March 2024: CUNY Drags Its Feet, Strike School Increases the Heat

In This Issue!

• Strike School Educates the PSC

• The Taylor Law Was Made to Be Broken

• One Year Without a Contract

• Analysis by RAFA Members of Bargaining Progress

• Launch of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine

Strike School Educates the PSC

CUNY on Strike has been hosting Strike Schools since January aiming to educate CUNY workers and students about the value of striking and why we should build this muscle memory back despite the illegality of striking in New York State. The second strike school, held over Zoom on February 22nd, had over 100 attendees and featured riveting presentations about the collective work of building a strike threat. The slow drip of austerity funding processes has been starving CUNY for decades: since 1992 we’ve seen a 40% drop in state funding per student, since 2020 we’ve lost 852 full-time positions, and we are currently grappling with major cuts to 9 ‘colleges of concern.’ Additionally, the adjunctification of CUNY is rising apace, and CUNY staff have experienced ballooning workloads and inflexible scheduling, harming students and putting us all on shaky ground. Given inflation, everyone except top administrators have had their wages cut since 2012. 

We are all living and working through these cuts so it is sometimes hard to step back and see the big picture. All too often, our union asks: what are the consequences of striking? A better question might be: what are the consequences of not striking? Over decades, the consequences have been poverty wages, austerity, and precarity. A credible strike threat is all that will save us.

The Taylor Law Was Made to Be Broken

Watch a recording of this event on YouTube.

Over 100 PSC members gathered online and in-person to hear Josh Freeman (labor historian and former CUNY professor) discuss the history of the Taylor Law and its implications for strike organizing in the present. Dr. Freeman explained that there have been what he would call successful strikes under the Taylor Law, particularly the Transit Workers United strike in 1980 but that the consequences of violating the law are serious. They include the loss of two days pay for every day on strike, suspension of automatic dues collection for the union, and possible imprisonment of union leaders. This is why, as CUNY on Strike organizers have been arguing, and Dr. Freeman agrees, building a successful strike campaign will require the active engagement of the entire PSC membership and strong logistical leadership in terms of establishing a strike fund and making sure we have the legal resources we need to fight this unjust law. 

Dr. Freeman made one other point we would like to highlight. He doesn’t know of any union or individual that’s been prosecuted under the Taylor Law for organizing towards strike readiness, which is what CUNY on Strike is attempting to do. 

One Year of an Expired Contract

On Feb. 29, CUNY workers and students “celebrated” the year expiry of our contract. Informational pickets were held across CUNY campuses, particularly the 9 “campuses of concern” facing deep budget cuts. Here are some highlights across our schools: 

York College

About 25 PSC members gathered in the atrium of York College’s main academic building to share a few pizzas and talk to passing students and faculty about the disastrous budget cuts facing York (over 11 million dollars, about 15% of York’s budget, in FY 2024). Among the crowd were familiar faces as well as some newcomers. Our organizing power at York is growing slowly but surely. We then marched to the administration offices chanting “What do we want? A good contract! When do we want it? Now!” and “Wages up, tuition down, New York is a union town!”  

Baruch

On February 29th, a healthy medley of students, staff, and faculty gathered in the lobby of the campus’s Vertical Building for a speak-out to mark 1-year that we in the Professional Staff Congress have been working without a contract. We heard from adjuncts, full-timers, and higher education officers who spoke  on the increasingly bleak working conditions and on their love of CUNY, its students, and the institution that we produce together.. Meeks Samuel, chair of the Baruch chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) spoke on the ballooning class sizes and the deeply shared interests of the students and workers of CUNY. Chants of “FREE CUNY!” were heard throughout Baruch’s bustling Vertical Building. 

Prof. Schools + Guttman

Professional Schools members of the Graduate Center chapter joined forces with PSC members from Guttman Community College and CUNY Central for an informational picket in front of the School of Labor and Urban Studies. About 30 workers from SLU, SPS, Guttman, and Central formed a picket line on the busy West 43 Street, chanting about the expired contract, adjunct wages, and union power. We gave out hundreds of flyers to passersby, many of whom expressed support. 

RAFA Members Analyze Bargaining Process

Bargaining Report 2/7:

Petty Proposals in the Face of Collective Power

by Sofya Aptekar

This bargaining session was the second after bargaining restarted this year, and it was held at CUNY Central, with a couple of dozen PSC members observing. The first half of the session involved management presenting proposals. Many of these seemed like petty ways to save relatively small amounts of money while eroding the working conditions of our members. For instance, they proposed making it a shared responsibility for an employee to get an evaluation memo within 10 days after a conference or observation. So if you don’t get your evaluation, it’s on you for not having asked. And they want it to be that if you did not ask to see your personnel file, you relinquish your right to claim that it is incomplete. Additionally, they want to cut off email access for our retirees and eliminate language that vaguely promises faculty offices. Petty garbage! 

Our bargaining team also presented proposals. The two that stuck out for me had to do with CLIP (CUNY Language Immersion Program) and CUNY START instructors and college lab technicians. Fellow members in these titles were present to speak to what their work is like and make a strong case for job security, pay equity, and fair promotion policies. I think management will be swayed by fear of our collective power, not by logic or compassion, but these presentations were educational for fellow members not in those titles. Both sides also discussed moving the work of developing proposals into small committees. The new consultant on the management side, Gary Dellaverson (how much is CUNY paying him??), seemed less than thrilled with the presence of all of us observers at bargaining. It’s a tremendous step towards union power and democracy to have opened up bargaining sessions to members. The fact that management would prefer small committees closed to members should be a reason to keep and grow our new bargaining policies. Or open up committees the same way. I would sign up to observe! 

CUNY Puts Its Gun on the Table. How Will Our Union Respond?
By Marc Kagan 

You can read the union leadership’s report on the February 29th bargaining session here. It accurately itemizes a variety of PSC and management proposals. Most, on both sides, will likely never see the light of day again, or (in the case of union demands) will be “paid for” by small deductions from the general wage settlement.  

The most significant features of the day were management’s proposal to completely eviscerate the existing 3-year appointment for Adjunct faculty; the bargaining team’s agreement to send most bargaining to closed sub-committees; and their defense of the decision to end most open bargaining in the post-bargaining “debrief” to the hundred members who had come to the union hall to show our support.  

Under normal circumstances, management’s extreme desire to basically end the 3-year appointment, the most important gain of the 2016 contract, would disappear into the ether along with many other of its “wish list” demands. 
But our circumstances are not “normal.” Management has declared that, because the 3-year appointment provision was written into the contract as a “pilot program,” it does not have to make those appointments (or reappointments) this spring – even though the provision specifically runs “through the end of the 2023-2024 academic year.”  We don’t understand why the union leadership accepts this premise. But because they do, it puts them, and us, in a very difficult situation, where management can implement its threat against 1000 or so of our most senior and longest-serving Adjunct faculty unless it secures a contract to its liking in the next two months. 

In other words, they’ve pulled out their gun and put it on the table. Their plan is that we will need to buy back existing rights on this (or on remote and other flexible work) with concessions on wages or working conditions. So, where is our gun? Where is our show of force, or power, against management?

 
Meanwhile, the bargaining team agreed to management’s demand that the sessions of subcommittees on Costing (the economic value of different contract items), Ed Tech, 3-Year Appointments, and Professional Development be closed to the PSC members who want to observe. (There was some indication there will be others as well.) 

During the post-bargaining debrief, several of the Principal Officers defended this decision. One said, “with full transparency we can’t get the best contract.” Another said the reason CUNY has not responded to our proposals is because there are so many people in the room. A third said it was the only way to talk to management on specific issues. 

Many members pushed back on this as a misbegotten strategy, made unilaterally without notice to, or consultation with, the union’s Delegate Assembly. They replied that it shows a lack of trust in the members to think we can’t understand, or would somehow prevent in-depth discussion. If management has so far been uneasy with members in the room, all the more reason not to give away that leverage and power. Keeping the meetings open will force management to be more selective about their words and battlefields when they know members are watching and care deeply. And we want members to continue reporting back to their co-workers.

Our real problem is that, after a year without a contract, the bargaining team is floundering. It’s under pressure from management’s threat to yank the 3-year appointments, but has developed no theory or plan to demonstrate countervailing union power. It hopes that, in secret, the same management that issues threats and swings a mid-year budget ax, will be more conciliatory. But this is grasping at straws. More likely is the prospect that union subcommittee members will feel themselves “liberated” to begin to discuss paring back demands, or even making concessions. That’s the best reason of all to keep all bargaining open.  

Hansel Memo: Accountability and Control

In late January, Executive Vice Chancellor Wendy Hansel issued a memo directing CUNY college administrations to reduce costs “without compromising academic quality.” This memo affects all of us workers and students at CUNY, and it is important to examine its content. How does EVC Hansel want our bosses to make these cuts? Central to her plan is “optimal scheduling”, requiring increasing enrolled section sizes and raising minimal percent fill rates for classes to run to 85%. The memo refers to the need to “socialize” campuses into a culture of optimized scheduling, presumably aimed at staff and faculty scrambling to provide courses students need to graduate while preserving the health coverage and livelihoods of adjunct coworkers. “Accountability is a partner to control,” writes Hansel, as she calls for increasing course caps and section floors. If accountability and control do not inspire you, rest assured that failure to comply with the memo might lead to money taken away from faculty development and hiring. 

Next steps? Closure or consolidation of programs that are not meeting enrolment and degree production criteria. Further mockery of faculty governance with administration using the student surveillance software Navigate to cut “unproductive credits” and classes with high failure rates. We reject this attempt to undermine our power as workers and the education of our students. 

