One of the foundational principles of labor organizing and collective bargaining is that workers can and should withhold their labor if their job situation or environment is threatening to their health and livelihood or inadequate to their needs—herein resides workers’ ultimate source of power. A variety of different laws implemented throughout the twentieth century have affected American workers in myriad ways, and it is helpful to consider the trajectory of these laws in order to understand our contemporary labor climate—particularly as it concerns public sector workers (most of us at CUNY), and specifically for contingent workers like adjuncts and graduate assistants who have very specific needs and interests due to our precarious situation.

Some of the most important laws and acts passed during the twentieth century include the National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act of 1935 (which gave private sector workers the right to bargain collectively, but did not address the rights of public sector workers), the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 (which demobilized labor by imposing limits on workers’ ability to strike, by applying strict penalties to public sector workers who went on strike, and by prohibiting communists or other “radicals” from union leadership), the Condon-Wadlin Act of 1947 (which, in its initial incarnation, expanded on Taft-Hartley by imposing very specific sanctions on striking public workers such as immediate dismissal from the job, a three-year ban on raises for re-hired public sector workers, and probation without tenure for five years), and the very complex and multi-faceted Public Employees Fair Employment Act of 1967—Article 14 of the New York State Civil Service Law. This act—which came to be known as the “Taylor Law”—governs and constrains New York’s public sector workers today.

To understand the complexity of the Taylor Law and the controversies surrounding it, it is useful to look at the immediate postwar period. In 1947, after a strike by public school teachers in Buffalo, lawmakers in Albany created the Condon-Wadlin Act, which outlawed strikes by public workers in New York State and did not provide them with any statutory means to collective bargaining. Despite the new law, however, the postwar period featured a steady increase in labor’s strength in the public sector, which was accompanied by a rising militancy among New York workers. According to Joshua Freeman, Graduate Center professor and author of Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II, by the early-1960s, job actions by municipal workers were on the rise. The newly formed United Federation of Teachers (UFT) initiated a brief strike in 1960 and led another one-day work stoppage in 1962. In 1965, eight thousand welfare service workers and members of the Social Service Employees Union (SSEU) went on strike, closing city welfare centers. To break the strike, the city fired five thousand of the striking workers and jailed nineteen of the union’s leaders, but because the SSEU had included welfare recipients’ issues in their demands, they had strong support from the community and went back to work after the city conceded and pledged not to seek penalties under Condon-Wadlin.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a series of strikes by teachers, welfare workers, and transit workers ultimately evidenced the unenforceability of Condon-Wadlin, and in 1963, the legislature revised the penalties to water the law down with an eye to making it more enforceable. This modification of the law proved ineffective; the transit workers strike of 1966 ultimately shut the law down, when anti-labor Republican Mayor John V. Lindsay succumbed to the TWU, granting them a fifteen percent pay increase which exceeded federal anti-inflationary wage increase standards, and was thus denounced by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The TWU strike and its aftermath also forced Governor Nelson Rockefeller to step in and wrest control of the situation from Lindsay.

In 1967, Rockefeller created an advisory panel to assess the legal situation of public sector workers. This panel, headed by labor researcher George W. Taylor, recommended a replacement for Condon-Wadlin, which would create both a formal process for collective bargaining for public sector workers and legally take away their right to strike. Rockefeller claimed this was the best way to balance the purportedly conflicting interests of New York citizens who required vital public services (and thus were negatively affected by public worker strikes) and the public sector workers who supplied those vital services (but who needed a way to secure their own rights). The Public Employee Relations Committee that made the recommendation ultimately became the Public Employee Relations Board—the agency charged with officially overseeing the process of negotiations between labor and management, and with formally implementing and interpreting the new law.

The Taylor Law is a complex piece of legislature, with fourteen different sections, addressing a variety of different aspects of negotiation. Central to the law is the interpretive role of the Public Employee Relations Board or PERB (addressed in Section 205), which consists of three members appointed by the governor, and which can be involved at any stage of negotiations between the state and the union, at the request of either party or at the agency’s own behest. The PERB functions solely as a mediator between the state and the union’s bargaining agents and can impose penalties on either for engaging in improper practices, such as “bad faith” negotiations, but it does not have any control over the contract that results from the negotiations that it oversees.

The mandates of the Taylor Law regarding the collective bargaining process concern both local governments (“public employers”) and municipal unions (“employee organizations”). Under the law, employers are required to determine bargaining units within public sector unions, to recognize employee organizations for each bargaining unit (and also the rights to organization, representation, recognition, and certification of municipal unions, all of which are covered in Sections 202-204), and to determine (or allow for debate regarding) what will be considered “mandatory bargaining issues” during negotiations. Mandatory bargaining issues are determined by the PERB in the case of conflict between public employer and union leadership, and the decision can be appealed in court. Although what constitutes “bargainable issues” is not explicitly defined by the Taylor Law, “terms and conditions of employment” are explicitly defined as negotiable, and the law states that it is up to the PERB and the negotiating parties to determine what falls within this category. In subsection 4 of section 201 on “Definitions,” “terms and conditions of employment” are defined as “salaries, wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment provided” (retirement benefits are excluded from explicit coverage). Under New York case law, wages, medical benefits, sick/vacation/holiday leave, reimbursement for expenses, severance pay, disciplinary policies, and work rules are all considered terms and conditions of employment, so these are generally negotiated as mandatory bargaining issues when the union goes to the bargaining table with the municipality.

The Taylor Law is best known (at least by labor organizers and activists and by many public sector workers today) for its “no-strike clause”—Section 210, “Prohibition of Strikes.” In an earlier section of the act, Section 201 on “Definitions,” a strike is defined as “any …concerted stoppage of work or slowdown by public employees.” The “Prohibition of Strikes” section details a variety of strict penalties for violation of this prohibition, including payroll deductions in the form of twice an employee’s daily rate of pay for every day he/she is on strike, legal sanctions including imprisonment and/or firing of members and officers of the union who are deemed to be involved in the strike or who are believed to be the instigating parties, and, for the union as a whole, the loss of “dues check-off” (the automatic deduction of and delivery to the union of dues from members’ paychecks by the state) and loss of the right to charge and collect an agency fee from all members of the bargaining unit. Although it could be argued that these penalties are not as strict as those designated under Condon-Wadlin, Condon-Wadlin’s draconian sanctions were very rarely applied during its twenty-year history. In contrast, the sanctions under the Taylor Law are understood to be more enforceable, and have been applied forcefully in recent cases. It is interesting to note however, that some labor lawyers, such as Staughton Lynd, argue that the no-strike provision in the Taylor Law is actually cancelled out by the previously mentioned NLRA, particularly section 7. This section states: “Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” Section 8 of the law lists ways that the boss (in the case of public employees, the state) is not allowed to interfere with this organizing process, and defines “concerted activity” as strikes and other job actions.

Confronting the Taylor Law

While the Taylor Law is well known as the primary legal prohibition on strikes and other job actions by public sector workers and unions, what is less well known is that, at its origin in 1967, the Taylor Law was, from labor’s perspective, an improvement in New York State labor law. By lessening the harsh penalties for public sector job actions that had existed under Condon-Wadlin, and by granting new recognition to aspects of public sector collective bargaining, the Taylor Law in some ways strengthened the position of public sector workers and unions in New York State. However, the passage of the Taylor Law was also state lawmakers’ attempt to create labor peace at a moment of particularly intense class conflict by crafting legislation that offered new carrots to labor while holding onto the stick which outlawed public sector strikes. This tactic did not prove effective, particularly in the years immediately following the law’s institution, and examining a variety of historical events during this time can help us understand how and why.

