News & Events
Late-Night Bus to Washington D.C., Sunday/Monday, February 25 - 26
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear the most dangerous anti-worker case in a generation, working people are taking a stand. Thousands of union members from across the state will take to the streets at 11 a.m. this Saturday, February 24 in Foley Square in Manhattan for a mass demonstration in defense of all working people. We need you in the PSC contingent!
Sign up here to join your PSC colleagues at Foley Square this Saturday. When you do, you will be taking a stand for your own union, your own rights, and for the rights—and needs—of all working people. Our power as workers has always come from mass action: Saturday will give us a chance to make that power visible. The Supreme Court may decide against us in the Janus v. AFSCME case, but it cannot strip us of the power we have when we take a stand together.
Join UFS Chair Katherine Conway, PSC chapter chairs Alia Tyner-Mullings (Guttman CC) and Luke Elliott-Negri (GC), adjunct faculty from CUNY's School of Professional Studies, and PSC President Barbara Bowen for a forum: "Faculty Governance Under Attack at CUNY" on Wednesday, February 7, from 6:00-8:00 p.m. The forum will examine the draft governance document for the CUNY School of Professional Studies--and the threat it represents to faculty governance throughout CUNY. We will also hear from faculty at Guttman Community College, who struggled to revise their governance document and ensure an active faculty role. Together we will probe the implications for academic freedom and professional autonomy at CUNY, and we will discuss what we can do together to protect academic integrity. Please come, invite your colleagues, and distribute the flyer.
Join us on Wednesday February 7, 6 - 8 pm in the Segal Theater at the CUNY Graduate Center, 34th St. and 5th Ave.
Call for Participants: Theater Works! Performance/Playwriting Workshop
on Caregiving at CUNY
Application Deadline: Friday, February 2, 2018, 11:59pm.
PSC-CUNY is proud to co-sponsor a free 12-week playwriting and performance workshop, TheaterWorks! on Caregiving at CUNY, a collaboration with the Labor of Care Archive from the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center and the Working Theater. The workshop is open to CUNY faculty and staff who are PSC/CUNY or DC37 members involved with the care of an elderly, ill, or disabled family member and who are looking to write about the care relationship, the labor involved, and/or its impact on their life and work. The workshop is organized by CCNY PSC Chapter Secretary and Delegate Kathy McDonald. The application deadline is Friday, February 2nd, 11:59PM. Click here for more information.
Fifteen Protesters Arrested for Blocking Access to Stock Exchange while Demanding Congress Stop the Tax Give-Away to Corporations and the Rich
Outside the New York Stock Exchange on today (Tues., Dec. 19), where the resources siphoned from the poor and middleclass by the Republican tax bill will be concentrated, 500 protesters filled the street chanting “Kill the Bill. Don’t Kill Us!” More than 60 lay down for a die-in.
The die-in, organized by the PSC together with other unions, community groups and religious organizations, happened at the center of corporate profiteering on the day of the Congressional votes on the tax bill. It was organized in coordination with another protest in Washington D.C. Both actions pressed Congress to stop the tax give-away to corporations and the rich.
New Yorkers know that the tax bill is an attack on their state and on its people. That’s why this diverse group of activists came together to defend working people, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the young and the sick.
At a time when he has vehemently opposed the Republican tax bill that would devastate New York’s working families and attack universities and students, Governor Cuomo has chosen to veto legislation that would have stabilized funding for New York’s public universities. What a missed opportunity! With a signature instead of a veto, the Governor could have shown CUNY and SUNY students that their education is worthy of stable State support. He could have shown the nation that New York is willing to invest in the top-rate public college education that working people need in an economy that is being increasingly rigged for corporations and the ultra-rich.
Message from President Bowen
I'm delighted to announce that the PSC has achieved an agreement with CUNY to implement a permanent reduction in the full-time faculty teaching load, to be phased in starting next fall. By Fall 2020 the contractual teaching load for professors, associate professors and assistant professors at the senior colleges will be 18 hours; and the contractual teaching load for professors, associate professors and assistant professors at the community colleges, as well as for instructors and lectures, will be 24 hours. The joint announcement is below.
This is a historic achievement for the union and a major gain for CUNY and our students. It was possible only because the union insisted that we would not sign the last contract without a conceptual agreement and because union members organized and stayed strong in support. Congratulations to the many, many people who were part of making this happen.
Details will follow next week; we are just signing the agreement today. Congratulations, PSC members!
Barbara Bowen
President, PSC
CUNY AND PSC REACH AGREEMENT ON TEACHING WORKLOAD
The City University of New York and Professional Staff Congress have reached agreement on a restructuring of the workload of full-time teaching faculty that will enable professors to devote more time to individual work with students, to advising, holding office hours, conducting academic research and engaging in other activities that contribute to student success.
The agreement reduces the annual contractual undergraduate teaching workload by three credit hours and will be phased in over three years, one credit hour a year, starting with the 2018-19 academic year. The agreement covers both the senior and community colleges of CUNY and all full-time classroom teaching faculty.
Unions, Community Orgs, Elected Officials Press CUNY to Negotiate a Competitive Contract for 30,000 Faculty and Staff
New York—With their union contract four days expired, hundreds of CUNY faculty and staff represented by the Professional Staff Congress kicked off an energetic contract campaign tonight in midtown. The kick-off—a press conference, rallies at two CUNY campuses, disruptions of the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting, a lighted march, and a 25-foot light-up sign—pressed the CUNY trustees to negotiate an agreement that protects CUNY quality and helps students to succeed.
Standing with community groups, other union leaders, elected officials and CUNY students, PSC President Barbara Bowen explained that a good contract for CUNY faculty and staff is good for all New Yorkers.
“There would be no New York without CUNY. CUNY is the single most successful university in the country in enabling poor and working-class graduates to achieve long-term economic security. Yet leading professors consistently turn down positions at CUNY and many current professors leave because the salaries are so uncompetitive. CUNY faculty salaries are significantly lower than those at Rutgers, Stony Brook, Fordham and Pace University. The most damaging result of planned underinvestment in CUNY is the University’s reliance on grossly underpaid part-time faculty, ‘adjuncts,’ to teach more than half of the courses. It’s time for the CUNY trustees to provide decent salaries at CUNY; anything less is an admission that the education—and the future—of New York’s working people and their families does not matter,” Bowen said.
