’t do what. It is about what the reality will be when the decision is in on September 3. Will the wheels move to pay retroactive and forthcoming salary increases? Will the process begin to implement the many gains in this contract? Will we start the planning and organizing for our next round?

Or, do we return to square one? If this settlement is voted down, all bets are off. We don’t start from where we left off, we start from zero – nothing won, zero dollars, new demands on both sides, new economic and political context.

What is the strategic plan for starting over? What are the goals and how and when are we going to achieve them? Will this strengthen our hand going forward? Or will it be a tragic mistake?

My “yes” vote is a strategic choice. In settling now we will implement the important gains of this agreement, return to the struggles at our campuses, and resume our education and organizing efforts to build the power needed for future contract rounds.

Anne Friedman
Professor, Developmental Skills, BMCC
PSC Vice President for Community Colleges

I am volunteering, as part of the AFT's Union Summer, in New Orleans, and have been for the past 9 days. I have not been checking my CUNY e-mail regularly.

I am a member of both the United Federation of Teachers, and the PSC. Three years ago the UFT brought to our membership a contract that gave back substantial rights and historic gains - it lengthened the school day, the school year. It brought back lunch duty and hall duty, which we had previously done away with. It limited our right to grieve unfair letters. It authorized suspending members without pay pending Department of Education investigation. It ended seniority transfers, and ended union oversight of the transfer process. The day we ratified this agreement, we were worse off than the day before.

The current agreement does not gain as much as we would have liked. But will we be worse off the day we sign it? Far from it.

I will not attempt to discuss the proposed contract point by point to argue that it is the best possible. I voted yes because I believed that the negotiating team felt they had done the best they could for the general membership. Though there may be valid reasons why some members could not support the proposed contract, I did not feel that I was in a position to second guess the team, or give them a vote of no confidence.

I feel that the proposed contract is a step forward, though it does not go as far as any of us might want. Personally, I would be more than happy if the union focused specifically on the issue of the university's abuse of adjunct, continuing education instructors and others. However, such a process will take time and will require extensive discussions among the membership.

Ultimately, I feel that all parties will be served better by continuing this discussion while we have a contract rather than while we are working on one. Spending the next few years without a contract will not benefit anyone, in my opinion.

PSC members should vote “NO” on the proposed contract. The time is now – not in some hypothetical better days – to fight management’s program of deepening inequality, not capitulate to it yet again.

This is not just an “adjunct issue” but of vital importance for all. With a rogue’s gallery of anti-union experts, school privatization ideologues and high-finance moguls on the Board of Trustees, management wants a Walmart U. The proposed contract further entrenches the divide-and-conquer mechanisms they use against us all: faculty, staff, and our students, daughters and sons of New York’s working class. NYC’s working class has power and a vital stake in defending the right to education. Tapping into that power, we must fight now, together with students, immigrants and key labor sectors, against the two-tier labor system integral to assaults on that right.

For “part-timers” who are the majority of CUNY teaching staff, it is clearly and simply against our most basic interests to vote “yes” to no job security, poverty wages, constant fear of not having health insurance, and two-tier degradation. But CUNY’s ever-increasing structural inequality weakens us all. A real fight against it was not made, or even discussed, by the leadership. Strength, forms of building it and measuring it come through real struggle. The towel was thrown in before a real fight even began. Some argue to postpone, yet again, such a fight, claiming this is the best possible under the circumstances. Accepting the framework of a strategy tailored to lobbying, not mobilization, this ignores the fact that once again, after an enthusiastic mass rally momentum was dissipated. This is nothing new. In 2005, even the opportunity to mobilize together with the TWU strike was ignored.

Raises will be below inflation (official inflation figures exclude food and fuel!). The Clinical line sets a dangerous precedent. Crucially, we are all in the same boat. But “part-timers” are in steerage, it’s leaking ever faster here and that is terribly dangerous for us all. While right-wing groups like “CUNY Alliance” don’t hide their hostility to adjuncts, the New Caucus pays lip service but has turned its back on us once again. One officer’s attack on contract opponents’ “political purposes” highlights this: subordination to the rules of the game laid down by Taylor Law-enforcing Democratic and Republican politicians means defeat.