Just as Condon-Wadlin had failed to quell public workers’ unrest, the Taylor Law did not deliver labor peace. One year after the law’s passage, sanitation workers in New York City went on strike. In 1968, the UFT also carried out a series of bitterly divisive strikes after the dismissal of teachers by a community-elected governing board which sought to increase community control of schools and to promote racial integration in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district of Brooklyn. While sanitation workers and teachers were challenging New York State’s new labor law, workers in other sectors were also engaging in actions, with strikes by Consolidated Edison and United Postal Service workers as well as by painters and longshoremen.

As the 1960s came to a close, strike action was reaching a peak in the United States. Much of it involved “wildcat strikes” which featured workers taking action without the approval of their union leaders. In 1970, postal workers, employees of the federal government who were also barred from striking, launched what Freeman calls “the largest public employee strike and the largest wildcat (or at least semi-wildcat) strike in U.S. history.” The following year featured a slowdown by New York City firefighters in which they refused to carry out anything but emergency services, and a six-day wildcat job action by New York City police officers.

In the early-1970s, faculty members of the City University of New York were also finding new ways to advance their position as public sector workers. In 1972, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), formed after a merger of the United Federation of College Teachers and a faculty organization called the Legislative Conference began bargaining its first contract. As negotiations seemed to gridlock, union members voted to strike if no contract agreement was reached by October 1973. CUNY responded to this vote by threatening to impose a contract under the terms of the Taylor Law. The conflict was averted, however, when the union and CUNY reached an agreement before the October deadline.

The New York City fiscal crisis of 1975 ushered in a new era for public sector workers, and stimulated intense debate about how to respond to the attacks on labor that the economic crisis had precipitated. To resist the mass layoffs imposed by city officials during the fiscal crisis, some union leaders proposed a general strike, an action which failed to materialize in part due to opposition by UFT President Albert Shanker and other New York City municipal labor leaders. At CUNY too the fiscal crisis threatened the jobs of faculty and staff. A segment of the PSC favored launching an immediate strike to resist faculty layoffs and budget cuts, but the referendum was defeated 58-26 in the union’s delegate assembly. Opponents of the strike argued that the Taylor Law would have a devastating impact on a union as small as the PSC, and that this might include loss of tenure rights and a fine of two days pay for every day on strike. The next year, when the city claimed to be unable to meet CUNY’s payroll, the PSC responded that its members would carry out a work stoppage if they were not paid. Then-CUNY Chancellor Robert Kibbee met this threat by shutting the university down for two weeks. According to Christopher Gunderson, “the dramatic action left faculty unpaid and postponed the graduation of thousands of students as well as the issuance of grades.” And when CUNY reopened, members of the university’s Board of Higher Education voted for the first time in CUNY’s long history to impose tuition on its students.

After the many intense labor battles of the 1960s and early 1970s, direct confrontations to the Taylor Law became more and more rare and city and state officials seemed more willing to use severe methods to break strikes by public workers. In 1979, prison guards and other security and law enforcement workers, all members of Council 82 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) went on strike. The union was fined, its Executive Director was sentenced to thirty days in jail, and it’s dues check-off was temporarily suspended.

The Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) also launched two more direct challenges to the Taylor Law: an eleven-day strike in 1980 and a two-and-a-half day strike in 2005. According to Freeman, the 1980 strike “represented the last major effort by New York workers to challenge the postulates of austerity.” The fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s had so transformed the political terrain of the city and weakened labor’s position that former allies now openly opposed the union. Mayor Ed Koch encouraged businesses and employees to keep the city working despite the strike. As Freeman observes, “having a Democrat like Koch position himself as a cheerleader for anti-unionism reflected the changed, post-fiscal crisis power relations in the city and the dramatic weakening of pro-labor sentiment.” Though the 1980 transit strike ended with some considerable gains for workers, the union was also fined heavily and lost its dues check-off system for four months. Twenty-five years later during the transit strike of 2005, as labor’s power in New York City had eroded even more, the penalties applied to the union’s illegal job action were even greater: the union’s work stoppage earned the TWU a $2.5 million fine, dues check-off was suspended, and union president Roger Toussaint was jailed for ten days.

Why Confront the Taylor Law? Students, Workers, and Self-Organization

As is shown through this history, the Taylor Law was not just a one-sided defeat for labor, but is instead tied up in a dynamic set of contradictions.. Acts such as the Taylor Law, which formalize and standardize negotiations between management and labor, have emerged from certain historical conditions that are rooted in the early days of the U.S. labor movement. Since the turn of the century, different methods have been used by different sectors of the working class to secure gains. Historically, there has been much debate over the best way for workers to approach winning gains: should we make deals with management to maintain “bread and butter” demands such as wages, hours, and benefits, or should we attempt to confront the contradiction between bosses and workers inherent in capitalism head-on and take control over the means of production? From the late-nineteenth century, this split was animated in part by the antagonism between the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and advocates of industrial unionism, an approach which favored organizing all workers in a workplace into a single union rather than separating workers by craft or job type (which was the AFL’s model of organizing). Labor historian Marty Glaberman illustrates this contradiction by discussing the sit-down strike of 1936-37 by General Motors workers who were members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, a part of the recently formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). At the end of this strike, workers had a one-page contract, which simply gave them the right to bargain collectively. All other workplace dynamics were negotiated between workers themselves, or through direct action against the bosses. Workers had control over the means of production, and the bosses knew that workers were the ones with the real power.

The institution of collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) was and still is seen by many as both a gain and defeat in labor organizing, and is recognized as a strong corollary to state laws that constrain gains by limiting workers’ ability to struggle in the long-term. The model of negotiating through a bargaining approach that is separate from the everyday workers themselves stands in contradiction to the way workers actually won many of the gains we think are so important today, such as the eight-hour work day and maternity leave. These gains were won not by union leaders bargaining behind closed doors, but by workers withdrawing their labor and taking control of their workplace. The codification of these rights into legal agreements with the state (such as the Taylor Law) or management has implications which are two-fold. Glaberman describes the contradiction like this: “A contract is a compromise. It establishes that no matter what union gains are recorded, the right of the company to manage production is also recorded…The union officials become the enforcers of the contract and the union becomes the agency by which the worker is disciplined…” (1972: 14-15). The danger of relying only on the kinds of gains that are afforded by CBAs and through federal and state labor law is that unions can (and often do) become organizations above and outside of workers, instead of groups of people fundamentally working together to change the very tangible conditions under which they work.

What we can see by looking at the past experiences of working New Yorkers, from the 1950s teachers’ strikes, to the 1966, 1980, and 2005 TWU strikes, is that public sector workers in New York haven’t just treated labor law as something they automatically have to follow; in fact, the biggest changes in working conditions, and even in legislation itself, came from direct and militant disregard of these laws. The Taylor law was a revision of a more draconian law which was busted through direct action and the explosion of resistance by working people, students, and teachers. Moving forward, it is clear we cannot change the Taylor Law simply by asking legislatures; we have to prove the law and all other oppressive labor laws and working conditions irrelevant by and through our own struggle. This struggle may include but is not limited to both wildcat and union leadership-sanctioned work stoppages, pickets, slow-downs, and other creative methods of building alternative institutions in our own workplaces.

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Adjuncts Exhibit Strength as PSC Bargains for New Contract

On Thursday, October 21, the CUNY Contingents Unite/Adjunct Project (CCU/AP) completed the first phase of its assault on the PSC Delegate Assembly’s inattention to contingent labor demands. The CCU/AP delivered a petition with over eight hundred signatures to the DA, leafleted the delegates as they entered the assembly, and distributed “Petition Packets” to each of the DA’s fifteen members—packets that included CCU/AP literature and a hard copy of the petition with all eight hundred signatures (as we go to press there are now more than 1,200 contingent and full time faculty members who have signed the petition).

The DA represented a major victory for CCU/AP. “We did a great job with this!” proclaimed Holly Clarke, a member of the CCU’s Coordinating Committee. “We publicized our petition, showed strength, and gained allies in an important arena of struggle. Everyone’s efforts in circulating the contract demands and getting signatures should be applauded! This has been—and still is—a truly united effort!”

