Where’s the Anger?

Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before. On September 11, 2009 I passed my second exam and advanced to candidacy. On September 10, 2009, I was told I wasn’t going to receive my first paycheck until October 8, 2009. I also discovered that about 150 graduate assistants—through no fault of their own—were in the same situation.

Rather than spending the morning of my second exam vacillating between pulling my own hair out and wanting to vomit, I spent it first on the phone with payroll trying to resolve the issue. Frankly, even now, I am more concerned with the impact that missing paycheck had on my professionalism than it did on my finances. It wasn’t just disappointing not to get paid—it was also disheartening. How could CUNY have so little respect for me as an academic that my paperwork couldn’t even get processed?

This problem certainly has everyone’s attention now—largely because it has impacted a large number of graduate students. It’s pretty impossible to recruit top-tier graduate students when word gets out that they might not (or probably won’t) get paid.

But this problem isn’t new. Any one of us who has taught as an adjunct on any college campus knows that this problem is familiar—and it’s systemic. Again this semester it impacted adjuncts and new faculty members on every campus (except one.) Setting conspiracy theories aside, this might not be on purpose, but it certainly isn’t an accident.

When questioned about this, the school administration often blames the employee: did you turn in your human resources paperwork on time? What forms are you missing? What did you do wrong?

Oftentimes nothing. Particularly at the Graduate Center this semester, those 150 of us who missed one or two paychecks did everything right. Our paperwork was in on time, but, according to university officials, there was a backlog that made it impossible for them to pay us on time.

And apparently they didn’t realize it until September 9. When I haven’t been paid at other campuses, it’s been a similar situation—either I was hired too late to be paid during the first pay period, or I was missing a form I was never given, or my chair held all of the adjunct paperwork until it was “finished” to hand it over to human resources.

As Jesse Goldstein pointed out at the October 5 community meeting with President Bill Kelly, this points to the precarious position of adjuncts throughout the CUNY system. We don’t make enough money, and if we aren’t paid on time we suffer.

This isn’t our fault, but what is our responsibility?

When the Adjunct Project suggested that graduate students talk to their classes about not getting paid, I was personally surprised at the response. A lot of graduate students are embarrassed to do so—perhaps because it highlights the fact that we are students and we are often in similar situations to the ones we teach. Other students were angered by the suggestion, equating it to an adolescent temper tantrum in the classroom.

Maybe if we threw temper tantrums more often we’d have more money in our bank accounts.

Maybe if we followed the lead of the University of California students, faculty, and staff, we’d have an impact on CUNY. We all know our problem is bigger than two missed paychecks—our problem is a system that treats us like disposable employees rather than respected academics. It is our responsibility to demand that respect not just for ourselves but also for our students, our colleagues, and staff throughout
the system.

This is our struggle.

On October 6, Governor David Paterson announced an additional $53 million dollars in cuts to the CUNY system. This isn’t a surprise—the state already balanced the budgets on our back last year, with $68 million in cuts in 2008, $44 million in cuts already in 2009, and a 15 percent increase in tuition for students on every campus.

And, the question remains, why aren’t we angry about it? Is it because the Graduate Center is thoroughly removed from college life at CUNY? Maybe if we did talk to our students about our missing paychecks, we’d begin to understand how a 15 percent increase in tuition impacts them, or how they’re doing with higher enrollment and fewer services. Maybe if we talked to our students, we’d learn from them. Maybe if we talked to our students—or staff members—as equals, we’d stop performing authority and start actually having solidarity.

And if we are angry, why aren’t we doing anything?

The University of California system is faced with steep budget cuts this year, as California attempts to—yet again—balance its budget by slashing education across the board. Schools are faced with a 20 percent budget cut this year and are planning to increase student fees by 32 percent. On July 16, the Board of Regents approved an emergency plan that would force 80 percent of the system’s employees to take unpaid furloughs of between eleven and twenty-six days over the next year.

At individual campuses, this doesn’t just mean that people aren’t getting paid; it means that there will be fewer student jobs, fewer teaching assistants, a virtual elimination of lecturers (who often teach up to 30 percent of undergraduate classes in some departments) and the risk that top faculty will leave for more lucrative positions.

Before we sit back and think about how lucky we are that this isn’t happening to us (or that it’s happening more slowly and more quietly), let’s ask the question: are we next?

On September 24, University of California students took action to make sure that their voices were heard. Thousands of students across the ten-campus system participated in a Day of Action to protest the de-funding of the system. While they were out there protesting for themselves, they were speaking for all of us. Public education is being systematically de-funded nationwide—and two missed paychecks are just one of the small consequences.

This is a wake up call to all of us, and it’s time to take action.

But how do we build solidarity across a twenty-three-campus system? I say this all of the time: we can start by talking to each other. I think it’s obvious that we need to talk to our students, but what about talking to other faculty members? When tenured and tenure-track employees started hearing the story of how I didn’t get paid, I got to hear their stories too—and they were surprisingly similar. They missed paychecks, taught classes with over 100 students in them, and felt overworked and exhausted. When I talked to higher education officers—more popularly known as HEOs—and college assistants about what their offices looked like, they had four times as much work and the same number of employees.

And what about the cafeteria workers at Hunter? The cafeterias were sold to a company, AVI, which refuses to honor the worker’s old contract. AVI is threatening to slash health benefits (by following the national pattern of making employees pay more each year for their insurance) and do away with their pension plans (many employees have been paying into this for decades!)

The workers are already underpaid—and their raises are at risk, despite an existing contract. A boycott is scheduled for October 29 if AVI refuses to respect the standing contract.

While it seems unrelated to budget cuts, this struggle is part of the ongoing corporatization of CUNY. Money is more important than people, and the struggles of those working in the Hunter cafeteria, or at the CUNY Research Foundation, all prove this.

Just like missing a paycheck, the corporatization of CUNY isn’t our fault, but it is our responsibility. We can choose to follow the lead of those in the Hunter cafeterias with protests and boycotts. We can choose to follow the lead of Research Foundation employees who walked out on September 14 to demand a contract settlement. We can choose to follow the lead of those at the University of California. Whatever we do, though, we cannot be quiet, and we cannot hide. Whatever we do, we must do something.

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