Program Eliminations Across the U.S. And Our Situation At CUNY

by Olivia Wood
The Hansel memo described above says programs across CUNY may be eliminated after a systematic program review. These types of “academic program reviews” and subsequent eliminations (alongside the layoffs of tenured faculty) are already happening across the United States, such as at West Virginia University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and two SUNY schools. While being a unionized workforce does make us more prepared to fight such attacks, it will still require a fight. In the 70s and 90s, the PSC was able to successfully reduce the number of retrenchments (firing of tenured and certificated faculty and staff), but it was not able to prevent them entirely; as the program review commences, we will all need to mobilize to protect each other. Read more about the nationwide attacks and our situation at CUNY in Olivia’s article in Left Voice, “U.S. Higher Education Is Being Gutted, but We Can Fight Back.”

Launch of CUNY FSJP (Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine)

CUNY now has a chapter as part of the national network of Faculty for Justice in Palestine. On March 18, this group held a name-reading vigil for Gaza after the Robert Fitch memorial lecture given by Robin D.G. Kelley at LaGuardia Community College. You can watch a recording of the vigil on their Instagram page here. If you would like to join CUNY FSJP, send an email to CUNYFSJP@gmail.com with “Request to Join” in the message. 

Save The Date: Fight the MLC for Healthcare Workers Deserve - Sat. 4/13

Behind closed doors and without any consultation or input from those who would be affected by their decision, the Municipal Labor Committee agreed to change retirees' health coverage from traditional Medicare to private Medicare Advantage.  Violating a fundamental principle of union democracy, retirees had no right to vote on this change.
   
Now the MLC and the City are in the process of changing the health coverage for those who are still working.  Register for our forum where we will examine the resistance that the MLC's modus operandi has generated and discuss what it would take to make this organization transparent and democratic.

Feb. 2024: Cuny goes to strike school!

In this edition: 

RAFA members in coordination with other formations have been busy building towards a stronger contract for CUNY workers while engaged in related struggles like Palestinian liberation and migrant solidarity. In this edition of the Dispatch, read about building strike schools across campuses and attending labor training, confronting CUNY management’s many underhanded tricks at open bargaining, exposing the injustices of the migrant “crisis” at the GC, protesting the Mayor’s blatant disregard for public education, and confronting Zionist forces retaliating against Palestinian solidarity propping up the ongoing genocide.

Building for CUNY on Strike!

On Friday, January 26, over 200 CUNY workers and students (split across in-person and online modalities) attended the first “Strike School” of the year, an initiative organized by the CUNY On Strike campaign. Strike School is modeled off of a series of events by the same name hosted by organizers at Rutgers University in the year leading up to their own strike last spring. 

A room full of organizers. Photo by David Klassen

When a union isn’t strike-ready, the only way to become strike-ready is to start talking about it. Strike School discusses the harsh conditions faced by CUNY employees right now (low wages, mass cuts and layoffs, serious overwork due to understaffing, and more) and argues that more militant tactics are needed to protect ourselves and our coworkers. Organizers also began a preliminary discussion of the Taylor Law (the law making public sector strikes illegal in New York) and its penalties before introducing some basic organizing how-to’s. Building a strike is difficult even under the best of circumstances, and the Taylor Law makes it even more complex, but this work is worth doing — a strike-ready union is a powerful union, and getting more organized is always a good thing. Also, illegal strikes work. Strike School concluded with participants circling up with other workers from their campuses and discussing next steps that make sense for each campus’s unique situation.

You can learn more about the CUNY On Strike campaign on their website, follow them on Twitter, and for CUNY workers and students, sign up for the next Strike School (February 22, Zoom) here. Get in touch at cunyonstrike@gmail.com to get connected with other organizers at your campus!

Open Bargaining Update by Ángeles Donoso Macaya

Bargaining sessions are now open to PSC members, a demand that the PSC rank-and-file have been asking for for a long time. This signals that the PSC Executive Council and the bargaining team are committed to make a process that concerns us all more inclusive. (a note on terminology: I won’t refer to the administration simply as “CUNY,” because we—faculty, staff, and students—are CUNY; indeed more CUNY than those who manage the university from above.)
 
I have attended two bargaining sessions. During the June 30 session, the PSC outlined the union’s vision for this contract, and shared tables comparing compensation for adjunct instructors at different schools in the tri-state area. The attitude of CUNY management was dismissive. They didn’t offer any definitive counterargument other than Columbia, NYU, and the likes “were not comparable institutions” to us, as though adjuncts don’t teach across all these institutions. Another moment worth evoking was when they attempted to discuss (even bargain?) our presence in the room, which clearly made them uncomfortable. Lead negotiator Doriane Gloria asked James Davis how he intended “to control” the audience (as if we were kids who don’t know how to behave): how was he going to ensure that we didn’t do anything that was out of protocol? I commend James Davis for not giving in to CUNY management’s attempt to micromanage who could and could not be present in the room.
 
In the second session I attended, the PSC presented demands related to remote and flexible work, and to multi-year appointments for adjuncts. Management’s attitude on this session was once again careless, and, at times, even disrespectful. While some of our colleagues were sharing testimonials, for instance, I noticed some CUNY management people looking at their phones, others yawning, others expressing through their body posture that they were not really listening. When I watched this whole interaction, I couldn't help but think of something obvious—that each party has a radically different conceptualization of the work we do, and of the space where we work: for PSC-members, and this was made manifest in the testimonials, the kind of work we do is valuable and worth-investing in. We work in an educational setting, we believe education is fundamental, and we care about the well-being of our students and of everyone who works at CUNY. For management, CUNY is basically another corporation.  
 
Moving forward, while the level of transparency is commendable, the PSC could be more open in their updates about the quality of some of the interactions we have seen at bargaining sessions, which could be a great tool to build power. Sharing more examples of the disregard, carelessness, and disrespect shown by CUNY management at bargaining sessions could rile up more members to attend sessions, and get more involved in the union more generally. And, if CUNY management refuses to budge, I don’t think it would be wise for the PSC to go years without a contract, as it happened in 2010-2016, but rather start organizing soon towards a strike authorization vote.

We Need to See the Pie by Marc Kagan

Management is management, but CUNY’s decision to bring in an outside gunslinger, Gary Dellaverson, the former longtime head of Labor Relations at the notoriously evil MTA, to join their negotiating team at the January 26th session, portends a new turn in our contract bargaining. Most immediately, and ominously, management spent the session complaining that the PSC had too many demands; it was "time to stop with the wish list and realize that what we want and what we can have are two different things." After three months, during which CUNY halted negotiations, it had nothing to say or propose other than to point to the recent CUNY-DC37 agreement of 14.9% over 67 months and a signing bonus which will not fold into the wage rate as the $$$ pattern for our own contract. 

Dellaverson’s specific “contribution” was two-fold and mimicked how he negotiated against the transit workers’ union in the early 2002s. (For those who want to read more about this, see here.) First, he pushed the PSC to abandon open bargaining and do much of the rest of the negotiating in small and closed “subcommittees.” In transit, that was a recipe for deal-making in which the interests of some sections of the membership were sacrificed out of sight of workers and even the officers representing those members. That’s a recipe for creating internal divisions within the union. Moreover, once those subcommittee deals are struck, it’s hard for a larger group to unwind them.

That was underscored by Dellaverson’s talk of “flexibility… to meet certain needs of certain job titles” – but only within the DC37 wage pattern, i.e., more for some, less for others. In transit, Dellaverson was notorious for helping the union leadership solve immediate (internal) political problems by sacrificing long-term gains for the MTA – more control of work product by management, more low-paid and part-time workers, and less job security.   

Members who attend bargaining sessions need to insist that all bargaining remain out in the open. We need to see the pie as it’s being assembled and baked, not just once it’s sliced and on the table. And we need to make sure that we don’t make dangerous concessions to Dellaverson and management in exchange for a few crumbs. 

Upcoming Bargaining Sessions (after you attend an orientation, you will receive an invite to join a session, subject to space constraints):

Wednesday, Feb 7, 1 – 5 PM (observers must attend from 12:30-5:30 PM),
Location: CUNY Central Office @ 205 E 42nd St

Thursday, Feb 29, 1 – 5 PM (observers must attend from 12:30-5:30 PM),
Location: PSC Office @ 25 Broadway

Upcoming Bargaining Orientations:

Wednesday, Feb 14, 1:00-2:00pm, online Orientation to PSC-CUNY Bargaining Observation, click here to register for the Zoom and confirm your attendance.

Wednesday, Feb 21, 6:30-7:30pm, online Orientation to PSC-CUNY Bargaining Observation, click here to register for the Zoom and confirm your attendance.

Monday, March 4, 6:30-7:30pm, online Orientation to PSC-CUNY Bargaining Observation, click here to register for the Zoom and confirm your attendance.

Countering the Migrant “Crisis” at the Graduate Center by Mariel Acosta

Since September 2023 the Student-Parents Organization and the Dominican Studies Group have opened the Grad Center for mutual aid distribution and created an information space for migrants and asylum seekers for the over a dozen shelters in the midtown area, and from others around the city. In November, 2023 these student organizations, supported by local mutual aid groups hosted the Afternoon of Solidarity with Migrant Families event, serving over 100 attendees. The event had a free store where families could “shop” for winter clothes, coats, toys, multilingual books, and other supplies. At the event everyone enjoyed a warm meal and the children danced, played, and did arts and crafts.
 
The Student-Parents Organization and the Dominican Studies Group have activated these GC spaces politically for migrant mutual aid work. These uses of GC space have allowed us to build bonds: here our new neighbors feel welcomed, they can come to ask questions and get resources and they can spend time with each other and socialize outside of the confines of a shelter or a respite center.

West African mothers picking up items at the distro area set up at the Dominican Studies Group office where families come weekly. Jan 2024.

On January 29, 2024, the Dominican Studies Group hosted a walking tour of the distro spaces at the Grad Center, the Row hotel (migrant family shelter) and Roosevelt hotel (migrant family shelter and arrival and intake center) both located midtown. CUNY students, staff and faculty from the Grad Center and beyond attended to learn about the so-called migrant 'crisis' in New York and were invited to mobilize and support the efforts to meet the needs of our new community members.  
 