But there is still plenty that needs doing. It’s clear that the PSC has not accepted the CCU/AP’s demands. In the coming days leading up to the November 4 DA vote on the bargaining proposal, CCU/AP pressure needs sustaining. Among other things, increasing the number of signatures on the petition will demonstrate through force of numbers just how many contingent employees there are paying attention and willing to take action in defense of their rights. Moreover, the petition is an important opportunity to attract full-time CUNY labor—tenured, tenure-track, and junior faculty members—to the cause. This copy of the Advocate reprints Distinguished Professor Ros Petchesky’s moving call to arms to full-time employees to act on behalf of their part-time employees (the full letter is reprinted on page 9). Use it to recruit full-timers as you press for more signatures. Remember also that the petition can be accessed online at http://www.petitiononline.com/demands/petition.html. Let’s sustain the momentum!

Perhaps more important still is the need for adjuncts and other contingent CUNY labor to show up to the November 4 DA meeting itself. Says Alyson Spurges, co-coordinator of the Adjunct Project and all-around superwoman, “It is crucial that we are present at 61 Broadway (PSC headquarters) that evening; our numbers and actions in that room will speak for us even if we are not given the chance to speak at the microphone…Even if you’ve never been involved with the Adjunct Project before—it is absolutely necessary that you come out to the DA meeting on Thursday November 4. We are working on how to present ourselves that evening—and are currently making t-shirts to wear, signs, and possibly buttons to show our solidarity as contingent workers.”

CUNY Expands Colonial Reach to Outer Boroughs

In the wake of massive budgetary cuts to state and local public higher education budgets, CUNY has been forced to take drastic belt-tightening actions of its own. Hiring freezes, expanded enrollment, and reduced class offerings are just three methods by which public education institutions are being forced to atone for the sins of Albany’s irresponsibility.

So it’s heartwarming to know that CUNY central is not only making demands on the various colonial holdings in its vast, city-wide empire, but is itself taking measures to cope with the ongoing economic and financial crisis. Like, for example, the recent Board of Trustees decision to reward Matthew Goldstein yet again with another raise for his tireless effort to privatize the CUNY system.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that CUNY has taken further fiscally responsible action this week to spend more of the money it apparently doesn’t have on new property in the outer boroughs. In late October, CUNY signed a two-year lease for prime-time real estate in downtown Brooklyn. The deal secures CUNY 27,000 square feet worth of executive suites on two floors in Brooklyn’s tallest skyscraper, located on Montague Street across from the federal courthouse complex that anchors the neighborhood. CUNY has made no comment on the details of the acquisition, but has acknowledged that it plans to move into its new digs at some point in January 2011.

CUNY Campus Settles Anti-Discrimination Suit with Human Rights Group

After firing an adjunct who claimed she was discriminated based on her race and creed, Kingsborough Community College settled a lawsuit with the New York City Commission on Human Rights this past month. The CUNY campus agreed to pay Hanaa Khalil, an adjunct teacher of chemistry, $7,700 in back pay and $10,000 in damages. The school also agreed to provide anti-discrimination training to its entire supervisory staff, including department chairs and academic affairs officers.

In Spring 2009, Khalil was fired by her department chair after complaining to human resources that she was receiving discriminatory treatment from her department’s administrative assistant. Khalil claims that Kingsborough staff increasingly treated her with disrespect that eventually evolved into harassment.

Khalil had been offered the adjuncting position sight unseen by the department’s administrative assistant in a desperate move to fill empty slots for classes that had already begun. When Khalil arrived to the campus to fill out her paperwork, the assistant “started immediately to have a very different way of dealing with me,” Khalil told the <i>Clarion</i>. “She looked shocked to see that Dr. Hanaa Khalil was wearing a scarf.” For its part, Kingsborough claims that Khalil was fired for repeatedly missing classes, claims that
Khalil denies.

The college’s decision to settle Khalil’s claims could produce positive results. According to Patrick Lloyd, an associate professor at Kingsborough who spoke to the <i>Clarion</i>, “people at CUNY often are not getting proper training. Especially with all the budget cuts, they’re overworked and undertrained.” For Khalil, the settlement lays the groundwork for avoiding similar ugliness in the future. “I am hoping that this will help other people have a good experience.”

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I want to kick off the first post of this blog by talking about an issue that every graduate student is probably concerned about, the dearth of job openings for tenure-track faculty, and how it’s connected to CUNY’s widespread use of adjuncts and the state’s budget deficit. We’ve all heard the horror stories about how there are too many students getting Ph.D.’s, that there aren’t enough academic jobs to go around, and that these degrees are worthless for anything else.

What is usually left out of such accounts or relegated to secondary status is that there are hundreds of thousands of university teaching jobs in existence that, rather than providing the comfortable middle-class lifestyle one associates with academia, are instead being compensated at a very marginal level, with no benefits, that it would be difficult to support an individual and impossible to support a family on: adjuncts. Adjuncts now make up over one half of the teaching workforce at public universities, including CUNY. For many grad students, adjuncting is a convenient way to gain some teaching experience and pick up some extra income. Yet many graduate students have difficulty surviving economically even by combining loans, adjunct jobs and/or other work. For many others, adjuncting becomes a life-long career of constant financial hardship and struggle.

The common refrain of those academics lucky enough to receive tenure is that they have earned their positions through their hard work and high-quality research. This position ignores several realities. First, the vast adjunct workforce was not created by the inferior scholarship of its members. State governments have been slashing their contributions to public universities for decades, resulting in severely underfunded institutions, such as CUNY. University administrations have responded by creating a two-tiered labor system in which half of the workforce receives low pay, poor benefits and no job security. This is not an intellectual strategy, it’s an economic one, and it’s the same strategy used by major corporations to prop up their bottom lines by attacking workers. It is part of the thirty-year-long national and indeed global “one-sided class war” of the employers against their workers in which median wages have stagnated and public services have been cut back while taxes on the rich and corporations have been slashed. Right now, education is one of the central fronts in this struggle, with K-12 schools being privatized right and left and public universities having their budgets cut, employees laid off, and tuitions raised.

Second, despite the universities’ role as producers of research, their educational role remains their core function. When tenure faculty complain that adjuncts deserve their low pay because they produce inferior research, they ignore the fact that without enough teachers, universities would cease to function, and rather than teaching their low-enrollment advanced seminars, tenured faculty would be forced to do the grunt work of teaching high-enrollment introductory lectures, which are usually relegated to adjuncts.

As the above makes clear, the “Ph.D. glut,” the adjunct-ification of the university, and the budget deficit are intimately linked. None of these problems can be solved individually, which is why it’s in the interest of all graduate students, adjuncts, and anybody interested in preserving the quality of public universities to become active in the fight to defend public education. If we lose this struggle, we can say goodbye to a secure economic future for ourselves and to higher education as a public good. To get involved, check out the Adjunct Project, the “March 4th” CUNY-wide coalition, or the PSC.

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When Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona signed SB1070 (“Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act”) into law on Friday, April 23rd, I felt like many of us had the morning after Obama won the presidential election: I went to sleep in one United States and woke up in a different one. Of course, with Obama’s election—for many of us—this was a feeling of elation, waking up the next morning and suddenly remembering that we, as a nation, had elected a (relatively) progressive, (definitely) Black president. Waking up the Saturday morning following Brewer’s signing of SB1070—a law that requires law enforcement officials in Arizona to stop and detain anyone they “reasonably suspect” might be an “illegal immigrant” until they produce papers proving they are in the country legally—I was devastated and living in a country where it is now legal to stop people on the street and detain them for looking Mexican.