With open admissions abolished and tuition continually hiked, management just got a green light for “deregulated tuition pricing” from the Commission on Higher Education. Arguing fiscal hard times, corporate rulers and their politicians of both parties order labor to knuckle under to capital’s requirements and its campaign to corporatize education. This is the “pattern” we are told cannot be challenged! Today the economic situation is cited as a reason to vote “yes”; last contract the arguments were different but the message identical. Each time management’s system grows stronger, our situation more unbearable. This struggle cannot be postponed. Vote no to deepening inequality, mobilize now to stop Walmart U!

The contract to be voted upon, the one negotiated by the PSC contract committee, recommended by them to the Executive Committee, recommended by the EC to the Delegate Assembly, and then recommended to the membership by the DA is worthy of support. As I provided when I voted for it in the EC and DA.

I recall the goals recommended by the leadership in fall 2008. They were enthusiastically endorsed by those at the mass meeting. I recall no major opposition - either during or after the meeting. The goals were stated as goals. While not fully met, they are the goals to which this contract made progress. Goals, and their enhancements, for which we must continue to work in the future

I also recognize that the contract didn’t go far enough - for any category of employee represented by the PSC. But then, as has been pointed out for decades, the PSC is not management. We cannot get what CUNY management, the city, and the state will not allow. Professors do not make almost as much as college presidents, Associate Professors do not make as much as they deserve. Nor do HEOs, nor do CLTs, nor do Continuing Education Teachers.

As one who has supported the under-supported for decades, I empathize with adjuncts who feel the contract didn’t go far enough. And I support and work actively for member goals. Especially Adjunct goals. In all forums (CUNY, NYC, NYS and Federal)! As most of us do - and as we all should.

The contract didn’t achieve in other important areas. Workload isn’t what it should be.. Nor are Welfare Fund benefits. Nor other benefits. But - and it is a BIG but, the PSC fought the management down on diluting the contract in a time and economic climate that favors management.

On the other hand, Welfare Fund contributions did go up some. Salary did go up. Furthermore, employees at the tops of steps will get more, including HEOS, and including Adjuncts. Those in low paid categories will get more.

Most full time-individuals will see raises higher than inflation through the general increase plus steps and/or these other increases. Some Adjuncts will also.

So I voted for the contract. And I will continue to work to enable us to make the next one still better. As I hope and expect we all will.

There were a number of reasons I voted in the affirmative for the contract at the 1 July 2008 meeting of the Delegate Assembly (DA). First, I appreciated the diligence, patience, and prudence of the PSC’s bargaining team and, in general, the outcome of their efforts. Second, as a chairperson who was at the time negotiating with two prominent senior-level persons to hire into my department, I regarded the projected salary increases as important for making better competitive offers in the recruitment and retention of such persons. Third, I valued the team’s wherewithal to obtain for the first time a fund to pay for parental leave. Fourth, I was delighted that the team acquired renewals to create more lecturer positions for experienced part-time instructional staff and to keep in effect the professional development fund for part-time instructional staff. Finally, I was glad that the team secured a memorandum of understanding that health insurance coverage would soon be available for CUNY doctoral students.

What did have the potential, however, to render my vote negative was the failure by the bargaining team to address the matters of (a) equitable pay and (b) job security for part-time instructional staff. In the end, they did not for the following reasons.

Re: a) I did not believe that equitable pay for part-time instructional staff was sufficient to cast a negative vote on the contract, forcing the bargaining team to go back to the table, with the state’s fiscal problems worsening. Admittedly this reason is pragmatic or prudential, not moral. Still equitable pay for part-time instructional staff is an issue worth making a priority in the next round of bargaining.

Re: b) Mike Fabricant stated at the DA meeting that this item required a “fundamental overhauling of the structure of CUNY.” He is partly right. This item entails a “fundamental overhauling” of the professoriate. If job security, specifically CCE’s, for part-time faculty could be had, what need would there be for the tenure of full-time faculty? I do not raise this query out of self-interest or out of some longing for the university back in the day. Rather I raise it seeking an answer about the character of the work faculty do in higher education today. Allow me an example.

