academic solidarity

As Ruth Wilson Gilmore has argued, austerity is nothing more than organized abandonment. For the past few decades, and especially since the last recession of 2008-2009, New York State public universities, SUNY and CUNY, have been the target of this meticulously organized abandonment. The State has withdrawn funding from our university systems, leaving the tab with our students. At the same time, new university administrators have been directed to devise strategies so that universities stay afloat without any real resources. One of the main strategies our administrations have enacted is the progressive reliance on a ridiculously low paid teaching force, which receives low wages per class, often without the benefit of insurance. More than 40% of our teaching labor force is now contingent. These labor conditions are in themselves unacceptable, but they also have consequences that enable this meticulous dismantling of New York public higher education—they create different “classes” within the teaching labor force, a classic strategy of divide and conquer. They are also designed to create the false sense that instructors, full-time and contingent, should be grateful for having a job, instead of being recognized and compensated for dedicating most of their waking hours to providing knowledge and skills to the people of New York.

Now, in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, New York State, under the direction of Andrew Cuomo—the main “mastermind” of our abandonment—and administrators, have decided, once again, to follow the same principles that have guided policy for decades, believing they can push anything through, simply because our conditions are too precarious for us to fight back. They are wrong.

In early May, the CUNY administration directed chairs on its campuses to begin preemptively terminating part-time faculty who are presently serving on semester-to-semester contracts in anticipation of decreased state revenues owing to economic costs associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. For campuses like John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 40% of the entire teaching force is slated for non-reappointment, a situation that will lead thousands of professors to lose health insurance coverage and students to lose classes they will need to graduate on time.

In an attempt to avert the layoffs of thousands of part-time professors who teach at the City University of New York (CUNY), Rank and File Action (RAFA) of the Professional Staff Congress is urging all faculty across the university to delay submission of Spring 2020 grades, and in preparation for a potential grade strike if the minimum sign-on threshold of 70% of CUNY faculty is obtained.

SUNY rank and file Member Action Coalition (MAC) stands in solidarity with our CUNY colleagues who have organized this action and urges the CUNY administration to reverse course and think of the many lives—instructors and students—its decisions are affecting. We want to also demand from New York State to start doing what they are supposed to do: Defend, not defund CUNY and SUNY.

Member Action Coalition

The Graduate Workers of Columbia organizing committee stands in solidarity with members of PSC-CUNY, including those who are currently withholding grades to demand the reinstatement of CUNY adjunct and part-time faculty who have not been re-appointed to their teaching positions.

Adjunct and part-time faculty teach over half of the courses in the CUNY system. They, like other CUNY faculty and staff, have supported their students and their communities through the move to online learning, in conditions of acute psychological and physical risk. Now, hundreds, potentially thousands, of those teaching staff across CUNY campuses have jobs under threat due to the austerity measures imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At John Jay alone, 40% of teaching faculty will not have their positions renewed, and departments at other CUNY schools have been told to plan for 25% cuts to their classes for the next academic year, despite it being unclear what the situation in fall will be

Despite their necessary contributions to the education of hundreds of thousands of CUNY students, adjunct and part-time CUNY faculty, like their compatriots at Columbia and Barnard, are being treated by the CUNY administration as dispensable labor.

Adjuncts have long been treated as second-class faculty, working the same amount or more than tenured and tenure-track faculty for less pay and fewer benefits. The CUNY administration’s response to this pandemic merely reveals, more starkly than ever, these underlying inequalities. 

Terminating their employment now will exacerbate the existing financial precarity of vulnerable adjunct and part-time faculty. It will rob them of much-needed health insurance in the middle of a pandemic. And, both in the short and long-term, it will not only endanger the health and lives of these members of our academic community, but also damage the education of CUNY students and the educational mission of the CUNY system as a whole.

We support the members of PSC-CUNY, including those who are currently withholding grades. We call upon the CUNY administration to fulfill its ethical and political obligation to these vulnerable members of the CUNY community by ensuring that adjuncts and part-time faculty are reappointed in fall 2020. 

GWC-UAW Organizing Committee

Graduate students, part-time lecturers, and full-time faculty at Rutgers stand in solidarity with members of PSC-CUNY presently withholding grades as a collective action in the face of mass layoffs. We support PSC-CUNY members’ demands that adjunct and part-time faculty at CUNY, as well as part-time staff, be reappointed to their positions.

Adjunct and part-time faculty teach over half of the courses in the CUNY system. With New York City devastated by Covid-19, they supported their students and their communities during the move to online learning, even as they faced the same dangers and traumas that all New Yorkers living through the pandemic faced. Now, hundreds and potentially thousands of teachers across the different CUNY campuses may lose their jobs due to austerity measures imposed by the administration in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At John Jay alone, 40% of teaching faculty will not have their positions renewed, and departments at other CUNY schools have been told to plan for 25% cuts to their classes for the next academic year, even though the situation for the fall remains unknown.

Adjunct and part-time CUNY faculty are being treated as disposable labor. Adjuncts have long been treated as second-class faculty, working the same amount or more than tenured and tenure-track faculty for less pay and fewer benefits. The CUNY administration’s response to the current pandemic draws further attention to these underlying inequalities. Terminating their employment now will exacerbate the existing financial precarity of vulnerable adjunct and part-time faculty.

It will rob them of much-needed health insurance in the middle of a pandemic. And, both in the short and long-term, it will not only endanger the health and lives of these members of our academic community, but also damage the education of CUNY students and the educational mission of the CUNY system as a whole.

At Rutgers, where part-time lecturers (PTLs) have faced similar obstacles to receiving the just treatment they deserve, union members have endeavored to defend and protect our most vulnerable members. A coalition of unions representing 20,000 employees at Rutgers’ three New Jersey campuses has proposed to the administration a work-sharing program that would save the university $100 million, and bring to a halt to the administration’s order that departments reduce PTL lines for the fall 2020 semester by 20%.

We believe that CUNY’s administration should be compelled to search for similar creative solutions to the current crisis. We support and commend members of PSC-CUNY currently withholding grades for pursuing a strategy designed to make CUNY contend with the harm it is inflicting.

We call upon the CUNY administration to fulfill its ethical and political obligation to these vulnerable members of the CUNY community by ensuring that adjuncts and part-time faculty, as well as part-time staff, are reappointed in fall 2020.