Undocumented workers form a large part of the workforce in this country. They are a class of workers not offered any protections in their daily lives and are completely at the mercy of their employers; they are reliant on the kindness of those who hire them to do any number of their very necessary jobs. I have seen justices brought about by employers who do right by their undocumented employees. I have seen horrors brought about by those employers who do not.

Undocumented workers cannot continue to rely on the kindness of strangers as they continue to live and work in the United States. Labor unions, including the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY), have already begun to come forward to speak for immigrant workers. As we saw at the recent May Day march in New York City, and other actions around the country, May Day is increasingly and quickly becoming a day of action for workers in solidarity with immigrant workers. Labor unions need to remain aggressively at the forefront of this fight, demanding comprehensive federal immigration reform that gives amnesty to those already living here and allows for freer movement between arbitrary borders. Many national unions, such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), already have demonstrated commitment to, and forward momentum in, organizing these communities.

Every other national and local union—both the leadership and the rank and file—needs to continue large and vocal shows of solidarity with all workers and point out the obvious: this does not begin or end with the oppression of “illegal immigrants.” Illegal immigrants form an unpopular class of workers in our nation. We must also recognize that all of us who work for a living are an unpopular class of workers. We are all human, and we are all workers. We must fight together to end the injustice perpetrated against Mexicans in Arizona, and immigrant workers everywhere in this country, if we want to remain at all credible as a movement.

At CUNY this translates to rallying with cafeteria workers at Hunter and child care workers at other campuses. Right now, we must stand in solidarity with contingent instructors, as we are beginning to find out just how disposable we really are. We are faced with an epidemic of layoffs. Contingent employees—people who work with no job security—cannot be laid off, though. Rather, those of us who are not being asked back to our current schools, schools that we have been at for one semester or ten, are simply “non-reappointed.” This is an administrative whitewash of reality. The fact is that we are being let go in large numbers.

The worst report those of us organizing at the Adjunct Project and CUNY Contingents Unite (CCU) have heard is at John Jay College, where fifty-two adjuncts in the sociology department alone were laid off. Mass layoffs are also rumored for the fall semester in the computer science and psychology departments at John Jay. As we heard at a joint emergency meeting of the CCU and the Adjunct Project on Friday, April 30, adjuncts are being let go at every single campus. With updates from almost every CUNY campus, adjuncts and graduate fellows expressed concern over both their job status and their class size should these layoffs go through. This joint emergency meeting passed a motion demanding that the administration stop layoffs, that the PSC immediately begin organizing a protest, and organizing our own protest at John Jay, where we have seen the most egregious offense.

There is one huge stumbling block in showing solidarity with laid off workers: CUNY is not required to tell anyone of these “non-reappointments” except the victim. The PSC-CUNY need not be informed, so there is no way to compile data about just how many contingent workers are being let go. Therefore, we must do what we do best as academics and compile the data ourselves. For that reason, please send any information you have about layoffs to cunycontingentsunite@gmail.com.

As we approach contract negotiations in the Fall, the CCU and the Adjunct Project have included job security as one of our four keys demands, asking that contingent instructors be offered a three-year contract. These layoffs indicate that we are completely devalued as a class of workers (and graduate students are not immune, though many department chair choose to treat us a “protected class”) and job security will never be offered unless we demand it.

Our petition regarding these four key contract demands is being circulated on campuses (and can be found online at http://www.petitiononline.com/demands/petition.html). In addition to job security, we are asking for significant pay increases for adjuncts and graduate fellows that move toward pay equity, equal health insurance plans for employees across the board, and a promotional series and due process for higher education officers. Meeting these demands, we believe, will move the PSC one step closer to striking at the heart of the two-tier system, as contingent employees were promised in our last round of contract negotiations.

Graduate students have a unique struggle in this, as we fight simply to be recognized as workers at all. In the year 2000, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that teaching assistants at private universities had the right to unionize. Many schools began this process, New York University perhaps being one of the most prominent cases. In 2004, the NLRB reversed this landmark ruling, stating that the main role of teaching assistants at universities is as students. It is integral that we stand in solidarity with students at NYU, as the school administration fails to recognize their union. The administration has not offered them much hope, and the students will then have to again take this to the NLRB, now dominated by Obama appointees, to reverse the 2004 ruling.

What ramification does this conflict between our roles as students and workers have on our careers? Primarily, the teaching experience we accrue as graduate students is completely discounted. Certainly, it is used to in the hiring process, but when determining pay for new instructors, tenure-track and contingent alike, the three, or four, or five, or six years you spent in the classroom while taking classes and writing your dissertation do not count. This is an affront to the work that we have done over our graduate career and completely ignores the fact that universities rely on us for this labor. We must fight to see that this is corrected. More and more graduate students at universities across the country are asked to teach their own classes, but we are treated as children in the paternalistic system.

Even amid all these struggles, I have decided to resign as Adjunct Project co-coordinator. Having served in this position for two years, my reasons are manifold. First and foremost, I feel that the fight for a contract that truly destroys the two-tier system is too great to be restricted by a formal position that is largely kept in line by the DSC. In this position I never truly felt responsible to anything but a set of baffling, unclear, and sometime arbitrary rules.

Additionally, the DSC Plenary recently approved a new bylaw that added a third co-coordinator position. Though many may view this as a further investment in the Adjunct Project, I voiced concerns that it was, in fact, a misguided one. Dividing the Adjunct Project into three discrete positions, with limited overlap, creates further bureaucracy in an already overly bureaucratized system. It becomes difficult to listen to the needs of students, and adjuncts, when there are so many “professional” voices speaking up. I encourage you to continue to speak to the Adjunct Project about whatever problems and concerns you have, and I encourage the new co-coordinators of the Adjunct Project to work under the unified vision of allowing graduate student needs to guide their work. Anything less than that would serve as proof that the DSC’s investment in the Adjunct Project did not, in any way, serve a student body clearly in need of representation.

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Upcoming Contract Negotiations

The current PSC contract expires in October 2010. The Adjunct Project and CCU (Cuny Contingents Unite) are working together to determine what demands should be included on the agenda at the upcoming union contract negotiations. We’re already planning for the next round of bargaining; the kick-off will be a meeting with the PSC and Barbara Bowen at the Graduate Center (room 9205) at 12:30 pm on Tuesday, April 6, to discuss priorities for the next contract and how GC students can be part of the collective bargaining process. 

Proposed CCU contract demands were circulated by Abe Walker on the CCU-Discussion list on February 5, after they were approved by the Coordinating Committee. If you would like to receive a copy of that posting, please write to cunycontingents@gmail.com.

The next Adjunct Project meeting is March 25, and the monthly CCU meeting will be held on Friday, March 26, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm, in the Political Science Thesis Room, inside Room 5200 at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Barbara Bowen and other officers will visit every campus this semester to begin a union-wide conversation about bargaining the next contract with CUNY. These meetings will be the membership’s chance to hear directly about issues that have already emerged for the upcoming negotiations and to discuss their own concerns and ideas.To find out when and where the meeting is at your home campus, go to: www.psc-cuny.org

Recap: March 4th Day of Action to Defend Education

On March 4, the National Day of Action to Defend Education, students across the nation gathered for mass protests against budget cuts, tuition hikes, increased class sizes, and school closings. In New York, over 1800 students, teachers and advocates gathered together to protest on the steps of City Hall to protest the mayor’s management of the school system; at Governor David Paterson’s office to protest $1.4 billion in cuts to state education funds, including $466 million in cuts to state funding for city education; and over 250 protesters made it all the way to the MTA hearings at FIT to protest the potential loss of free student MetroCards (with 5000 petitions in tow).

Students, parents, and teachers rallied on the steps of New York City Hall to protest the impending closure of nineteen failing city schools and the expansion of charter schools. 400 students at Hunter College staged walkouts and three protesters were arrested after marchers clashed with campus police. About sixty protesters entered the seven-floor main building in a failed attempt to occupy it; two people were arrested by security officers at the college and charged with trespass, criminal mischief and possession of graffiti instruments, and a thirty-seven-year-old man was charged with disorderly conduct. Students also walked out of classes at the New School and New York University.