The SPO and DSG are still taking donations for migrants and asylum seekers in the City. Most needed items right now include coats, winter books, sneakers, luggage with wheels and new underwear (see flyer here for more information). You can leave donations in the DGSC lounge (5495). For more info, or to get involved, email macostamatos@gradcenter.cuny.edu

Row hotel. Jan 29

"Unwelcoming" Mayor Adams at Hostos

colorful protesters gathering holding signs. Photo by David Klassen

A confluence of social movement groups and organizations gathered at Hostos Community College on January 24 to protest Mayor Adams’s State of the City address. Adams has referred to himself as the CUNY Mayor, but those of us who turned out to protest his appearance were having none of it. No CUNY degree can cancel out this mayor’s attack on our university, and the crowds chanted “Fund CUNY, Not Jails” at the scores of attendees lining up outside Hostos. Although the official PSC invite to the protest did not arrive until the morning of the event, PSC members had been planning a grassroots showing for weeks, focused not only on calling the mayor out for imposing budget cuts on CUNY but also for his anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian policies and his constant bolstering of the NYPD and inhumane conditions at Rikers. Bronx Action Coalition met at a nearby park and marched over in a joyously militant group of students, faculty, and staff based in the Bronx campuses. 

Secrets of a Successful Organizer

On February 3, Rank and File Action partnered with our allies in the United Federation of Teachers Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) to hold an all-day Secrets of a Successful Organizer training at the CUNY Graduate Center. This Labor Notes training is designed to help rank and file workers to build power on the job, and focuses on getting workers involved in union work, putting together an organizing team, and building a successful campaign. We are excited to build rank and file power among K-PhD educators of New York City. 

There is an online secrets training series coming up in late February/early March, and we are looking to schedule another in-person one for CUNY workers.  

Note: the Labor Notes biannual conference is coming up in April! If you are a CUNY worker planning to or interested in attending, and would like to consider fundraising for it, email Boyda at johnstoneb@gmail.com

CUNY for Palestine Organizing against the Genocide 

With the US-backed genocide in Gaza now in its fourth month, CUNY for Palestine (C4P) has been busy organizing together with RAFA and various student and worker CUNY-wide/NY Palestine solidarity groups to raise awareness and mobilize the CUNY community to oppose the genocide and stand in solidarity with Palestine liberation. This includes an ongoing teach-in series. Most recently, C4P held a teach-in on ‘Radical Solidarity and Organic Connections: Palestinian, Black, Puerto Rican, and Filipino Liberation Struggles.’ 

The next teach-in is scheduled for Monday, February 5th on ‘Kashmir and Palestine: Thinking Solidarity Across Settler Colonial Contexts w/Hafsa Kanjwa & Azad’ at 7pm (register here: https://forms.gle/o8esLfXL5Jp3yXAZ9). 

As part of C4P’s coalition building, we have endorsed and participated in several recent NYC wide protests and rallies. This includes the January 12th, Palestine Feminist Collective for a day of action in Manhattan against colonial-imperialist feminism (photo below).

On January 26th, C4P participated in a rally organized by the Audre Lorde Project to demonstrate the LGBTQ community’s solidarity with Palestine, and on January 25th C4P joined the New York City Worker for Palestine rally, rejecting mayor Eric Adam's zionism, racist austerity, inhumane treatment of migrants, and increased spending for the institutions of organized violence including the police and prisons. 

As part of  CUNY for Palestine’s campaign against the systematic targeting of Palestinian higher education and in partnership with Students for Justice in Palestine, C4P supported the “No Back to School as Normal'' campus-wide rallies that took place at the start of the Spring semester. C4P has also endorsed the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) campaign for a National Day of Action on Thursday, February 8th. C4P endorsed Not In Our Name’s email campaign on January 3rd, sending letters of dissent directed at several university administrations and campus Hillels for their complicity in genocide and anti-Palestinian racism. On February 2nd C4P organized a contingent to the Within Our Lifetime protest in solidarity with Columbia student organizer and protesters who were attacked with skunk spray by zionist/former members of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on January 19th.

C4P also has been supporting ad-hoc campaigns to protect students and faculty (especially adjuncts) from repression and retaliation and welcomed the successful vote at the December Delegate Assembly of the PSC-CUNY for the union to sign on to the U.S. labor movement ceasefire statement. C4P issued a statement celebrating the vote and calling for the union to do more to stand in solidarity with Palestinian workers facing genocide, including by heeding the Palestinian trade union call to support BDS and end all US military aid to Israel as well as to put in place measures to protect CUNY workers and students from doxing and other forms of zionist harassment and attacks. 

For more info or to join, email C4P at: cuny4palestine@gmail.com Keep up to date with our campaigns, events and more by following us on social media: X: @Cuny4P; Instagram:@cuny4palestine & Linktree

FALL 2023 Dispatch

In this issue: 

• Contract Campaign Action: PSC Sing Out, Shout Out on Dec. 2

• Campus Responses to the War on Gaza

• CUNY4Palestine Actions and Update

• 11/19 March on the Chancellor!

• CUNY Adjunct Project

• The GC Dining Commons Lives!

• UAW Wins Big at the Big 3 — What Does That Mean For Us?

• PSC DA Modality Fight: a Victory for Accessibility and Inclusion

• RAFA Bargaining Update

Contract Campaign Action: PSC Sing Out, Shout Out on Dec. 2

Join members of the Grad Center chapter and RAFA members for a march to the Sing Out, Shout Out contract campaign rally on December 2. We will meet at the corner of 38 St and 3 Ave, in front of the D’Agostino, at 12:45pm. We will have beautiful posters, signs, and banners to help us walk up to the rally with maximum militant impact and style. #CUNYStrikeReady. Register for the rally (held @633 3rd Ave) here: https://psc-cuny.org/calendar/sing-out-shout-out-for-apeoplescuny/

Campus Responses to the War on Gaza

Since Oct. 7, CUNY college campuses have responded in various ways to student and faculty groups organizing for Palestine. Here we provide a partial round-up of campus activities, many of which showcase ongoing hostility toward Arab and Muslim students and blatant disregard of academic freedom. 

Borough of Manhattan Community College:

BMCC has been dealing with targeted anti-Palestinian repression for almost a year now. In March 2023, the recently opened Social Justice & Equity Centers (SJEC) at BMCC–which included the Pride Centers, the Multicultural Centers, and the Women’s Center–hung a timeline of Palestinian occupation in the hallway. Tenured Zionist professors complained and it was eventually taken down with a statement issued by the President offering “our deepest and sincerest apologies to anyone who was offended and felt unsafe” by this exhibit (even while claiming to uphold “multiple perspectives” and “viewpoint diversity”). More egregious than this singular act of censorship is the fact that the SJEC is now shut down entirely and its employees–both women of color who are students in Hunter’s Silberman School of Social Work–terminated, even after extensive talks about future programming for the center. The administration’s official line, which is unfortunately echoed by the BMCC union chapter leaders, is that the funding for the centers ran out. But we know that repression of pro-Palestine activism stirs up currents of rightwing repression generally. And now, due to Zionist backlash, BMCC does not have a Pride Center. 

In this context, organizing for Palestine at BMCC has been difficult. The Muslim Students Association organized a small protest that was pushed off campus by security officers. As for faculty, at the October chapter meeting, members passed a resolution concerning CUNY’s suppression of academic freedom against pro-Palestine voices, based on a previous GC resolution. Unfortunately, despite this seeming bright spot in our attempts to fight back, the chapter chair has refused to circulate or publish this resolution anywhere outside of the meeting, reiterating a commitment to bury its existence at the November chapter meeting. We call on union leaders to recognize and reaffirm democratic process by publicizing this resolution and ensuring the principles of academic freedom apply equally to all students and workers.  

Brooklyn College: 

Brooklyn College has experienced extreme repression of students speaking out for Palestine. The President of Brooklyn College, Michelle Anderson, associated students protesting for Palestine with terrorism and violence. The administration created barriers to students protesting on campus, and when the protest was held off-campus, Anderson sent an email implying that the protest was unsafe and calling on police to attend the action and “escort” students who felt unsafe. City councilwoman Inna Vernikov brought a gun to the protest and had it visibly protruding from her waistband, which is illegal in NYC, and has yet to be rebuked by Michelle Anderson. Brooklyn College has refused to host other events about Palestine, leaving Muslim students at Brooklyn College feeling unsafe and unprotected. There is a long history of Islamophobia and targeting of Brooklyn College students, including the NYPD illegally sending an undercover officer to befriend and spy on Muslim students on campus from 2011-2015. 

As a result of the repression being experienced by students now, 19 Brooklyn College student organizations have stood up to demand the resignation of Michalle Anderson and have continued to mobilize for Palestine at weekly demonstrations despite the repression by the administration. Next one Weds 11/29 from 12-2 and 2-4 pm! 

CCNY: 

City College’s administration seems to be having the most pro-free-speech approach of the CUNY campuses so far, with the president making multiple statements affirming his commitment to academic freedom and his belief that speech that makes someone uncomfortable is different from speech that makes someone unsafe. However, at the CCNY chapter meeting, only a few members chose to speak during the section dedicated to discussing the GC chapter’s resolutions. Three faculty members were also the subject of a FOIL request from a Zionist lawyer that requested reimbursement records and emails with key words relating to Israel and Palestine.

CSI:

In October, activists called a special meeting to vote on a ceasefire resolution and while we did not have quorum and thus could not hold a binding vote, we nevertheless had a discussion regarding both the genocide in Gaza and the unacceptable, biased statements issued by Chancellor Matos and President Lynch on the crisis. A Palestinian student read a powerful statement condemning the symbolic violence and blatant double standard of the Chancellor and President’s statements, expressing a profound sense of exclusion felt by Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students at CSI. We proposed next steps that would include organizing a public assembly with President Lynch where students could address him directly. We also plan on having a second special meeting to vote on the ceasefire resolution, and we ask that other chapters call special meetings to pass a similar resolution. 10 member signatures are needed to call a special meeting. As stated in Article IX, Section 7 of the PSC constitution, "Upon receipt of such a petition, the Chairperson shall call the special meeting."