CUNY has made efforts to increase the size of its full-time faculty with the belief that with this increase there should be a concomitant reduction in the budget for the hiring of part-time faculty. However, the budget for hiring part-time faculty has increased enormously even with the increase in the hiring of full-time faculty. This has led the chancellor to compel every college president to ensure that full-time faculty are satisfying the workload.

Although I have not been clear as I would like here, there are, for me, too many questions surrounding the matter of job security for part-time faculty, which require many answers before I can consider it a priority in collective bargaining or a reason for voting negatively on the contract.

I concur with the view that we should applaud the efforts made by the bargaining team to beat back the concessions (all of which I am sure you’re familiar with) CUNY management was seeking this round of bargaining. I am proud to be a member of a union that is willing, if not in actuality but in vision, to fight the corporatization and consequent destruction of CUNY’s mission. Nevertheless, it’s in the spirit of high regard that I hold for the PSC and its leadership that I submit to my fellow PSC members my reasons to vote NO on this contract.

Clearly, the proposed contract perpetuates the inequality inherent in the two-tier labor system at CUNY specifically as it relates to job security, salaries and healthcare for adjunct, part-time, and graduate students—which must include Master’s, not only doctoral students.

Several union brothers and sisters will essentially argue that this is the best contract we can get, considering the fiscal strain on CUNY and New York State, vis-à-vis other municipal unions. Others will claim that going back to the bargaining table will be “too risky,” given this fiscal strain. However, I submit to you that the time is now to dig-in our heels and fight back against the state and management. If not now, when? When we are able to suck our index finger and hold it up to make sure “the winds are blowing is the right direction”? As one of our sisters asked before, what is the union of your dreams? How long do we have to wait for the dream? What happens to a dream deferred?

As a HEO, my call to vote NO on this contract is a clarion call for the membership to see the contract and it’s perpetuation of inequality as an opportunity to redefine the alternatives we are being handed down by both management and, as it’s official stance, the PSC leadership, and use it as a catalyst to mobilize all of CUNY, particularly students and their families, along with community organizations and other unions.

This is a call to reject the false dichotomy between expediency and convenience versus long-term struggle. We cannot sacrifice one of the largest segments of our members at the altar of expediency and convenience and then wait to recollect our strength and political power to secure the best contract with significant advances for everyone in the bargaining unit. It must happen now!

To my fellow HEOs, I ask that you think about our working conditions and the lack of respect we sometimes experience when dealing with management. The dignity and respect we seek is the same our fellow adjunct, part-time, and graduate student brothers and sisters seek. I ask that you think about the meaning of solidarity within our union in this context.

Vote NO on this contract and let’s make this a union built on an informed analysis of concrete reality founded upon principles of non-capitulation to the austerity imposed on us, as laborers, and our students.

In Solidarity,
Douglas A. Medina
Alternate Delegate
HEO, Baruch College
Ph.D. student, GC

At The DA meeting of July 1 I voted to recommend the proposed contract to the membership. Given the constraints of pattern bargaining, I feel the negotiating team did exceptionally well, except on issues affecting adjuncts. On these issues, it is clear, it is extraordinarily hard to make progress, in spite of the best efforts of our leadership.

Some form of job security for adjuncts is urgent for the next contract. Exactly how that would be provided needs serious discussion. Two or three year contracts do not seem to touch the heart of the matter.

Provisions for adequate health coverage for adjuncts seem to be in sight, although further negotiation with the city is required. The leadership is to be commended for its efforts in this regard, even if they have not yet achieved closure.

Further movement towards adjunct pay equity is difficult, especially given the fiscal condition of the state and city. My own thought is that the best solution is conversion on a much larger scale of adjunct lines to full time lines.

As for the campaign to vote “No” on the contract, I am very much opposed to it. If the contract is defeated, every employee at CUNY will be a loser. A campaign to mail in abstentions would make more sense, while registering a protest.

Chancellor Goldstein visited Brooklyn College in March of this year. He spoke of his vision for CUNY; it could become a “modern” university. For Goldstein and the rest of CUNY management, this modernization meant performance pay, the removal of chairs from the union and other measures that clearly would transform CUNY into a quasi corporate entity.