Nationally, tens of thousands protested. Many were objecting to recent budget cuts and showing solidarity with students in California, who protested a 32 percent increase in tuition. Oakland police arrested about 150 people after protesters climbed onto a San Francisco Bay area freeway during the afternoon commute, shutting it down for about an hour, police said. More than a hundred such events in at least thirty-two states joined the grass-roots campaign, which had been in motion since demonstrations last fall in California.

The protests garnered substantial media attention. In response to student protestors, the chairman of the MTA agreed to meet with them to hear about how the loss of free student MetroCards will impact their lives. As a result, Chairman Jay Walder has agreed to postpone the vote on the MetroCards until June (rather than mid-March, as expected). It was an important victory, demonstrating that New York students will not accept having to sacrifice for an MTA budget crisis not of their own making.

Part-Time Adjunct Faculty Survey

The Spring 2009 Faculty Experience Survey (FES:09) of full-time faculty and part-time adjunct faculty was conducted by the University Faculty Senate of The City University of New York during the Fall of 2009. The following is an excerpt from the report:

“In reviewing the data, very few readers will fail to note that the differences among campuses in the satisfied columns range from 20 to 70 or even 80 percentage points between campuses. These differences merit our attention and concern…. A handful of campuses merit special attention because they consistently perform in the bottom 25th percentile of satisfaction on a number of issues.

“In the current study, faculty voice strong opinions about their campuses. On a substantial number of campuses, faculty are discontented. Full-time faculty are often split on a number of matters and that is predictable given the wide disparities between campuses.

“Across CUNY, on a few issues, faculty are generally content…. similarly to CUNY full-time faculty, part-time faculty expressed considerable satisfaction with many aspects of their jobs and their faculty and staff relationships at CUNY in the University-Wide report.

“… In order to solve problems that faculty have given voice to, a willingness to engage and dialogue with faculty, to advocate for their campuses, to become creative in solving areas of discontent, and also to preserve valued achievements would foster mutual governance. The City University of New York will be well-served if faculty opinions documented in this report are vigorously addressed.”

Some statistics of interest to part-time Adjunct faculty:

• University-wide, 85 percent of part time adjunct faculty are not graduate students, and 71 percent are over the age of forty-six;
• 27 percent said they had no office space;
• Over 10 percent do not receive timely notification of their reappointment;
• 29 percent usually did not, or never, received notification of their schedule for the following  term before the end of the previous term;
• over 30 percent disagree or strongly disagree that they have adequate facilities to meet privately with students;
• 18 percent are dissatisfied with health insurance;

  While 70 percent are satisfied or very satisfied with their position at CUNY, 23 percent are very dissatisfied or dissatisfied with their salary.

As the March 4 protests and media coverage indicate, we have the potential to make important changes in the compensation, job security, health insurance coverage and overall satisfaction of full and part-time faculty at CUNY. If GC students can make the time to attend the meetings for upcoming contract negotiations, and educate themselves on the most important issues of the day, collectively we can—and will—make a difference.

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Author Louis Menand

The Marketplace of Ideas by Louis Menand. W. W. Norton and Company (2010).

The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected by Jonathan R. Cole. Public Affairs (2010).

In Willa Cather’s 1925 novel The Professor’s House, Godfrey St. Peter, a professor of history at a Midwestern university, befriends Dr. Crane, a professor in the physics department at the same school (and mentor to the novel’s tragic hero Tom Outland). These two professors, one from the humanities and one from the sciences, find a common foe in what they see as the encroachment of industry and profit in the educational process, a phenomenon that threatens their goal of producing well-rounded, cultivated students. As Cather describes it: “His friendship with Crane had been a strange one. Out in the world they would almost certainly have kept clear of each other; but in the university they had fought together in a common course. Both, with all their might, had resisted the new commercialism, the aim to ‘show results’ that was undermining and vulgarizing education. The State Legislature and the board of Regents seemed determined to make a trade school of the University.” That this appears in a novel published in 1925 is some indication of how long there has been this persistent anxiety over the aims of higher education, and the fear that market forces were corrupting the values of institutions of higher learning. (In The Professor’s House these forces of profit play a major role in the story, as the scientific discovery of the deceased intellectual prodigy Tom Outland ends up being patented and used to fund the luxurious lifestyle of St. Peter’s unscrupulous son-in-law.)

One wonders what Professors St. Peter and Crane would think of today’s universities with their power rankings, outsized athletic programs, and students who resemble not so much pupils as customers (who are always right!). And that’s not to mention the rise of for-profit conglomerates like the University of Phoenix. Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas and Jonathan R. Cole’s The Great American University, are two recent works on higher education which attempt to make sense of where the nation’s colleges and universities are today, what makes them work or not work, and what challenges lie ahead for American higher education in the coming years.

Before taking his current position as the Bass Professor of English at Harvard, where he has been since 2003, Louis Menand taught here in the Graduate Center’s English department. His newest book, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University, is part of W. W. Norton’s Issues of Our Time series edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Menand mentions that he served on a committee to re-develop Harvard College’s General Education curriculum, and this had no small part in inspiring the book, which examines the history of higher education, ideas about appropriate curriculum, and the state of graduate education at the current moment. Coming from a different angle is Jonathan R. Cole’s The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected. Cole is a sociologist by training and served as the Provost and Dean of Faculties at Columbia University from 1989 to 2003. In this book, Cole examines the nation’s largest and most prestigious research universities, shows why the United States is the unequivocal world leader in academic research, and argues that this status could be threatened by limitations on research and inquiry put in place in the past eight years.

As you may have gathered from the literary reference that began this review, my own allegiances are in the humanities. I am a student in the English department here at the Graduate Center, and my dissertation project is on academic novels such as Cather’s The Professor’s House and Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, examining them in the context of the history of American higher education. All of us in this profession encounter debates around higher education and policy in some form. Though it is impossible to keep up with every article, trend, and debate, we all read our share of pieces from The Chronicle of Higher Education and InsideHigherEd.com. However, my work on this dissertation has led me to dive headfirst into the voluminous field of higher education history. I soon found myself drowning in a sea of monographs full of overlapping information, murky statistical claims, and confusing, convoluted historical narratives about the origins and trajectory of America’s institutions of higher education and all of the administrative personalities that have shaped the field. Complicating matters even more is the fact that the American collegiate system is not really a “system’ at all, but a loose network of degree granting institutions. On the up side, this allows for a wonderful diversity of institutions and approaches. According to Cole, there are roughly 4,300 different institutions of higher learning granting degrees in the United States today. Ultimately, that variety is an asset that allows students of various abilities, backgrounds and interests to choose among a plethora of options. We now have small liberal arts colleges like Berea College in Kentucky, a school known for its innovative financing which does not charge its students tuition. We have massive public state colleges like Ohio State University which, while located in Columbus, functions like a whole city unto itself. And we also have unique institutions with specific historical missions such as my alma mater, Morehouse College, the nation’s only all-male historically black college. Cole’s number of 4,300 also includes the hundreds of community colleges spread out across the country. But how does one begin to document and quantify the outcomes of education given all these disparate institutions and their assorted curricula? How do you compile a history of American higher education in such a way that it gives us a language for assessing the success and failures of education and provides some grounding to make the appropriate changes to ensure that these institutions remain competitive in the 21st century? Some scholars have taken an institutional approach, examining the history of one particular institution and its administrative decisions about curriculum. Other historians have attempted sweeping historical surveys of American higher education as a whole, and the library shelves groan under the weight of these tomes, many clocking in at 500 pages or more.