Graduate Center:

photo credit: Luigi Morris

The GC Chapter has responded to the genocide in Gaza in several ways, truly serving as a model for all other chapters. With input from organizers across the union, we wrote two versions of a resolution for the Delegate Assembly, the first focusing on the actions of the Chancellor, and the second on how our union should respond. We ended up withdrawing this resolution in response to what we saw was a twofold win: 1) PSC officials responded to the pressure generated by our first resolution by issuing a sign-on letter to the Chancellor. While weaker than our resolution, it is nonetheless light-years better than their initial statement. We encourage all members to sign the letter.  2) The pressure of the second version of our resolution resulted in the union president announcing new policies that address all of our “resolved” clauses, such as training with Faculty First Responders. We are pushing for these in writing available publicly to all. Outside the Delegate Assembly, members of the GC Chapter were key players in organizing a series of teach-ins on Palestine, as well as a rally and a powerful die-in on the steps of the Graduate Center. Two of our chapter members wrote a critical response to the Teaching and Learning Center’s disappointing piece on classroom strategies during “the ongoing violence in the Middle East”.

Queens College: 

At Queens College, where Palestine solidarity organizing has been mostly invisible for nearly a decade, a new chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was born in October. While this SJP doesn’t yet have official club status, that hasn’t stopped it from holding a couple of well-attended rallies. At one of these rallies, a group of high school students joined after staging a walkout from Townsend Harris High School, located on the QC campus. NYPD was present for both rallies, but QC students refused to hold their rallies in the police pens set up for them; instead they asserted their rights to choose their own protest locations. (Under CUNY’s “Henderson Rules,” students and workers can speak out anywhere on campus, as long as they don’t use violence or block other students or workers from accessing buildings.) 

Faculty and staff at QC have been much quieter, but a few attended the SJP rallies, and others got activated in mid-November after QC president Frank Wu sent out a college-wide email on November 8, saying that he had reported the Muslim Student Association (MSA) Instagram account to the NYPD for investigation because it allegedly shared “misinformation” (a post questioning Israel’s version of Oct. 7 events). The PSC chapter executive committee declined to respond to this email as a body because of internal disagreements, but more than 50 QC faculty and staff members, along with over 200 QC students and a few alumni, signed onto an open letter expressing concern about President Wu’s attack on the students, noting the sordid history of NYPD surveillance against Muslim students in the past at QC and other CUNY colleges.

CUNY4Palestine Actions and Update: 

Many members of RAFA have also been participating actively in CUNY for Palestine (C4P), which brings together CUNY workers and students fighting for Palestinian liberation. We encourage everyone to sign onto CUNY for Palestine’s October 14 statement (tiny.cc/C4P2023) and also to sign the new solidarity pledge, endorsed by over 100 organizations across the country, that calls on university students, faculty, and staff to pledge to stand together to defend our right to speak out against genocide, settler colonialism, and in solidarity with Palestine liberation (tiny.cc/PalestineSolidarityPledge). Reach out to cuny4palestine@gmail.com to be connected to Palestine solidarity organizing at your CUNY campus, and follow C4P on social media: Twitter @Cuny4P  Instagram@cuny4palestine Linktree linktr.ee/cuny4palestine

End AFL-CIO Complicity with Genocide Protest! 

On November 9th, CUNY for Palestine and Labor for Palestine, including several RAFA members, organized a protest against the AFL-CIO’s complicity with the US-backed zionist genocide in Gaza as part of the national Shut it Down for Palestine day of action.

Speakers drew attention to the long history of the AFL-CIO supporting settler colonial violence and dispossession in Palestine, dating back to the AFL’s endorsement of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which paved the way for the establishment of the settler colonial state of Israeli in 1948. Later, in the 1920s, the AFL raised funds for the Histadrut, which despite claims to be a labor federation has actually served as a key instrument of zionist colonization and capital accumulation. Speakers drew comparisons to the AFL-CIO’s nefarious role in promoting US imperialist policies across the global South, undermining leftist influence in trade unions and providing support for interventions against socialist and nationlist governments. Not only does the AFL-CIO leadership continue to maintain support for zionist settler colonialism through its assistance for the Histadrut as well as investing millions in the Israeli government through the purchase of bonds without consultation with its members; it has consistently opposed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and has taken steps to prevent members from adopting or event discussing resolutions related to BDS or Palestinian rights. For example, two years ago, the AFL-CIO leadership used a procedural rule to tell the San Francisco Labor Council that it could not even debate a resolution on BDS. More recently, after a central labor council in Olympia, Washington, unanimously passed a cease-fire and Palestine solidarity resolution, the national AFL-CIO stepped in to quash the measure.

Speakers at the rally addressed the need to challenge the labor bureaucrats and zionist gatekeepers and heed the call of the Palestinian federation trade unions as many internationalist trade unionists have already done by bringing union resolutions condemning the genocide and calling for an end to US military and political support for Israel as well as mobilizing our collective power in the workplace by blocking the transport of weapons for Israel along various points of the supply chain.

March on the Chancellor!

Together with CUNY4Palestine, RAFA organized a March on the Chancellor on Nov. 19. Originally planned before October 7, this event morphed from a focus on neoliberal austerity and adjunct impoverishment to incorporate the very much related issue of repression and attacks on Palestinian solidarity efforts at CUNY. About 40 students and workers marched from the Pelham train station to the Chancellor’s home in the Westchester suburb of Pelham, where we enjoyed chants and speeches against racist austerity, genocide, and political repression, and a picnic lunch on the chancellor’s front yard. 

The Adjunct Project is So Back

The Adjunct Project is an initiative of the Doctoral and Graduate Students’ Council at the Graduate Center. It is tasked with providing information about adjunct struggles, doing event programming and connecting student and worker struggles on the Grad Center campus. It had lain dormant for a while, but in the Spring semester the DGSC brought in three new coordinators: Giacomo Bianchino, Justin Beauchamp and Nikita Meghani. The coordinators will be providing bargaining updates to students and workers at the GC, while also developing resources for adjunct organizing across CUNY. You can follow their work on their website, or in social media (Twitter: @GCadjuncts, insta: gcadjuncts). Look out for their monthly newsletter!

Presidents Pass; The Commons Remain

At the end of August, as GC activists were preparing to welcome a new raft of students at campus orientation meetings, we received word that the Dining Commons on level 8 had been shut down. This had been a site of struggle for a whole semester, as we fought against the administration’s indifference to our wellbeing and refusal to restore dining services to the GC. We built the Commons into a space of solidarity and education, hosting regular events and providing food and other resources for free to impoverished students and workers. After the closing of the commons, we started another mobile pantry in the Foundation Lounge on level one. The administration removed it a number of times, and recommended in an email that students go on food stamps if they’re hungry. Then, seemingly from nowhere, GC folks received an email from Garrell, declaring that she was stepping down as President. She will be replaced by union-friendly Dean of Sciences Joshua Brumberg as interim president. Through our activism, we had won commitments from admin to reopen the cafeteria and establish a permanent pantry at their expense. Garrell’s closure of the Reclaimed Commons was clearly a last “fuck you” as she made to exit the building. Reclaim the Commons, GC RAFA and the PSC GC Chapter all welcome her resignation, taking it as yet another major victory in a year of successful campaigns. Her presidency was marked by indifference and managerial hubris. She is gone now, but we are still here: it takes more than a padlock to enclose the Commons. 

UAW Wins Big at the Big 3 — What Does That Mean For Us?

The UAW’s new contracts at Ford, GM, and Stellantis won enormous raises and other key wins like the elimination of some tiers of workers, the reopening of a closed plant, and the right to strike over plant closures. Some of the lowest-paid full time workers will go from making around $35k to over $80k per year over the course of the contract. We’ve already seen reverberations — Toyota raised wages very soon after the contracts were announced. A huge win like this one can have a galvanizing effect across the whole labor movement — why shouldn’t our own lowest-paid workers get 25% raises effective immediately, if they can win it? UAW also represents many higher ed workers at other universities, so workers in those unions might be particularly inspired to shoot for more ambitious demands and with more militant language and strategy. Always remember, a rising tide lifts all boats! 

PSC DA Modality Fight: a Victory for Accessibility and Inclusion

In October, the PSC Executive Council put forward a resolution that they hoped would force delegates and alternates back to in-person meetings of the Delegate Assembly, after spending the past year ignoring multiple, well-reasoned arguments from DA members demanding equal access to remote participation. The resolution sought to set up “a one-year pilot in which remote attendance is made available and in-person attendance is expressly preferred,” where remote attendance would only be available to delegates and alternates who have a disability or a health condition or whose work at CUNY was fully remote. 

RAFA delegates and alternates joined many others in condemning the resolution, noting that the union should be doing whatever it can to increase participation, not limiting it, and pointing out that the EC was sowing division, eroding morale, and losing credibility at a crucial time in contract negotiations. At the DA itself, RAFA delegates moved an amendment that maintained the commitment to remote attendance while eliminating all restrictions on it, ensuring inclusion and accessibility going forward for not only delegates and alternates but for all PSC members attending the DA meetings. The amendment passed overwhelmingly, a major victory for DA members who had grown tired of being browbeaten by PSC leadership over their support for remote attendance. The amendment eliminated reference to a one-year pilot, so the policy does not need to be revisited in the future.

RAFA Bargaining Update

by Nathan Nikolic

RAFA members would like to express, first of all, how excited we are to have a version of open bargaining, something RAFA has long advocated. We applaud PSC Leadership’s commitment to inviting all union members to attend a session (multiple sessions where space permits) and the timely bargaining updates they have sent to the membership after each session. We also appreciate the Q&A periods during caucus breaks and after each session where members share their observations and suggestions with the bargaining team and each other. The mass inclusion of rank-and-file members in the bargaining process is a welcome change from previous rounds of negotiations. We hope to see the Principal Officers continue to prioritize member engagement and transparency throughout the contract campaign.    

