In February, PSC members waged an intense two-week campaign in response to the CUNY chancellor’s decision to ignore the contract and refuse to pay equity increases to 2,500 colleagues in lower-paid full-time positions—Assistant to HEO and Lecturer titles. Hours before a planned demonstration in front of his suburban home, Chancellor Matos Rodríguez reversed his decision and signed an agreement with the union for payment of the increases as lump sums instead of as raises spread over the course of a year. The agreement required CUNY to expedite their request for payment of the increases by the City and State so that members could receive the money as soon as possible.
CUNY has informed the PSC that both the $1,000 lump sum payment to Assistants to HEO and the $1,500 lump sum payment to faculty in full-time Lecturer titles (which include CLIP and CUNY Start Instructors) will be paid on the pay dates of 4/22/21 for senior college employees and 4/30/21 for community college employees.
Dear Chairperson Thompson, Chancellor Matos Rodríguez and Members of the Board of Trustees:
I write on behalf of the 30,000 members of the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY to urge you in the strongest terms to reject the resolution scheduled to come before a hastily called Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees today: “Authorize a Contract with McKinsey & Company to Provide Consulting Services for CUNY Reopening Readiness Plan.”
The resolution calls for the trustees to approve a no-bid contract at the cost of $3 million with a for-profit consulting company to do the job the CUNY administration should do in partnership with the unions representing CUNY employees and the organizations representing CUNY students.
At a time when your administration has failed to give PSC-represented employees even a date for payment of our contractual raise due November 15, when approximately 2,000 adjuncts you laid off in June 2020 are still without CUNY employment, when searches for full-time employees remain frozen, the proposal to spend $3 million on a contract with a for-profit consulting firm to do the work CUNY managers are paid handsomely to do is outrageous.
Statement on the FY2022 New York State Budget for CUNY
Barbara Bowen, President, Professional Staff Congress/CUNY
“The CUNY faculty and staff represented by the PSC are delighted to see important gains for CUNY in the budget agreement reached yesterday. The FY 2022 budget rejects every cut proposed by the governor, increases the maximum TAP award by $500, commits to closing the TAP Gap within the following three years, adds funding for opportunity programs, stabilizes support for community colleges hit by losses in enrollment this year, adds capital funds to fix CUNY buildings, and freezes undergraduate tuition.
“We thank the members of the Legislature who responded to the thousands of PSC members, CUNY students and allies who urged New York to break with decades of planned poverty for CUNY. All of us who support a New Deal for CUNY are right to claim these steps as victories. We applaud the progressive legislators who led the fight for them and the entire Legislature for their support.
“But in a year that cried out for bold investment in public higher education and an end to racist austerity for the Black and brown communities CUNY serves, Albany missed the opportunity to pass a transformative budget for CUNY. Rejecting a tuition increase without adding the funds to replace the lost revenue will ultimately undermine the quality of education CUNY can offer. CUNY needs investment on a larger scale if it is to recover from decades of underfunding and realize its potential for the people of New York. A fully funded CUNY would be a linchpin of a recovery that not only rebuilds New York, but reimagines it.