In The Marketplace of Ideas, Menand narrows his emphasis to a set of particular issues, but in the process provides a useful overview of American higher education. The book is organized into three essays examining three particular issues in higher education: 1) the history of the general education curriculum, 2) the logic of academic disciplines and the allure of “interdisciplinarity” as a buzzword in academia, and 3) the politics of professors and the academic labor market. Menand’s writing style may seem deceptively simple—the book clocks in at a slim 174 pages—but in the course of presenting the background on these topics Menand also does a masterful job of taming and synthesizing over a century’s worth of scholarship on higher education. To boil all that down to an accessible narrative requires some generalizations, and there are many in The Marketplace of Ideas. But Menand has picked his reductionisms wisely and his attempt to fashion a coherent narrative out of all of this history is in itself a useful exercise that will allow scholars to reevaluate some of the central themes in the history of American higher education.

One of the most
striking concepts that jumps out of the book’s second section is his insistence on labeling the years between 1945 and 1975 as the “Golden Age of Academia,” a period during which “the number of American undergraduates increased by almost 500 percent and the number of graduate students increased by nearly 900 percent.” This is a level of growth that will likely never be surpassed. Higher education continued to grow after 1975 but at a much slower rate. The Golden Age began with the end of World War II and the introduction of the G.I. Bill, and lasted until the financial turmoil of the 1970s. The G.I. Bill is perhaps the single most important piece of legislation in the history of American higher education. It extended what was once a privilege reserved for children of the wealthy to thousands of working class veterans. These measures have radically reshaped the look, feel and size of
America’s colleges.

No doubt many of my peers approaching the job market will want to skip ahead to the third section titled “Why Do Professors All Think Alike.” Here Menand confronts the well-worn conservative gripe against a leftist bias in higher education, especially in the humanities where multiculturalism and pop culture have allegedly replaced the sober study of Western Civilization and its greatness. Menand dismantles this argument by citing surveys that show that the academy does in fact lean liberal, but it does so across disciplinary lines, including in the sciences, and that within that umbrella of “liberal” is a variety of political and religious perspectives. However, Menand acknowledges that “the politics of the professoriate is homogenous,” and goes on to argue that this homogeneity is rooted in how academia trains and hires its professors. While I don’t think Menand’s explanation is convincing his discussion of academic labor is worth a look less for its intervention into the culture wars and more for his examination of the “time to degree” which has blown wildly out of proportion. For instance, a typical graduate student in English will spend roughly ten years earning a doctoral degree. Other humanities fields have comparable numbers. This is an unnecessary and sadistic system. Menand proposes that the humanities Ph.D. should be streamlined in the way that programs in medicine, law and business are administered, with a set number of years and clearer program requirements. The length of the Ph.D. program prohibits many students from considering the process at all. Shortening the time to degree would make graduate education seem less daunting for college graduates from modest economic backgrounds who may have already sacrificed greatly just to get an undergraduate degree and who may be interested in earning a Ph.D. but unable and unwilling to endure its length and cost.

As for the labor market itself, Menand writes that “There is a sense in which the system is now designed to produce ABDs.” These ABDs have increasingly served as the cheap labor force for teaching undergraduate students. In recent years we have seen a graduate student unionization movement necessary to counteract universities using graduate students to teach undergraduate courses, even the upper-level ones once reserved for tenured faculty. (I first typed in “full-time faculty,” but many adjuncts are teaching full-time, which is precisely one of the problems.) Menand does not go far enough in indicting the exploitation of the current adjunct teaching system. And one wonders if this system of contingent labor has any chance of being stopped. Now with the rise of for-profit schools and the prevalence of corporate management in higher education becoming the norm, the situation continues to look bleak. Nevertheless, Menand provides some ammunition against the usual narrative of an “overproduction of Ph.D.s.” Marc Bousquet’s book How the University Works and his blog of the same name, also contests the “overproduction” thesis, showing that the demand for teaching is actually higher with more students enrolling in college each year, and that adjuncts are being slammed with larger class sizes. The question of “overproduction” must be seen in light of the growth of adjuncting as the default teaching model for the humanities.

At first glance the hefty 660 pages of Jonathan Cole’s The Great American University appears to be exactly the kind of dense, foreboding book I described earlier that makes up the canon of higher education history. And to some degree it is. But Cole has done an exemplary job of making the narrative relatively accessible despite the voluminous statistical data and flurry of eminent names that bog the book down at times. Cole has spent most of his life at Columbia where he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in sociology, and later served as provost for fourteen years until 2003. His focus in the book is, well, universities like Columbia. Cole identifies about 260 institutions that now claim to be research universities and narrows his focus to the 100+ that sit at the top of the list.

The first section of the book chronicles the history of the nation’s earliest institutions of higher learning and examines how these colonial colleges evolved into major research universities over the years. Long story short, by 2001 the United States has produced a third of the world’s science and engineering articles in refereed journals, and in three of the past four years American academics have received a majority of the Nobel prizes for science and economics. The American university system, like the nation itself, has firm roots in England, but Cole also describes how American institutions borrowed from the German model of the 19th century, with its combination of research and teaching. Germany is a key part of Cole’s conclusions in the book. Cole returns to the history of Nazi Germany in the 20^th century to demonstrate how repression of free inquiry damaged Germany’s standing as the site of the world’s most competitive research institutions, driving talented academics in Germany and Austria to American universities where they helped these institutions to flourish. The second part of the book details the specific discoveries and innovations that have originated in American research universities—things such as the bar code, congestion pricing for traffic, and even the Internet itself. The third part outlines what Cole sees as a potential threat to the American research university—the squelching of academic freedom and scientific inquiry—especially that which took place under the eight long years of the Bush presidency.

Cole sounds optimistic that the Barack Obama administration will restore science to its rightful place in our research institutions and restore some of the restrictions put in place by George W. Bush’s flat-earth approach to scientific knowledge. In his most recent State of the Union address, Obama at least mentioned the importance of science education (as well as funding for community colleges). But Cole is leery of the damage done by the recent financial crises, and in this regard the Obama administration has already been a major disappointment (for anyone not on the board of Goldman Sachs that is). This, in fact, raises a looming question about Cole’s own study. He identifies a number of innovations in science and economics as well as the social sciences and humanities, and cheerleads for the goodness of America’s institutions of higher learning. But I was also left wondering as to the extent that these same elite institutions and their departments of economics and business were the breeding grounds for the very policies that have left all of us in financial turmoil and threatened the opportunities for a generation of young Americans whose families may no longer be able to afford college at all. Ultimately, it is this relentless push for profits and a continued faith in corporatization and finance capital to solve all our problems that is changing institutions of higher education, including the way they teach students, and how they train and hire faculty. Neither of these books seems interested in challenging corporatization of higher education at the ideological level (not that they need to do so as several other books and many articles have already tread over that ground). But what they have both done is map out the current terrain of the American university in ways that will help us to understand how to ensure that in the rest of the 21^st century, the nation’s colleges and universities maintain high standards of achievement, and continue to be a force for good.

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On March 4 at 4 p.m., the Adjunct Project and a large group of students will march on Governor David Paterson’s Manhattan office. This will be a part of our effort to participate in the National Day of Action to Defend Education. We want you to join us in both the protest outside of the Graduate Center and the action at the governor’s office.

Why are our protests aimed at Governor Paterson? In an effort to end what the governor calls an “era of irresponsibility,” Paterson has called for $400 million in budget cuts to New York City public schools, $95 million in cuts to SUNY schools, and $48 million in cuts to CUNY. This attack on public education is the largest part of his attempt to close a $7.4 billion budget deficit.

These proposals come alongside a less frequently discussed initiative called the Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act. According to Paterson’s office, this would “take the politics out of tuition setting,” ostensibly by allowing each school to set its own tuition. The governor’s office heralds the proposal as a way to create more jobs (2,200 faculty positions on SUNY campuses alone—but it is not mentioned whether these would be tenure-track or contingent hires) and end overregulation of the schools by the state and create more accountability. Both the SUNY and CUNY chancellors are in favor of this proposal.