It was against this limited and dangerous idea of what CUNY could be that the negotiating team, backed by union membership, fought. The negotiating team not only pushed back against management’s demands but also insisted on innovative and creative measures that address a wide variety of the needs of its current and future members.

So it was without hesitation that I voted yes on the contract. Although it is not everything it to be – the salary increases do not come close to compensating for the systematic under-funding of the university for the past three decades and adjuncts remain without job security – it does offer remarkable elements that will undoubtedly make a difference for the current and future members of the CUNY’s professional and teaching staff. Among the most important are the following:

Paid parental leave, which allows the growing ranks of recently hired, young faculty and staff members the necessary time to begin their families

A fund for recruitment and retention, which addresses the difficulty that colleges across CUNY have head not only in attracting but keeping their future academic and administrative leaders.

In addition, the contract provides important resources for the creation of new kinds of engagements with students and for the professional development for all of its members.

A pilot program for student mentoring, which may be the beginning of a re-imagining of faculty advisement of students.

A professional development fund for adjuncts, HEOs and CLTs, which will provide significant support for members.

I chose to vote yes for these elements of the contract and for its moving CUNY in the right direction.

The four part-time officers voted yes on the contract and sent a letter to that effect to the adjuncts which was also posted on the DA listserv. While we totally support the need for adjuncts to move towards parity in large increments and are aware that this contract does not do it, we believe that it is to our advantage to ratify this contract, both because of the gains that have been made and our intimate knowledge of management’s resistance to bending at this point. Some describe my saying that getting to parity will cost millions of dollars in addition to requiring a quantum shift of perspective as defeatism. Quite the contrary.

The only question is what is the best strategy to redistribute the pie and/or get a bigger pie. I think it is voting yes and collectively putting our shoulders to the wheel to gain support to pressure management to make changes, such as allowing the five schools that only pay for fourteen weeks to pay up. We don’t have to wait for the next contract for this and other practices that disenfranchise part-timers to be reversed.

Susan O’Malley
Executive Council
Kingsborough

Tim Shortell
Delegate
Brooklyn

Thanks to Susan O’Malley and Timothy Shortell for generously donating their 500-word allotments! They bear no responsibility for the contents.

Attend the forum “Organizing for Justice: Voting No on the Proposed Contract,” Tuesday, August 26, 6-8pm, Graduate Center Room 5414. Information: voteno.getactive@gmail.com

Excerpt, 7/1 statement of “Concerned Adjuncts, ‘Part-Timers and Graduate Students”:

The proposed settlement...exacerbates the deep inequalities of CUNY’s academic labor system. ...

We demand that the bargaining team go back to the table. The contract must include:

1. Real progress on job security. Three-year teaching contracts for adjuncts, at a minimum.

2. Health coverage for all. Some “part-timers” have it, far too many don’t; any one of us can lose it if we don’t meet the minimum number of hours in a semester, accept a fellowship, or retire. We all need it from day one. Whether it comes from the Welfare Fund, NYSHIP or the city health plan, it must be explicitly guaranteed as part of any contract settlement.

3. Real progress against the gross inequality we face. For starters, an additional $1,000 per course. A salary step schedule and substantial raise for CLIP, Continuing Ed and others at the bottom of the CUNY system.

Any settlement without these features would be unacceptable and must be voted down. Our union must aim to uproot and overturn the two-tier labor system of structural inequality. Clearly, this will require a major struggle to defend public education in the interests of all faculty, staff and students, in close alliance with key sectors of labor and the working people of New York City whose sons and daughters attend CUNY.

Many adjuncts, “part-timers,” graduate students and full-timers are asking you to join in voting NO on the proposed PSC-CUNY contract settlement. Why?

A contract that increases inequality at CUNY is bad for full-timers, “ part-timers,” our union and our students. Every year CUNY becomes a more unequal place to work and to study. The two-tier labor system undermines academic freedom and weakens the union and the university. Yet now, once again, we are being asked to vote for a contract that makes no progress at all in transforming this labor system. Instead, the contract perpetuates it and leaves more than half of the faculty without job security, a living wage, and adequate health coverage.