Currently, negotiations are stalled due to a medical emergency facing CUNY’s chief negotiator. But once they are restarted, we have a few concerns and suggestions about the bargaining process so far. These are all aimed at building broad-base engagement and our power as a union.

1. Bargaining Orientations–these could be conducted asynchronously rather than synchronously so that more members can become involved. If the Leadership insists on having live orientations beforehand, they should at least deputize PSC staff organizers and Chapter leaders to hold them regularly at each campus. 

2. Taking Member Comments Seriously–Members have repeatedly asked for the Bargaining Team to bring copies of the materials they are providing to Management for attending members to follow along. Each time someone brings this up, there seems to be general agreement, but at the next session there are still no copies for the members. 

3. Full Bargaining Updates–The bargaining updates so far have overwhelmingly focused on the proposals PSC Leadership has brought to the table. There has been some focus on Management’s responses and proposals but not enough. From statements like “Remote work is not a right” to dismissive remarks about the effects of racial disparities during the pandemic, to the disgusting claim that the University is not actually responsible for making sure its workers can buy food and put a roof over their heads, Management’s negotiating team has said some truly egregious things, and it is clear that they are looking not only to reject any proposals we are making during this round of bargaining but to erode the protections and gains of previous contracts. We want members to understand the extremely recalcitrant stance CUNY Management have taken thus far in order to understand what kind of organizing and power it will take to win a good contract.    

4. Addressing the Elephant in the Room: How Can We Actually Win?–we have had few open and honest conversations about what it will actually take to win even the most modest demands in our bargaining agenda, let alone the more radical ones. In addition to building strike readiness, the only real weapon we have, we should consider coordinating symbolic actions at bargaining sessions that involve protests, disruptions, and other actions that signal to Management our commitment to winning the demands we’ve put forward and our rejection of their neoliberal austerity agenda.

5. Inadequate Demands for Adjuncts–The Bargaining Team has called for a parity demand between Adjuncts and Lecturers that would raise the minimum pay per 3-credit class to about $7,200 dollars at the beginning of our new contract and to about 10k at the end of five years (this assumes that we also win certain salary demands for Lecturers). While an immediate 2k raise per class would mean a lot for most adjuncts, we don’t understand why the Bargaining Team is not coming to the table with a higher demand, especially taking into account the fact that we will probably negotiate down from any proposed number over the course of bargaining. We believe that Leadership should adopt the Adjunct and Part-Timer Platform Committee’s demand for 13k per 3-credit class as a starting point, understanding that we are unlikely to win the full amounts of any proposals we put forward.  

6. Bargaining for the Common Good/Fully Open Bargaining–While we are thrilled to see so many PSC members attending bargaining, we believe sessions should be opened up to our students and the broader NYC community. CUNY is a public institution, funded primarily through taxpayer dollars, and everyone in NYC therefore has a stake in it. We should hear from students and NYC residents about their vision for a People’s CUNY. We should all stand in solidarity to support PSC member demands, student demands, and broader struggles for social justice in our communities. Let’s push for a contract that includes the elimination of tuition, small class sizes, adequate advisors and support staff, a contract that gets the NYPD and military recruiters off our campuses and establishes community control of university resources and governance.    

March Dispatch

Upcoming events: 

March 29 5-7:30pm “LGBTQ+ Night at the People’s Pantry” (Grad Center) 

March 29 5-7 People’s Hearing at CUNY Law

March 30 5-6pm RAFA Zoom Happy Hour Orientation 

March 31 6-9pm Cross-Campus CUNY Organizing Dinner (Grad Center) 

PSC Anti-Racism Committee resignations

In mid-March, all three co-chairs of the PSC Anti-Racism Committee (ARC) resigned, as well as three other committee members. In their letters of resignation, former committee members cite systemic issues that impeded committee’s work. They write about the disproportionate representation of PSC leadership and a few chapters on the committee, roadblocks put up by PSC principal officers, and the narrow focus of campus action teams on the contract campaign despite a robust ARC plan to develop campus-specific anti-racism groups. In the words of RAFA member Ángeles Donoso Macaya, “This committee can have no weight, no validity, no substance, if decisions made collectively, tasks assigned to individual working groups, constructive feedback, you name it, are tossed aside, ignored, or conveniently reinterpreted by the PSC leadership.” Rhea Rahman pointed out the lack of support and withholding of resources by PSC leadership when faced with a vision of anti-racism that encompassed the workings of the union as well as CUNY. 

At the March Delegate Assembly, PSC President James Davis expressed gratitude for the work of committee members who resigned but did not address criticisms aimed at the principal officers for undermining the work of the ARC. The ARC resignations are a troubling sign of the state of anti-racist work in our union. As all those who resigned pointed out, anti-racist union work continues at the rank-and-file and chapter level, but this work must be supported with the resources of our union and backing of our union leadership no matter how difficult, messy, and uncomfortable. 

Reclaim The Commons at the Graduate Center

Since February 1, students and workers at the Graduate Center have been holding and running the vibrant Reclaim The Common space in the 8th floor dining hall. Reclaim The Commons is run by a diverse group of students, staff, and faculty with a variety of affiliations (including PSC and RAFA), and their demands can be found here. It has become a central site of organizing on the GC campus, and a site of pitched battles with management, including this recent march on the boss. 

The project involves a People's Pantry that provides free food for the GC community (anyone can contribute or take items from the pantry, no questions asked), as well as a free hot beverage station. The pressure of this project on the GC management has finally resulted in initial moves to establish an official food pantry, and student and worker activists are working to make sure that this official pantry follows the principles of democracy and access embodied by the People’s Pantry. Meanwhile, the need is acute, and the People’s Pantry has become essential to the survival of many members of the GC community. You can contribute financially via venmo: @Zoe-Hu-1 or cash slipped underneath the PSC office door (6302), and of course through non-perishable food donations. 

Reclaim the Commons has been holding weekly potlucks in the Dining Commons each Wednesday evening. With financial backing from the Doctoral Graduate Student Council, as well as meals cooked by the community, they have been able to provide hot meals for hundreds of people. All are invited to join us, not only students. See calendar for upcoming events. To sign up for the Reclaim the Commons email list. Follow RtC on Twitter and Instagram.

The People’s Hearing Launch and Land Day Iftar

On March 9th at the CUNY Graduate Center, a new coalition of radical CUNY and community organizations, including RAFA, came together to officially launch the People’s Hearing. The Hearing is a response to the CUNY administration’s participation in a sham City Council hearing in which right-wing groups reacted to successful Palestine liberation work at CUNY to try to force the university to adopt policies excluding Palestine from the university space. A People’s Hearing is meant to hold the university accountable to its students and workers, and to the wider community in which it is embedded. 

The event was attended in person and online by close to 200 people (recording here). Speakers described CUNY’s centrality to radical NY organizing going back decades and including resistance to McCarthyism and ROTC recruitment, Puerto Rican and Black liberation struggles, anti-austerity and anti-racist protests, student strikes and campus take-overs, anti-war, Palestine liberation solidarity, abortion rights, and rank and file worker organizing to end the exploitative, multi-tier labor system at CUNY. We heard about CUNY’s ongoing entanglements with racist police and carceral state, colonialism, zionism and imperialism, including CUNY’s role in perpetuating violence and dispossession in Palestine, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Speakers also discussed how they envisioned a true People’s University, free from systems and structures of oppression and one run by and accountable to its students, workers, and communities. Audience members shared their experiences of racism and repression at CUNY. 

The next People’s Hearing event- Land Day Iftar and the first testimonial event building up to the People’s Hearing against Racism and Repression- will be held on March 29th, 5-7pm at CUNY LAW: RSVP form and submit a written testimony, form to submit further evidence; form to get involved in the organizing of the People’s Hearing, linktree.

The Fight for Trans Rights at CUNY

Last week, the Graduate Center chapter of the PSC unanimously passed a resolution affirming the chapter’s solidarity with all LGBTQ+ people, rejecting the 440+ anti-queer (mostly anti-trans) bills that have been introduced in this year’s legislative session alone across the United States, committing to fighting against homophobia and transphobia at CUNY, and pledging assistance to any students or workers fighting the anti-trans bills in other states. Graduate Center delegates hope other PSC chapters will pass mirror resolutions at their own upcoming meetings this semester.

While New York is not facing any bills like the ones being introduced in about two-thirds of the other states, that doesn’t mean queer people in New York don’t face discrimination. The Queens Public Library in Jackson Heights regularly sees far-right protests outside its doors on the days they host Drag Story Hour events. At a similar protest outside the LGBT Center on 13th Street on March 19, one member of the Proud Boys punched a counter-protester. Some demands for protecting and affirming trans students and workers at CUNY include expanding the ability to use one’s chosen name on CUNY accounts and documentation, expanding the number of gender neutral bathrooms on the campuses, creating new protections against deadnaming and misgendering, and making gender-affirming healthcare more accessible for all. 

To continue discussing how to address these issues, the Reclaim the Commons coalition is hosting “LGBTQ+ Night at the People’s Pantry” on Wednesday, March 29, to commemorate Trans Day of Visibility on March 31. Everyone in the CUNY community is welcome to attend, including cis and straight allies. 

March 31 Cross-Campus Organizing Dinner 

RAFA invites you to a cross-campus CUNY organizing dinner at the People’s Pantry at the Graduate Center on Friday, March 31 from 6-9 pm. Our goals for the evening are:

• Connect undergrads, grad students, faculty, and staff across CUNY over food and dialogue. 

• Plan cross-campus mobilization efforts for a large May Day action at the end of this semester.

• Build a centralized communication network for radical organizing at CUNY.

Dinner will be provided. After 45 minutes of eating and socializing, we will share plans for May Day and split up by campuses/borough to discuss coordination and organizing. RSVP here 

The dinner and May Day actions are tests of our ability to mobilize towards a strike to reverse decades of austerity that have plagued this university. The Taylor Law makes it illegal for NY public sector workers to go on strike, but we know that unjust laws should be broken, and there are numerous examples of employees in states with similar laws going on strike and winning. The massive strike wave at universities, hospitals, and beyond across this country over the past year has won major concessions from management. Imagine what a joint student-worker CUNY strike could achieve! 