The formula as presented by proponents of the plan is simple: tuition goes up, and quality of education follows.

But what will the real effects be? Coupled with vast cuts to the school system’s budgets, this plan allows colleges to raise tuition themselves. Without the state’s supposed “overregulation” there will be no caps on tuition—meaning that colleges and universities can institute steep tuition hikes, essentially pricing out lower-income students.

The real formula is equally as simple: tuition goes up, and public education becomes unaffordable.

I grew up in Illinois and am very familiar with each university in the state setting its own tuition. Chancellors praise this model because of the autonomy it affords each campus. But here’s a reality check: base rate undergraduate tuition varies among Illinois state institutions from $7,017 to $14,500 for the 2009-2010 academic year. The tuition rate has no apparent connection with the academic standing of the school—with the most prestigious university center charging a middling tuition rate. Additionally, a complicated system of grandfathering students under old tuition rates and prepaying tuition has been instituted. It’s no surprise, then, that one institution is raising its base tuition from $8,448 in 2009-2010 to $11,020 in 2010-2011.

As tuition becomes less affordable with this plan, the Professional Staff Congress has pointed out that the state’s funding for full-time students has decreased from $14,000 in 1990 to $9,000. Enrollment has gone up, funding has gone down, and the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) is being cut by $93 million. All student aid will be reduced because of this.

This constitutes nothing short of privatizing public education. Though it sounds almost idyllic for state schools not to funnel money through the state government, the governor’s plan is nothing more than a fantasy. There is no legislative oversight and no accountability to the public. Each school functions free of any strings attached. Is that what public education is?

Both chancellors argue that the most common use of this system will be in graduate programs. In other words, we will be the most likely to fall
victim to it.

To break down the funding problems at the Graduate Center is easy: there’s just not enough money, and there’s going to be even less of it starting
in 2011-2012.

There will be more money for more incoming students, that’s for certain, but that’s only because the schools will be taking money away from advanced students. Even if you receive an Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellowship (which, remember, only covers in-state tuition) you are only funded through year five—with an incredibly heavy workload. Second-chance funding in the form of Writing Fellowships and Instructional Technology Fellowships will be folded into the ECFs.

Sadly, there are few students who go from a bachelor’s degree to a PhD in five years. The time-to-degree is even longer at the Graduate Center, where students are often required to work far more than students in other institutions. After year five, though, CUNY tells us we’re on our own. There’s no tuition remission for teaching at CUNY after ten semesters. Level III tuition might seem like nothing, but when it’s half your salary for teaching one course at a CUNY college, it’s a lot.

Arbitrary and unregulated tuition hikes will impact you, even if it seems unlikely.

We’re asking you to join us on March 4 at Governor Paterson’s office—to leave or miss class to take a stand—not only because of the direct impact that these cuts will have on you, or even your students, but because of the impact they have on the city and the country as a whole.

The New York City Department of Education (DOE) announced in January its plan to close twenty public schools, one of which is located just blocks from the Graduate Center (Norman Thomas High School, located on 33rd Street and Park Avenue.)

In its decision about closings, the DOE cites high drop-out and low graduate rates at these schools, poor performance on standardized tests, and a failure to hit a number of other, rather arbitrary, academic markers. The DOE does not recognize—as NYCORE, Class Size Matters and other advocacy groups correctly point out—that it is neither the students nor these schools are failing. The system is failing them.

New York City public high school students go on to become CUNY students—and the system continues to fail them. It begins in elementary and high school with overcrowded classes. In more extreme cases (becoming less extreme these days) schools close, which according to Class Size Matters leads to higher drop-out rates, more push-out rates, and higher discharge rates. These are much more common with at-risk students.

Additionally, there is little evidence that the DOE has done anything to try to improve performance in these schools. Rather the schools attempt to do so autonomously and are often punished for setting higher academic and safety standards. The DOE is also largely responsible for a school’s success through admissions rates, a policy they set. Not surprisingly, the more higher-risk students that are admitted, the less “success” a school has. Higher-risk students are less likely to be accommodated at small schools, and therefore the success rate of these schools will skyrocket.

Beyond all this troubling evidence, it is worth pointing out that, in a time of budget cuts, the DOE’s moves are fiscally stupid. Teachers cannot (thankfully) be laid off from their positions due to school closures, and therefore they will be added to what is called the Absent Teacher Reserve. Teachers in this reserve earn a full salary while essentially functioning as substitute teachers. The financial impact is obvious, but what is perhaps more insidious is the disrespect for teaching as a profession. Teachers are not pegs that can be used to fill in holes wherever they are needed; they are trained professionals and should be treated as such.

On March 4 at 4 p.m. the Adjunct Project and a large group of students will walk up to Governor Paterson’s office to demand that students and teachers be treated with respect throughout New York State. We will demand that the cuts to all public schools in the state be restored. We will demand that the governor end his attacks on education. We hope you will join us.

If you would like to help organize or join protests, contact the Adjunct Project Co-Chairs Renee McGarry and Alison Powell at theadjunctproject@gmail.com. Updates can be accessed at:

http://opencuny.org/adjunctproject. 

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Recently, a subcommittee of the Committee on Contingent Faculty and the Profession disseminated a report on the dire state of tenure-track positions in American universities. Considering that by 2007, almost 70 percent of faculty members were employed off the tenure track, it has become crystal clear that the original goal of tenure—established to ensure adequate compensation and encourage research and academic freedom—is applicable to fewer and fewer faculty. American universities must consider how they make use of contingent faculty and reassess not only the compensation and benefits of adjuncts, associate instructors, and the like, but also the status these faculty members are given within their departments. Some universities maintain a standard set of tenured faculty within their departments, only to rely increasingly on contingent employees in satellite campuses, online course offerings, and campuses overseas. The individuals staffing these positions work for low pay with few or no benefits, and they correspondingly have less say in how a department is run and what decisions are made regarding upcoming hires. Relied upon heavily for the majority of labor within these departments, yet with no job security or prestige, contingent faculty are the outcast step-child within their profession.

These issues are familiar to us at CUNY, and the Adjunct Project has consistently worked to bring the concerns of adjuncts to the forefront of conversations about how CUNY will face the 21st century. Yet the country-wide shift toward heavier reliance on contingent faculty goes beyond mere cost cutting. As the American Association of University Professors’ 2009 Report on the Economic Status of the Profession explains, the erosion of tenure-track positions is due in part to the “fundamentally flawed premise” that faculty “represent only a cost, rather than the institution’s primary resource.” The report continues, pointing out that the increasing reliance on contingent faculty who are underpaid and overworked “represents a disinvestment in the nation’s intellectual capital precisely at the time when innovation and insight are most needed.” Too true: that the general quality of American university education has been in sharp and consistent decline over the past few decades has become conventional wisdom. Grade inflation, and a decrease in challenging curricula are frequent topics during the happy hours of university faculty; they are problems we acknowledge with genuine dismay, yet really have no idea how to address.

Part of the issue may be that our attention is in the wrong place. Rather than being only the reflection of the state of ournation’s public schools, or the current consumer-model many universities seem to follow, the problem is also a result of the heavy reliance on graduate students and adjunct employees who—rightfully so—have an ethical obligation to invest only as much in their classes as they are compensated. Of course, many, if not most, contingent faculty put in well over the amount of hours for which they are actually paid. Grading, conferences with students, pedagogical training (formal or informal) means additional hours which we “volunteer” in our departments. Nationwide, it is nearly impossible for contingent faculty to live on the low pay they receive, and many individuals must seek employment outside of their departments; depleting their resources and the time they can offer to students. The committee reports that “a broad and fast growing front of research shows that the system of permanently-temporary faculty appointments has negative consequences for student learning. In many cases this is not due to the quality and professional training of the faculty serving in temporary appointments—they may be highly qualified and superb teachers—but to the terms and conditions under which they are employed.”