On Job Security. The proposed contract makes no progress at all on the key contract goal of job security for adjuncts and other “part-timers.” For the second contract in a row, this was declared a major priority, but we still have no certificates of continuous employment, no three-year appointments, no two-year appointments–nothing. Adjuncts, CLIP teachers and others can teach semester after semester, year after year, with no guarantee of future employment and no requirement that reasons be given for non-reappointment. This leaves half the teaching staff permanently vulnerable–and undermines academic freedom throughout the university!

On Salaries. This settlement would actually widen pay inequity between “part-timers” and full-timers. The small “equity increase” at the top of the adjunct scale is unavailable to most adjuncts, is too small to prevent the salary gap from widening even for those who receive it, and leaves all adjuncts–together with CLIP and Continuing Ed instructors–without a living wage. An adjunct at the top salary step with 12 years of service, who managed to teach seven courses a year, would find his/her salary going from $23, 800 to $27,700 over the life of the contract! Allowing CUNY to pay poverty wages to half the faculty serves neither the full-time nor the part-time staff. Reducing the pay differential between full-time and part-time staff lessens the economic advantage that accrues to CUNY from its reliance on talented, but grossly underpaid part-timers. It strengthens the fight for more full-time lines and restoration of competitive salaries. Until the salary gap between part-time and full-time personnel is eliminated, the position of both groups will continue to suffer.

On Health Care. Health care was another declared priority for these contract negotiations. We are now being told that coverage for “eligible doctoral students” may be forthcoming and that the PSC leadership hopes adjuncts will eventually get on the City health plan. We are being rushed to approve a “settlement” which did not solve these critical issues. Adjuncts remain at constant risk of losing their health insurance if a course is cancelled, if they get ill and can’t teach, or if they retire, while others, such as master’s students, will remain without health coverage.

CUNY management obviously believes it can continue to make up for the chronic underfunding of the university by depending on a large contingent of grossly undercompensated adjuncts, graduate students and part-time personnel. This must come to an end! We urge full-time personnel to recognize that the terrible conditions adjunct faculty work under weaken their own bargaining power, and to further our common cause by voting against the proposed contract. Adjuncts, “part-time” faculty, graduate students, full-time faculty, HEOs, CLTs and all who make the university run–yet are not given the respect they deserve–need to unite on the principle that an injury to one is an injury to all. Let’s show CUNY management that a contract that fails to tackle the two-tier labor system and address the core needs of half the faculty is unacceptable!

Our union must aim to uproot the two-tier labor system of structural inequality along with addressing pressing workload issues for both faculty and staff. Clearly, this will require a major struggle to defend public education in the interests of all faculty, staff and students, in close alliance with key sectors of labor and the working people of New York City whose sons and daughters attend CUNY. Our campaign for a “No” vote on this contract is a way to make clear that a real fight against inequality can no longer be postponed–and is a step in mobilizing for that fight. This is the time to increase the pressure. Get active in the fight for equity at CUNY!

I voted for the contract without hesitation. Given the “pattern,” given CUNY’s intransigence on certain critical issues, given the city and state’s real--if manufactured—fiscal crisis, given members’ manifest unwillingness to wait indefinitely for an agreement, and given the lack of time to mount the kind of contract campaign that might have made possible a “paradigm shift” in labor-management relations, I saw no alternative.

The PSC negotiating team did an extraordinary job--meticulous, creative and dogged—in extracting the maximum possible from management under difficult circumstances. My own position had been that we ought to settle immediately for whatever the other municipal unions had accepted, trading off a bad deal for the time to build a fight for a radical restructuring of public higher ed here in NYC. The negotiating team proved me wrong. We are significantly better off for their having toughed it out.

But we changed very little that we regard as fundamental to a social justice model of public higher education. I believe the PSC is committed to the fight for that model. A “No” vote on the contract is not, however, the way to begin that fight. There are no prospects for a better deal by going back to the table. Nor does management need a “signal” of union discontent. CUNY already knows that a restive PSC membership wants structural change and hasn’t achieved it. We are not yet in a position to mobilize our members for a “fight to the death”. And we haven’t built broad public consciousness that our fight is their fight, a consciousness that is essential to success.

