PSC Contract Battle Begins: CUNY, Union Far from Agreement
by Advocate Staff
On Sept. 19, the contract between the City University of New York and The Professional Staff Congress — the faculty and staff labor union for the entire university — officially expired. Although the union and the university have already begun the long process toward a new contract, no salary offer has yet been made by the university, and consequently, any real progress toward a potential settlement has been put on hold. Like previous contracts, the last of which took over three years to settle (meaning faculty and staff worked without a contract for more than three years), it looks like the union could be in for another long, arduous, and bitter struggle before they see any improvements to their salary or working conditions.
On April 20, 2007, the Board of Trustees and Chancellor Matthew Goldstein submitted through their negotiating team a short, and many would say disturbing, list of demands for the new contract. The university’s new proposals, which include the elimination of salary steps, the implementation of lump sum awards to “productive” faculty, an increase in the cap on the number of courses that can be taught by adjuncts, an increase in the number of distinguished faculty positions, and the removal of department chairs from the union, seem designed to limit rather than strengthen faculty and staff self-governance, academic freedom, productivity, and employee satisfaction and autonomy.
Of all of the administration’s current demands, the most significant and radical, say critics, is the proposal to completely do away with the current salary step system. At present faculty and staff earn their wages based on what is known as a step system, where each worker enters at a particular level and, based on experience, receives incremental increases to their salary over time. These steps insure that all workers receive regular and fair wage increases as their experience grows and they progress in their careers. Not incidentally, these steps also help to create a spirit of solidarity and insure that no one employee or faculty member is favored over another, creating a shared sense that faculty and staff are all working together toward the common goals of the university community. The administration’s proposal to eliminate these steps and allow college presidents to offer lump sum increases based on performance, would destroy pay equity and create an environment of competition rather than cooperation, pitting workers against each other, rather than bringing them together.
Like the proposed changes to the salary schedule, the university’s proposals to increase adjunct teaching loads and allow for an unlimited increase in untenured distinguished lecturer positions may sound like a good idea on the surface, but when you look closer, there are a number of clear negative consequences. The unlimited increase in untenured distinguished lecturer positions would allow the university to create what the union newspaper The Clarion reported in April as “a whole new tier of full-time faculty, serving at will” without the benefits of tenure, academic freedom, or job security. Likewise an increase in the permitted number of courses that adjuncts can teach would continue to erode the very concept of tenure, while growing the underclass of underpaid and overworked adjunct faculty, who, despite their ridiculously low wages, often work as hard or harder than their tenured counterparts out of a sense of academic and civic duty and responsibility to their students.
Consistent with the chancellor’s and the Board of Trustees’ corporate vision for the university, the administration has, again, proposed to eliminate all department chairs from the union, creating even further divisions within the university at the department level. This would give the administration an unprecedented control over the day-to-day academic activities of professors and lecturers, weakening collegiality, and further creating a sense of division, mistrust, and competition among academic workers in the university. As the Vice President for Part-Time Personnel, Marcia Newfield said, “I think [removing chairs from the union] is a blatant metaphor to turn the university into a corporation, with all power at the top. I say metaphor because I don’t think they think they will get it — they have repeatedly asked for chairs’ removal in prior contracts.”
Although many graduate students at CUNY might not immediately notice any significant differences in their day-to-day working lives if these changes were implemented, the change in the university over time would be significant and irreversible. Currently more than 50% of the courses offered at CUNY are taught by adjuncts and this number is increasing. This change, of course, (from a tuition free university of mostly tenured professors, to an often unaffordable, increasingly demanding university of largely contingent and de-professionalized faculty) didn’t happen overnight. It happened in slow increments over a long period of time following other national trends, and because it met with little, or often impotent resistance from faculty and unions, was largely successful in completely transforming the university. If the administration’s demands were met the university would continue the trend toward an even greater percentage of temporary, underpaid, overworked, and unprotected academic labor.
As for the PSC, they are requesting, among other things, that paid office hours be granted to all adjuncts who teach at least two courses CUNY wide (currently this only applies on a campus wide basis) and that the administration “support and gain the necessary legislative and executive action to provide health insurance to graduate employees and their dependents.” The union has also called for changes that would create greater job security and seniority for adjuncts. Although this is a good start, there is little in the union’s March, 2007 demands that actually provides any kind of real attempt to address the radical inequities that still exist between part time adjuncts and the tenured and tenure-track faculty. Although the language of the union’s demands reflects a concern for these inequities: “Inequities of salary must also be addressed so that there is movement toward pay equity for employees in part-time positions and other titles,” there are no actual demands for equity, and the union is calling for across the board increase in salaries, which, when said and done, means that the actual salary differences between these two groups will only increase over time. n
For a full list of the union and administration demands see this page.