As many of you are aware, due to clerical and human error, many GC adjuncts failed to receive paychecks for two pay periods at the beginning of this year. The problem was widespread, and it is not an overstatement to say the economic ramifications for our graduate students—who live paycheck to paycheck as it is—were severe. Increases in credit card APRs because of missed payments, fees from landlords and other financial pressures highlight the tightrope many of us walk day-to-day as we try to survive on our paychecks.

There were many ideas about how to handle the problem, and the Adjunct Project, along with the Professional Staff Congress and Doctoral Students Council, worked around the clock to ensure that the Provost’s Office and President Bill Kelly were taken to task for the inexcusable failure. One suggestion, aimed toward publicity and a desire to use the paycheck debacle as a “teaching moment,” was to encourage adjuncts to make a statement to students about the event (the suggested statement was circulated over email). The idea was that our students benefit from understanding more fully how the university system works and that such knowledge helps them become more active and sophisticated participants in their university; in addition, it was argued that our students deserve to know how the education they pay for is being compromised by overworked and under-paid contingent faculty.

The idea was met with some criticism. Adjuncts were hesitant to subject their students to the discomfort of listening to their teacher “complain” about not being paid. There is obviously room for debate about the strategy; the desire not to discuss with our students the disheartening working conditions we labor under demonstrates our genuine commitment to our classes. Eager to create a professional and top-notch classroom environment, we’re reasonably hesitant to broach the subject. But their ignorance, much like the ignorance of the rest of the country, doesn’t serve them well. Rather than being fully equipped to articulate the kind of education they expect or to participate in the ongoing conversation about the state of the nation’s universities, our students passively run through the system. Their disengagement reflects, in fact, the disengagement of many contingent faculty from their own departments. No one can deny that the system we work under requires, in part, the ignorance of our students to the problem. “Mindful that their working conditions are their students’ learning conditions,” explains the Committee, “many faculty holding contingent appointments struggle to shield students from the consequences of an increasingly unprofessional workplace.… Institutions that serve the economically marginalized and the largest proportion of minority students, such as community colleges, typically employ the largest numbers of nontenurable faculty. We are at a tipping point. In addition to the injuries to students, campuses that overuse contingent [faculty] show higher levels of disengagement and disaffection among [all faculty members], even those with more secure positions.”

It’s difficult to know how to proceed, how to begin to address such a wide-spread and systemic problem in American colleges across the country. The Committee “believes that the best way to stabilize the faculty infrastructure is to bundle the employment and economic securities that activist contingent faculty are already winning for themselves with the rigorous professional peer scrutiny of the tenure system. The ways in which contingent teachers are hired, evaluated and promoted often bypass the faculty entirely and are generally less rigorous than the intense peer scrutiny applied to faculty in tenurable positions.” This makes sense, if the idea that increasing scrutiny for contingent faculty will be accompanied by reward—that is, an increase in compensation, especially those who have worked within the department for some time, the potential for more benefits, and a shift in the marginalized position these individuals feel when it comes to the development of their respective departments.

The Committee concludes its report with a summary of those institutions which have “adopted provisions that fall well short of tenure but that offer contingent faculty some protection and the institution some stability. Often, these take the form of improved job security, protections for academic freedom, or provisions for inclusion of contingent faculty in academic citizenship and governance.” One of the universities they consider is CUNY, and they point out the improvements in job security for contingent employees recently won through collective bargaining by the PSC. It must not escape our attention that these hard-fought victories fall short in one key way: none will result in the increase of tenure-track positions within departments. This is a question we must all consider, a concern we must all have, as graduate students and as contingent faculty. How do we both advocate for improved working conditions, job security, and compensation, and also stop the increasing decline of tenure-track positions available? We can do both—but it’s just one more thing to add to
our plate.

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There is a law in New York that basically says that public business should be conducted publicly with enough notice to the public that any member of the public can attend to witness this public business conducted on behalf of the public if he or she so desires.  I realize that in that sentence I overuse a certain word, but I believe that I’m overusing it to make a point.  This law is known as New York State Open Meetings Law—or just OML, and the premise behind it seems obvious and right.  Since CUNY is a public university, all of our business is public business.

We haven’t, however, always been so compliant with OML. Recently, a student was barred from attending a College Association meeting at Hostos Community College and was arrested.  This student sued the university, and the university lost.  The case is known as Perez v. CUNY(2005). The opinion in Perez was a bit wider than just the purview of OML; it included questions of quorum, which is the definition of the minimum number of voting members who must be present in order for business to be conducted.  The number now works out to 50 percent of all seats plus one member.  “All seats” happens to include vacant seats as well.

These issues of quorum do matter.  For instance, last May, many degrees were in jeopardy of not being granted because a meeting of Graduate Council, the meeting in which all degrees are voted on to be accepted, didn’t make quorum.  A special meeting was called in that moment of crisis so that those who had earned their degrees could actually have them awarded that month.

At the DSC this year, we’ve had a strong focus on our own governance, partly because two of the co-chairs are members of the Graduate Council’s Committee on Structure and partly for other reasons. There has been a flurry of activity from the Constitution and Bylaws Committee, and a new version of the constitution—which has been reorganized, streamlined, and brought up to compliance with OML, in light of Perez—was passed at the November 20 Plenary meeting of the DSC.

So, go vote on the proposed constitution.  You can find the copies of the old as well as the new and a link to vote at http://www.cunydsc.org/constitution.

A few other announcements

Don’t forget about the free legal services provided by the Campus Legal Resource Network.  Sign up for an appointment on the DSC webpage.

There are chartered organizations that still need members to be charted: L’Atelier, Turkish Students Association, Mise en Scène, Japan Study Group, Luso-Brazilian Studies Group, Eastern European Studies Group, PART (Art History Journal), Free CUNY, Middle Eastern Studies Organization, and the Africa Research Group.  If you have any interest in joining these organizations or helping them get their charter, then please go and sign-up for them.  A link can be found on the DSC website; otherwise, point your browser to https://eballot.votenet.com/dsc/.  Please go make friends: join a chartered organization.

Did you know that you don’t need to pay Medicare or Social Security Tax on wages paid by an institution at which you go to school?  What’s nicer is that you can get all those taxes that you paid back from previous years; just think of it as a nice check to pay for that debt you’ll incur on Black Friday.  Here’s the process: get a letter from the Registrar’s Office (7201) certifying that you were a student for each semester that you have taught in the CUNY system (adjuncting at other schools counts as well). Then go to HR at the school you’re employed at, present them the letters, and ask for a refund.  It’ll help greatly if you have copies of your previous W–2’s so that you can provide them with the dollar amount that they owe you.  If they don’t comply, then contact the IRS.  There is a form on our website (www.cunydsc.org/forms) that you can send to the IRS.  With any luck, you’ll get a fat refund.

Perhaps most importantly as you feel the need to unwind at the end of the semester: free booze! We’ll throw our annual holiday party on December 11, starting around 8 PM.  The last one was too much of a success, and so we’re planning on redoubling our efforts and finding ways to fit even more people into our space in a more comfortable way.

Here is a last plea that starts in the form of a question: what do you want us to do?  As representatives, we need to represent you, and so, please send us issues that you find are pressing or just ones that should be addressed.  You can filter them through me: dsc@shawnrice.org, and I’ll make sure that they are heard in the appropriate committees.

Upcoming Meetings

(starting at 6pm in room 5414):

Plenary meetings — Dec. 11, 2009, Feb. 5, 2009

Steering Committee meetings — Dec. 4, 2009, Jan. 29, 2010

Party: Dec. 11, 2009, starting at 8pm in rooms 5414 and 5409.

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Governor Paterson set to slash CUNY budget yet again

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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