Let’s approve the agreement. Let’s immediately get down to work on the next one. We might start by taking a look at how the Teamsters educated their full-time members at UPS to throw in their lot in a contract campaign focused on justice and equity and security for part-time drivers. The Teamsters defeated UPS. The consensus was and remains that all the members gained.

I voted to recommend ratification of this contract because in an environment that does not favor our members, or any other workers, our negotiators were able, with our pressure behind them, to forge ahead and break more new ground while maintaining earlier gains.

Maybe we didn’t get a huge pay increase, but we kept our salary steps, which management would love to see us lose. And we stopped an insidious move toward “merit” pay (we all know merit, to paraphrase Mae West, has nothing to do with it). And we kept chairs in the bargaining unit, safeguarded HEO job security, and forged uncharted public employee territory by achieving paid parental leave. All of this happened because we have increased our power exponentially since 2000.

Did all our dreams come true? No contract will ever do that. But enough nightmares were prevented so that we can build on this and go into the next phase. Before we can go further, we need to organize an effective and broad-based campaign, forging alliances with the public, the students, their parents, and our most underutilized resource, our alumni. When all those whose lives have been improved by what we do come to see our struggle as theirs--and vice versa--we will realize even greater gains in even more areas.

My name is Olga Steinberg, and I am an alternative delegate from Hostos Community College. I fully support the ratification of the new PSC contract, and I would like to tell you why I believe we should all vote to ratify it.

The Administration came to the negotiating table with the misguided notion that the draconic values of a corporate environment would well suit an educational institution: hence their initial demands for elimination of steps, merit pay (as defined by the Administration, of course), and unchecked administrative rule. Our negotiating team has managed to prevent this disaster from becoming a reality, at least for the duration of the next contract. I consider this victory so significant that I would support the contract on this achievement alone.

The new contract has something for everyone. Granted, it is not as much as we may wish for, but it is still a step forward, and a good foundation for the next step, until we get where we want to be. We should keep in mind that the best way to achieve positive resolution for our concerns is not through reactive rejection of work already done, but by proactive measures well in advance of the start of negotiations.

Rejecting the contract now and sending our leaders back to the negotiating table means that the process will have to start over again, with the negotiating team’s position weakened. The Administration is as determined to get their way as we are. I would fully expect the Administration to take advantage of this opportunity to revisit the items already agreed upon. In this case the only sure outcome we can expect is another year without a contract. The possibility of recapturing the gains already agreed upon would become uncertain.

This contract is not ideal, and many of us have expressed disappointments about it. However, taking into the account the starting point of the negotiations and comparing it with the contract presented for ratification, it is clear that much was won for the union members. Even if you consider the present contract only a small step forward, it is still better than standing still or marching backwards.

Let us ratify the contract today and start fighting for a better contract tomorrow.

As an alternate delegate from New York City College of Technology I voted to recommend the proposed 2007-2010-contract settlement for ratification. I urge all members to vote yes and thereby ratify the contract settlement. Randomly ordered, here are a few macro-level reasons for why we must ratify the contract:

• Failing to ratify will result in the reopening of contract negotiations in a less than favorable economic environment for the union.

• Given the dramatic decline in the New York City and New York State economies, the political mood toward funding The City University just prior and subsequent to the upcoming NYC elections, Mayoral and City Council, will be more difficult to predict.

• History confirms unions make greater concessions than management when negotiating a contract during periods of city and state fiscal difficulty. Note: In 1976, CUNY proposed a four-week unpaid furlough for all union members (Spring break and two other weeks were to be determined). In 1993, CUNY reduced funding for academic sabbaticals.

For a generation New York has shortchanged CUNY. And while that shortchanging continues in many ways, I believe that our bargaining team has done an excellent job under very difficult circumstances and that’s why I voted in favor of the contract on both the Executive Council and the Delegate Assembly.

Unfortunately, our collective bargaining agreement happens within a pattern system in which the city and the state give the same financial offer to every union. The only way to increase that offer is to agree to givebacks such as giving them more of our time. The rest of the bargaining process is mostly spent arguing with CUNY over how to spend the money that has been allocated by that pattern.