Come together with CUNY students and workers to fight for the CUNY that working-class New Yorkers deserve: a CUNY that’s free for students and that provides living wages for its employees; a fully funded CUNY with fully staffed departments and small class sizes; a CUNY with buildings that aren’t falling apart; a CUNY where administrators don’t make ten, twenty, or thirty times as much as adjunct instructors and staff members. Together, we can also tackle the myriad social injustices that we face: police brutality and racism, sexism and patriarchy, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, anti-immigrant violence, the rising tide of fascism. Help us create a People’s CUNY. 

Organizing against racism in the Bronx

Members of RAFA and the Bronx/Hostos Action Committee participated in two events highlighting the ongoing fight against racism at CUNY. On Monday, March 13th, during a so-called “listening tour,” Wendy Hensel, Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost (annual salary: $488,000) came to Hostos and did an awful lot of talking about how students and workers at CUNY must suffer under additional racist budget cuts. Carrying water for CUNY administration and Governor Hochul, who wants to institute a 3% tuition hike, Hensel tried to convince us that this austerity is the only way forward. Both outside and inside the assembly, CUNY workers and students challenged the austerity mindset and pushed for a fully funded, free CUNY. We met new students who are eager to join in future organizing! Anyone in the Bronx who wants to get involved, email us at hostosactioncommittee68@gmail.com.

On Thursday of that week, Kingsborough students and faculty visited Hostos to give us a first-hand account on the organizing they have been doing in response to the racist attack on a student in November. The seriousness and militancy of this student-led organizing was plain to see. They spoke of the retaliation that the administration, led by President Schrader (renamed “President Traitor”) is launching against the students and two faculty advisors - and how they are going on the offensive against these attacks!  The sense of solidarity was profound and the KCC group give us encouragement and inspiration for our fight in the Bronx. We encourage anyone at CUNY to contact Common Ground at KCC and arrange for them to visit your campus. They are also raising money to help fend off the attacks from administration. If you can contribute, please do! 

Accessibility at the PSC Delegate Assembly

On March 16, the PSC held its first-ever hybrid Delegate Assembly (DA) meeting. This decision, voted at the February DA, was subject to much debate. The primary stated reason for returning to in-person meetings was the value of socializing and the increased sense of camaraderie that can come from being in a room together. A primary concern about returning to in-person delegate assembly meetings was COVID safety. Members who did attend in-person reported that not everyone wore their masks consistently, and there are also concerns about whether there was adequate ventilation, given dinner was in the same space immediately before.

During the DA, attendees on Zoom faced several issues, including the PSC’s decision to not enable the Zoom chat and participants not being able to split into smaller breakout groups focused on specific organizing topics. Zoom attendees couldn’t see who was speaking at the in-person microphones, were bothered by comments made about how the in-person component was the “real” DA, and disputed the assumption that everyone who attended online must like digital participation which is ostensibly why they were all placed in the same breakout group . Members also pointed out that at times, it seemed like online votes weren’t even counted. Some had issues receiving the Zoom link. 

The debate continued on the DA listserv after the meeting. One key point of disagreement is on whether the DA needs to be accessible for everyone, given that it’s a representative body in which some members already represent others. Others have argued that even though not everyone may want to be a delegate, the meetings are open to all PSC members, and all PSC members should be able to attend if they want to. Another point of disagreement is on whether in-person meetings actually do have key organizing advantages over digital ones, or if these advantages are primarily social and/or a matter of personal preference and enjoyment. Meetings intended to be open for all ought to be fully accessible for all, especially when we know that about a third of all attendees require these accommodations. 

Public Sector Rank & File Organizing Across NYC

Since August 2022, a group known as Public Sector Rank & File has been meeting and plotting together to get a better sense of our shared struggles and obstacles across the city. Frequent topics of discussion include the Taylor Law and how to overturn it, as well as the scourge of austerity and the constraints of pattern bargaining enforced on us by the city and the state. Unions represented include PSC-CUNY, the MORE caucus within the UFT, nurses from NYSNA, and workers from various DC-37 locals. We have held three in-person assemblies and meet regularly over Zoom, every other Wednesday from 7-8 pm. Currently, there are talks of another in-person assembly on Sat., May 13, as well as ‘brown bag’ lunches over Zoom focusing on each respective union so we can learn about issues particular to each of us and how to support each other better. You can join our email list at bit.ly/JoinPSRF. 

Right now, all eyes are on DC37. Their Tentative Agreement (the exact details of which have not been released to the membership) is currently being voted on by members, and the reform caucus DC37 Progressives has released a set of informative materials exposing problems with the proposals and encouraging a no-vote on the contract. We are linking those resources here and find inspiration in them for our own battles at CUNY!

• Contract FAQ Document (google doc): bit.ly/DC37TAContractFAQ

• Contract FAQ Brochure (pdf): bit.ly/DC37TAContractBrochure

• Compound Wage Increase Calculator: bit.ly/DC37TAContractCalculator (view only google sheet)

For more information about PSRF, contact Boyda at johnstoneb2 [at] gmail.com. 

Breaking Unjust Laws II

On February 20, RAFA got together with Member Action Coalition, our counterpart rank and file group at SUNY for a second in our town hall series on Breaking Unjust Laws. This installment focused on academic freedom and censorship (watch here) and featured a youth librarian from Michigan and a professor from a public college in Florida. Both reflected on censorship struggles in their workplace specifically as union activists. Audience members from CUNY and SUNY, as well as guests from other public sector universities across the US, discussed protecting colleagues under attack, inoculation, and what PSC and UUP can do as unions in solidarity.

February Dispatch: Fighting For A Contract Amid CUNY-Wide Cutbacks

In this issue: Reclaiming the Commons at the Graduate Center; battling censorship with SUNY’s Member Action Coalition; building class struggle unionism at the People’s Forum; resisting the neoliberal university with the Tempest Collective; launching the PSC-CUNY bargaining campaign; and finding inspiration from the University and College Union’s approach to union democracy.  

Reclaiming the Commons

On February 1st, the Graduate Center RAFA members, the Graduate Center PSC Chapter, and the Doctoral and Graduate Student Council (DGSC) coordinated to help create a food pantry (affectionately named the People’s Pantry) in the GC Dining Commons on the 8th floor after the abject failure of the GC administration to address food issues, including food insecurity, on campus. The GC administration initially responded by sending some organizers of the pantry a cease-and-desist letter, which has been ignored.

The pantry is run by the GC community on donations, both of non-perishable food and money. To donate, please send a Venmo to GC Chapter Chair Zoe Hu @Zoe-Hu-1 and put a gift emoji in the comment. It is an inspiring example of workers and students being the change they need (instead of waiting on management), as well as of a vision of a non-bureaucratized public space. The Reclaimed Commons has hosted a potluck each Wednesday since then, with plans to expand programming, as GC community members emphasize the need for public, common space in the GC.

The three demands for the Commons are:

1. Reopen the cafeteria immediately. In tandem with a committee of student, faculty and staff advisers, management must provide a public plan by March 31 for reopening the cafeteria. Before the cafeteria is reopened, management must begin providing a daily low-cost hot food option to the college community. Vending machines are not enough, and expecting individuals to purchase food in midtown on less than a living wage is unacceptable.

2. Support students, faculty and staff in transforming the Dining Commons into a communal space. By March 1, senior administration must establish a fund that will sustain the existing People’s Pantry and purchase furnishing and amenities for a more social and community-centered space. There must also be more community autonomy in decisions about future revenue-generating reservations of the space to non-GC entities. Additionally, political expression in the Commons must be affirmed as a positive right and cannot be restricted by administrative fiat.

3. Increase transparency around kitchen management. In 2021, $900,000 dollars was allocated by vote to kitchen repairs—and yet there seemingly has been no progress in renovations. We demand management post a public report on the kitchen and the unaccounted-for funds by March 1. We also demand that the Auxiliary Enterprise Corporation, which manages GC food services and space reservations, become compliant with Open Meetings Law. 

Learn more about the Reclaim the Commons project here.

 Breaking Unjust Laws 2: Censorship

Rank and File Action is continuing our partnership with SUNY's rank-and file-group, Member Action Coalition, and we are hosting a second event in our series on Breaking Unjust Laws. On Monday (February 20th) at 7:30pm, we'll be talking with folks organizing against censorship laws in their workplaces: our first speaker is a faculty member from Florida who is engaged in fighting the draconian DeSantis law, and our second is a librarian from Michigan who will discuss how they are already incorporating anti-censorship work into their labor organizing now (instead of waiting until if/when it becomes a legal problem). We'll hear from each of them and then will have substantial time for Q&A.

You can register for the Zoom event here: https://tinyurl.com/BreakingUnjustLaws2

If you want to watch the first event in the Breaking Unjust Laws series it can be found here--it was with educators who went on strike despite living in states that have anti-strike laws (like the Taylor Law).

people’s hearing on racism and repression at cuny: march 9

Over the past six months, a group of CUNY organizers including members of RAFA, the Cross-CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism, CUNY for Palestine and other radical formations within CUNY, and New York more broadly, have been meeting together to organize the People’s Hearing against Racism and Repression. The launch event will be held on March 9th, 6-8:30 pm, in the Proshansky auditorium at the Graduate Center. The event is intended as a rallying call across our campuses and broader NYC community to build connections and demand the university be accountable to its students, staff and faculty, and to the wider community in which it is embedded.   