There are several fundamental disagreements between CUNY management and the PSC about how to spend the money. CUNY is controlled by Republican appointees, who mostly share a management philosophy designed to disempower employees. This means that they favor giving total discretion to management over pay, working conditions, and hiring and firing. This would allow them to remake the university into a corporate workshop, where academic freedom is replaced by a very narrow definition of what’s best for the New York economy.

In this round of bargaining, where CUNY attempted to expand this model, the PSC held them off. Department chairs have been kept in the union, rather than becoming management, salary steps have been retained, and due process protections for HEO’s maintained. Unfortunately, where management already has control, it has retained it. Specifically, management retains tight control over the treatment of adjunct faculty by refusing to grant them any kind of formal seniority or due process in firing. They have also kept wages low to allow the university financial “flexibility.” This is a euphemism for a two-tier labor force that that keeps part-timers poor and insecure and full-timers looking over their shoulders.

It is understandable that those at the bottom of this two-tier system are not happy. Those in the top tier should not be happy either, for their own security is at risk as long as this system is maintained on such a huge scale. The solution, however, is not a return to the bargaining table, as some have suggested. No matter how forceful and thoughtful our bargaining team (and they are both), they are at a disadvantage in that forum. A broad political realignment will be needed to go after both the two-tier system and the overall austerity funding at CUNY. That will require a much higher level of mobilization of our members and student and community supporters as well as the development of greater solidarity between the two tiers. We have more work to do and another round of bargaining alone won’t make the difference.

I urge you to vote yes to the contract and to explore ways to bring together full and part-time employees on your campus to build a stronger union for the benefit of all our members and CUNY itself.

Vote No (V-No) to reverse widening inequities which cause disunity in our labor-congress and university.

V-No to send a message to PSC and CUNY managements that the adjunct question is a human-rights & academic/professional freedom struggle with many critical aspects to resolve.

V-No because even if you are in a scarily unwitting majority on this vote, you realize that the negotiation teams on both sides will protect their financial agreement, and adjust terms without breaking the remarkable legislative package engineered by Prof.-VP Steve London.*

V-No to promote deeper re-evaluation of the assumptions and approaches of PSC decision makers toward building ongoing patterns of membership activity in growing circles of commitment, to shape win-win contexts for bargaining, starting now with workload parity (9/6 rule modification) for multi-college adjuncts..

V-No because while ‘sister’ and ‘brother’ are rarely heard in academe, you love principles of familial relations, however they’ve been abused, and would indeed incur some costs to affirm them.

V-No because you accept the struggle to get beyond ‘slave (or oppressed) morality’, wherein the oppressed comes to believe s/he is always right because the oppressor is plainly wrong, but with this belief the oppressed can then become oppressors, or self-oppressors.

V-No because the paradox of power (good from one view, evil from another) challenges, allowing you to reshape your life by acting your way into better thinking.

Vote ‘No’ because you want full-timers and part-timers to appreciate each other and each other’s professionalism. Take courage, compassion, and intelligence to heart – choose growth over fear – vote No.

*Editorial Note: The author seems to suggest that if the proposed agreement were voted down, the economic package would be maintained. If the agreement is not ratified, both sides would be free to negotiate new economic terms, either more or less favorable to the union. In addition, the author suggests that First Vice President Steve London single-handedly "engineers" legislation. First Vice President Steve London is the PSC's legislative representative, but legislation relevant to the PSC is of course the work of many parties--both within the PSC, and within the legislature itself. The legislation necessary to fund the contract is separate from the other legislative initiatives supported by the PSC and its statewide affiliate, NYSUT.

I voted “yes” at the Delegate Assembly. Over 40 HEOs had contacted me and they all were enthusiastic about the proposed contract settlement. This agreement is a partial victory for Higher Education Officers. We received a settlement much sooner than we expected. The leadership was brilliant in orchestrating a settlement before the recess of the state legislature. While the salary increases do not meet the increased cost of living in New York, it is about what we expected. There were no cutbacks or givebacks for HEOs. We protected our job security. We won extra pay for assistant to HEOs who have Master’s degrees and PhDs. We won higher increases for those at the top of the scale including assistant to HEOS, HEO assistants, HEO associates and HEOs. We won a continuation of the HEO/CLT Professional Development Fund and won a sick leave bank and funding for parental leave. We didn’t win promotions or tenure. While we didn’t win everything we need, voting “no” at this time would not increase our chances of winning anything, and could endanger some of the accomplishments.

One HEO recently contacted me to express his opposition to the proposed contract. He felt that the contract did not meet the needs of the part-timers. Adjuncts won higher increases for people at the top of all adjunct titles, health insurance for doctoral students who teach, a professional development fund and 100 full-time lines for adjuncts. They did not win job security or seniority, health insurance for all adjuncts or equity pay. A full-time professor at the top of the scale at a senior college who teaches seven three-credit courses a year will receive $116,364 on October 20, 2009. An adjunct lecturer at the bottom of the scale who teaches seven three-credit courses a year will earn approximately $20,500.* This is not a living wage. It is impossible for someone to support oneself or one’s family on such a wage. In other words the professor will receive almost six times more than the adjunct for teaching the same amount of courses. Although it is argued that the professors do research and have administrative responsibilities, many adjuncts also do research and volunteer to do administrative work.

Now is the time to begin to organize for promotions for HEOs, tenure for HEOs, significant salary increases for all titles and fundamental improvements in benefits and working conditions for part-timers. We especially need to focus on occupational safety and health issues which affect all campus employees and students.

We need to document the number of people who support themselves as adjuncts, publicize the life stories of adjuncts, document the specific contract gains that have been won by adjuncts in other parts of the country and organize full-timers and adjuncts to go to Albany to lobby for increased benefits for all union members, oppose tuition increases and support increases in financial aid.

*Editorial note: A fairer comparison is to contrast the top step of the full
professor with the top step of the adjunct lecturer position. An adjunct
Lecturer at the top step teaching seven courses would earn $25,420.50. It is
likely a faculty member in such a position would qualify for an additional 2
credits (the paid office hour, one each semester); this would add $2,421 to
his or her annual income. That total is $27,841.00 .

I voted against the proposed contract because it does very little for adjuncts, graduate students and other “part-timers,” and because it does not address the structural inequity that allows the university to undermine the roll and compensation of the full-time faculty.

The union had demanded that the university move adjuncts to the City healthcare system, that adjuncts be offered some form of job security and that graduate students be offered health insurance (progress on this issue was recently reported). In addition, adjuncts have long demanded progress in moving towards parity and an end to the two-tier labor system that not only impoverishes the part-time faculty, but makes it impossible for full-timers to regain the compensation that they enjoyed decades ago.

No gains were won in these areas, and the ongoing pattern of wage increases that expand, rather then narrow the gap between part- and full-time faculty was continued. As a result, part-timers fall even further behind, while full-timers continue to lose leverage in their efforts to regain their former compensation as the university takes economic advantage of the two-tiered system.

What we need to do, starting now, is to insist on a contract that includes large improvements in the pay and working conditions of part-timers, moving towards the elimination of the two-tier system and eliminating the economic lever used by the university to continue its erosion of full-timers’ terms and conditions of employment.

We must insist that the university offer full-time positions to interested part-timers whose under-compensated labor has enabled the university to function for decades under grossly inadequate budgets.

It will take billions of dollars to reverse the chronic underfunding of public higher education in this state. Where are the additional funds to come from? We can’t (and shouldn’t) ask for higher taxes – New York City residents already have the highest all-in tax burden of anyone living in the country. But the money may already be there – slowly moved from areas such as education, infrastructure, public transport and the like by a little-noticed but inexorable increase in New York State Medicare funding.

About three years ago, the Times wrote about how New York State was spending twice as much per capita (40% of its budget and growing) as the next highest-spending state on Medicare. Why should this be? Time reporters easily identified billions in waste, fraud and misspending. The next two highest spending states - Texas and California – keep their spending in check and have far better higher education systems than New York has. Is this a coincidence?

Recapturing money that has leaked, and then gushed from higher education into Medicaid won’t be easy – we would have to take on big-pharma, the medical profession, politicians, other unions and various other entrenched forces. But if we want this university, and our compensation to be restored, we owe it to ourselves and our students to look into where the money has gone, and how to get it