The idea for the People's Hearing comes out of organizing that took place in our CUNY community in the summer of 2022 in response to the CUNY administration’s participation in a sham hearing organized by the New York City Council’s higher education committee. This was a direct result of pressure by right-wing groups who made it clear that their aim was to force CUNY to adopt policies that would in effect erase any mention of Palestine from the university space in direct response to successful Palestine liberation organizing across the university. The administration’s decision to participate in this hearing in the face of anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia and other forms of systemic racism and racialized violence on our campuses is a testament to how the administration has often been the agent of such forms of violent racism via being an outright source or through selective silence. As such, we felt strongly that what was needed was in fact a different hearing - a People’s Hearing - to hold the university accountable to its students, staff and faculty, and to the wider community in which it is embedded. 

Through this launch event, we aim to build towards a People’s Hearing against Racism and Repression by building networks between the different struggles for social justice already taking place across CUNY and NYC more broadly to increase our collective power. This is an opportunity for us all to come together to discuss current and future organizing that addresses racism, austerity, gentrification, academic freedom attacks, surveillance, and policing within CUNY, as well as ways of building solidarity with Palestine, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Haiti and other struggles for liberation, abolition, reparations and decolonization/landback. We aim to shed light on the persistent ways that CUNY is actively engaged in perpetuating institutionalized racism and other forms of discrimination such as transphobia, sexism, ableism, as well as colonialism/imperialism. We want to reclaim our rights as people of this city as well as full members of the CUNY community. 
 

For more information or to get involved, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @PeoplesCUNY or email us at: peoplescuny@gmail.com

Click here to let us know if  your organization would like to be a co-sponsor

For updates and background info, check out our linktree

Class Struggle Unionism at the People’s Forum

A rich panel of unionists gathered at the People’s Forum on January 21st to discuss Joe Burns’ Class Struggle Unionism, with the author in attendance. Burns began by giving a recap of key points in his book with a response from the panelists, including members from NYSNA, MORE-UFT, Starbucks Workers United, and Rank and File Action. Highlights of the event included defining the difference between business unionism, class struggle unionism, and labor liberalism, in which progressive values and reliance on media publicity mask a lack of militancy--something that rings true to us in the PSC! We were also inspired by recent wins by striking NYSNA nurses, and there were many reminders that we should not be relying on so-called experts (such as politicians or labor leaders) to fight our workplace battles. Burns’ book is a must-read for lefties in the labor movement today.

RAFA live-tweets can be found here, and you can watch the whole event here.

Tempest Magazine - Resisting the Neoliberal University: Higher Ed Organizing & the Fight for a Livable Wage

December 8th, Tempest Magazine hosted a hybrid event on organizing in the neoliberal university. Gerry Martini represented Rank and File Action on the panel along with organizers from the New School, NYU, Columbia, and the University of California. Gerry spoke to our commitment to militancy, democracy, and coalition building as the ways to win a university (and a union) that we need. In the Q&A, we addressed questions about cross-union rank-and-file organizing, PSC’s strike readiness, about open bargaining at the PSC, and more.

Live tweets here and you can watch the event here.

Launching the PSC-CUNY Bargaining Campaign

The PSC contract with CUNY is expiring at the end of February, and a Special Delegate Assembly was held on Thurs., Feb. 2 to discuss and vote on the now approved bargaining agenda. Rank and File Action hosted a meetup prior to the DA to engage rank & file members in discussing their reactions to the bargaining agenda. 

We at RAFA have a few substantive concerns, including whether the agenda sufficiently incorporates demands from the Vision for Equity document compiled by the adjunct-run Platform Committee. This document calls for $13k/class for adjuncts in keeping with rising trends across NYC-area schools and skyrocketing inflation, and which also takes into consideration the full costs of contingency. We would also love to see the Bargaining Team take on class size in this round of negotiations given course cap increases and workload creep, issues which impact all of us and which grow worse every semester. 

To build power in our workplaces and on the streets, join us for these actions to launch the bargaining campaign:

• Sunday, 2/26 @3-6pm: Rank and File Action is hosting an Art Build in Kensington, Brooklyn (F, Q, and B trains). Get to know other CUNY workers and students while making posters and banners for the 2/27 PSC rally (sign up for more details here). You can also join us on zoom, as this is a hybrid event.

• Monday, 2/27 @7:30-9am: come to the PSC’s rally at CUNY Central (205 E 42nd St, between 2nd-3rd Ave) on the last day of our contract with CUNY. Sign up with the PSC to attend the rally here.

• Monday, 2/27 @9-11am: Immediately after the rally, we will do a short march down to the Graduate Center and join the GC chapter of the PSC for breakfast in the newly reclaimed Commons on the 8th floor, where a People’s Pantry was launched on Feb 1. Come for socializing and strategizing around open bargaining and strike readiness.

We believe that transparency, accountability, and meaningful rank-and-file engagement are essential to a powerful union. There are obstacles to democracy in the way the Delegate Assembly and PSC bargaining are currently set up, but there is every reason to believe that positive change can happen. Let’s attend the DA together in the spirit of being the union we want our union to be: one where members’ thoughts on the bargaining agenda are recognized and considered.

UCU Shows the Power and Potential of Open Mass Meetings — PSC should follow its lead

Earlier this month, the University and College Union (UCU), which represents higher education faculty across the United Kingdom, held a mass open meeting to discuss tactics for their spring campaign. Not only was this meeting open to all members, but it was open to the public — they held it using Twitter Spaces, and anyone could join to listen, including PSC-CUNY members an ocean away. Thousands of people joined the Twitter Space. Union leaders spent only 10 minutes framing the conversation, before members were asked to share their views on the options open to the union. The first speakers were pre-selected, to present each of the main perspectives, and then any member was free to request to speak. The union leaders acknowledged that a fully open meeting meant that bosses, members of government, or other union enemies could also listen in, but they took the position that if the bosses were listening, they would see robust member commitment and passion for the struggle, no matter the disagreements about tactics. The size of the meeting alone was a show of power and solidarity.

This was very different from the PSC’s October “mass meeting” to discuss our upcoming contract campaign, in which a large portion of the meeting was taken up by EC speeches rather than member discussion. Ultimately, almost no time was spent actually discussing tactics for building our collective power to win a strong contract in the face of austerity and pattern bargaining. The UCU approach is even more different from the January 10 meeting to discuss the bargaining framework, in which non-delegate PSC members who attempted to join the discussion were removed from the Zoom. At the January 19 Delegate Assembly, a motion was made to postpone voting on the bargaining framework until February in order to make time for holding an all-membership meeting to discuss the bargaining framework. This motion was voted down, though the voting was already postponed until February because several amendments were approved to the bargaining framework. The PSC’s 30,000 members lacked a space to dig into the bargaining framework together and discuss whether it actually meets their needs and goals for the coming fight. 

We’re supposed to build power using the framework as an organizing tool, but we’ve squandered most opportunities to do that so far, by excluding or limiting rank and file members’ participation at every step of the process. Furthermore, the bargaining framework was introduced at the crunch-time end of the fall semester, and all “deliberations,” such as they were, took place over a break when many members were unavailable to participate and it was nearly impossible to organize campus-level meetings around it. The PSC must do better. 

November dispatch

Circulated via Mailchimp on Nov. 29, 2022

Here’s what you’ll find in this issue!

New York Professors Ride a Strike Wave
This year, or any year: Don’t Give to CUNY on Giving Tuesday!
Putting the right to strike in the New York State Constitution
RAFA & MAC: Why We Need to Break Unjust Laws
Platform Committee Hosts Adjunct Struggle Meeting
Join Public Sector Workers on Saturday at People's Forum
Organizing for A People's Hearing on Racism and Repression at CUNY
RAFA and PSC Members at the Troublemakers School

New York Professors Ride a Strike Wave

New School Part-timers on Strike! 

On November 20th, TNS management shared their "last, best, and final offer" and cut off negotiations. As explained in an email the bargaining committee sent out ahead of the vote on management’s contract, the “offer does more harm than good”:

• It gives the university unlimited authority to hike out-of-pocket health care costs & could force some faculty and their families from our current insurance onto a costly and risky high deductible plan.

• It chips away at long-time faculty members’ job security and would allow the university to continue to churn through new faculty, hiring and then firing after 8 semesters.

• It does not provide real recourse against harassment/discrimination, even though this costs the university nothing.

• It would result in declining real dollar wages.

If a majority of New School Adjuncts vote NO on this contract, the bargaining committee will push for continued negotiations with a mediator. In the meantime, TNS part-timers remain on strike and ask for the support and solidarity of CUNY and other NYC academic workers at the picket line. Specifically, they have asked for supporters from the PSC to join the picket line on Thursday (12/1) from 2-4pm. Please join if you can! 
 

Fordham Contingent Faculty Launch Strike Authorization Vote

Fordham Faculty United (SEIU Local 200 United), the union representing adjuncts, postdocs, and non-tenure track full time faculty at Fordham University, launched their Strike Authorization Vote this week, with an intended strike date of January 30. FFU asks all academic workers in the NYC area to sign the No Scab Pledge initiated by adjunct faculty at UAW-7902 (NYU and the New School). You can follow FFU's contract fight on Twitter and Instagram and learn more in the section of the Dispatch below about the Platform Committee’s Cross-Union Adjunct Struggle meeting.

This year, or any year:
Don’t Give to CUNY on Giving Tuesday! 

You probably have seen the emails asking you to donate money to CUNY. Rank and File Action urges you to ignore these emails! We don’t hold this position because we’re uncharitable or because we don’t care about CUNY workers or students. We urge you to ignore these emails because CUNY has relegated the bulk of its employees to poverty wages and diminishes its student’s education day by day with racist cutbacks. Giving them money won’t change this. Only solidarity between CUNY workers and students and militant opposition to these attacks has a chance to succeed.

 More than half of CUNY employees are part-time, struggling to cobble together a living wage by teaching at multiple CUNY campuses, and often working other jobs as well. There are CUNY part-time employees facing homelessness, hunger, and eviction. Through numerous contract campaigns we have struggled to force CUNY to pay its part-timers a decent wage, only to be told time and time again that it wasn’t possible. Full-timers are in a relatively better position but have also seen their real earnings diminish with one below-inflation raise after another. And now they hold out a hand and ask us to give them money?  We say no.

 CUNY used to be free. From its founding in the late 1800s until 1975, students, who were predominantly white, paid no tuition. After the historic student struggles to open CUNY to the vast number of BIPOC students of New York City, they responded by imposing tuition that has been going up ever since. At the same time, racist disinvestment from the city and state mean that CUNY has had to operate with steadily shrinking public funding. Students are thus caught in the racist vice grip of rising tuition and shrinking public investment. CUNY students are also disproportionately from low socio-economic status households: more than 50% come from families with household income less than $30,000. CUNY students: don’t give away your hard-earned money to a university that proves all the time that it doesn’t care about your education!

 Giving money to CUNY will never produce living wages for its workers or a decent education for its students. Giving money to CUNY is just one of the many attempts they employ to bind us together as “one big family,” urging us to see CUNY’s racist administration as our friends. It is an attempt to get us to ignore the systemic injustice at CUNY’s rotting center. Don’t fall for it! Rather than give money to CUNY we urge you to get involved in one of the many groups at CUNY that are actually fighting to make this place a decent place to work and learn, like RAFA for example! 

Amending the New York State Constitution
to Include the Right to Strike

NYS Public Employees' Fair Employment Act, aka the Taylor Law, prohibits public sector workers from going on strike. PSC GC Chapter members Sofya Aptekar and Marc Kagan and HEO Chapter member Gerry Martini recently participated in a zoom meeting with State Senator Jabari Bisport, the Chief of Staff of Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, and others, to discuss recently introduced legislation that would amend the NYS Constitution - rather than the Taylor Law itself - to enshrine the legal right of public employees (and farmworkers) to strike.

The legislation as currently written (Bill A9115/S9191) simply adds the word “strike” to Article I, Section 17 of the constitution: 

Employees shall have the right to organize, strike, and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.

Amending the constitution requires passage by two successive sessions of the NYS legislature (i.e., with an election in-between) and then approval by voters. Accordingly, this would be a long-term process, but an exciting one. It creates a basis for activists to have discussion within their unions about the value of being able to strike and the necessity for support of this legislation. In other words, it would immediately put the idea of striking back on the radar of public employees and, if passed, prevent the punitive penalties that now exist.

By seeking to amend the constitution rather than the Taylor Law itself, this path heads off any attempt to “trade” the right to strike for abolition of the “Triborough amendment,” which prevents employers from unilaterally changing the terms of a contract (wages, health benefits, working conditions, etc.) when a contract expires.   

There are legal questions to consider. How would the courts and the Public Employee Relations Board (which regulates the Taylor Law) interpret this wording? Which parts of the Taylor Law would become unconstitutional? What political compromises (changes of language) might be necessary to pass the amendment?

All of these are appropriate questions – which nonetheless should not stop us from immediately beginning to agitate for PSC to support this legislation as written, and to actively participate in ongoing discussions about how to ensure its passage.

RAFA and MAC team up for a town hall on
Breaking Unjust Laws

On November 10, UUP Mass Action Coalition and RAFA held a second joint town-hall to discuss organizing against the state laws that make striking for public sector workers illegal (see video here). Two panelists from public sector unions in other states where such laws are on the books shared how they decided to break the law and why it was worth it. Mark Higbee, the vice president of AAUP at Eastern Michigan University, reported that EMU workers tapped into their history of illegal strikes and community support in what is an industrial union state where people understand bad faith bargaining by management. They authorized their strike the day after their contract expired and right before the semester, and managed to save healthcare for all campus workers as well as winning large raises. 

There is a wave of teacher strikes in defiance of the unjust anti-strike law in Massachusetts right now. Jessica Wender-Shubow, the president of Brookline Educators, stressed that the union rank-and-file made the union go on strike, tired of being told to do the same things that do not work. Members felt that they could no longer wait for permission to achieve self-respect and dignity. Union activists talked to 95% of members and knew what the strike vote would be before they held it. People fought for the most vulnerable workers in their union. The union decided that paying the fine to the school district as a penalty was worth it. The collective action was scary, stressful, but also joyful and empowering and is now spreading like wildfire across the state, in defiance of unjust laws. Educator unions are bargaining for the common good, including eviction moratoriums, and locals are helping each other pay the strike penalties. Jessica said it was no longer Colgate versus Crest as far as strategy: we need to enact principled action and unleash the energy of the rank and file.

The Platform Committee Hosts Cross-Union
Adjunct Struggle Meeting

Members of the Platform Committee, a committee established by the Committee for Adjuncts and Part-timers (CAP), gathered together adjuncts from other colleges across New York to discuss the struggles and successes of their contract fights. Schools such as NYU, The New School, and Fordham were represented, and the discussion was a lively roundtable both on contract gains and demands and how unions across the city are fighting for better pay, benefits, and job security. We heard, for example, from David Klassen on how NYU adjuncts won a pay increase of $10,200 for a 4-credit course and a bonus of $2,000 for anyone who taught during the height of the pandemic. Jaclyn Lovell, from the New School, informed us on the current strike situation and how management refuses to come to the table to pay adjuncts a living wage.

What stood out, and underlined, the conversation was need for large, open bargaining in the negotiating process as well as the credible strike threat in order to win. Open bargaining has been a key element of these unions’ fights by bringing more people into union activity through the bargaining process as well as showing power to the university bosses. Jaclyn highlighted that at the beginning of the process “40 to 60” part-time faculty participated in the bargaining process, but that number grew to over 200 part-time faculty in the room, as she notes, “to hear” the university’s lawyers and counter offers.

This was a key lesson from the event, and one we hope the PSC will learn and implement in our upcoming contract negotiations. It is clear, from hearing from our comrades in other higher-ed unions, that open bargaining–coupled with the actual threat of job actions–is necessary in order to win the kinds of demands that our adjunct, part-time staff, as well as full time faculty staff, deserve.

You can view the entire event here: https://youtu.be/3ercABy4GuY

Join Public Sector Workers this Saturday
at People’s Forum!

This coming Saturday, Dec. 3 from 10 AM - 1 PM, a formation of reform-minded union members from PSC, DC37, UFT, ALE ,and NYSNA will be gathering to learn more about our shared struggles as we face an austerity-minded Adams administration hellbent on wielding divide-and-conquer techniques against us. While PSC is dependent on the NYS budget, our union is still stifled by the restrictions of citywide pattern bargaining that establish “raises” that don’t begin to catch up with skyrocketing inflation, and we continue to grapple with the legacy of the anti-strike Taylor Law. Please join us for all or part of this assembly as we build a community of militant rank & file members willing and able to confront these challenges together. If you are not inspired and invigorated by the time you leave, we’ll give you a refund! RSVP in advance at http://bit.ly/Dec2022PSRF

11/11 Organizing Meeting for the People's Hearing on Racism and Repression at CUNY

Organizers for the People's Hearing on Racism and Repression at CUNY met Friday, November 18, to discuss next steps. The idea for the hearing emerged as part of CUNY organizing around the June 2022 New York City Council Higher Education “hearing” on anti-semitism and the resolution that was presented by council members Eric Dinwoitz and Gale Brewer. CUNY for Palestine wrote their own resolution, which explained that the City Council hearing was not in fact concerned with anti-semitism and was instead part of a manufactured zionist backlash against a highly successful year of organizing, and growing support for Palestinian liberation as well as coalition building with other anti-racist and social justice groups organizing within the CUNY community. The CUNY for Palestine resolution detailed numerous incidents of racism, particularly anti-Palestinian and anti-Black racism, across CUNY that were intentionally obscured by the sham hearing. It also announced a People’s Hearing to bring to light these incidents as well as other forms of institutional racism and repression at CUNY and to demand action from the administration.

The People's Hearing is envisioned as the culmination of collaborative work between different groups and organizations at CUNY (and the NYC community more broadly) including solidarity with Palestine, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Haiti and other liberation struggles, anti-racism, abolition, decolonization/landback, the fight for a free and fully funded CUNY, against gentrification, racist austerity, adjunctification and the exploitative multi-tier system of labor, heteropatriarchy, policing and surveillance, etc.. The aim is to build on past successes and work together to achieve a truly transformed and People's CUNY- and People’s New York! Watch this space for more information about the launch event in February.

The next planning meeting will be on December 2nd, 6-7pm. For more info or to get involved, email: CUNY4Palestine@gmail.com

RAFA and the PSC at Labor Notes
Troublemakers School NYC

On the 19th of November, a large contingent from RAFA and the PSC gathered at the Beacon High School in Manhattan for the Labor Notes Troublemakers’ conference. They were joined by about 400 other union militants from around the city and state, making it the largest meeting of its kind so far. Workshops on organizing and mobilizing within your union were bookended by plenary sessions, with keynotes from members of unions across sectors and geographies. Amidst a packed room for the ‘Public Sector Bargaining Landscape’ panel (pictured below), and alongside activists from DC37 and UFT Retirees, RAFA member Boyda Johnstone shared lessons and takeaways from the ‘vote no’ campaign following on #7KorStrike in the last PSC contract struggle. In the afternoon, PSC member Sofya Aptekar led a workshop on ‘Turning an Issue Into a Campaign.’ 

The sense of excitement around impending strike actions by major unions, and solidarity with existing strike movements, was palpable. Unfortunately, another common sentiment was impatience with the obduracy and insularity of union officialdom, particularly in the public sector. The attempts by union bureaucrats to confine our work to dead-ends like legislative action, or to restrict member access to the work of bargaining, swelled the panel “What to do When the Union Breaks Your Heart” to the point of needing a whole auditorium. The most urgent lessons people took away from the event was the unconditional necessity of open bargaining for large-scale victories in bargaining; the ongoing importance of face-to-face organizing at a chapter level; and the viability of a project to model the kind of union you want to see at the level of your own organizing. If we can build around ourselves the image of a more perfect union in our group work, perhaps people will awake from the apathy and languor of membership in an indifferent organization.

October 2022 Dispatch: Halloween edition

In this issue:

• TONIGHT! Attend the 10/26 PSC Mass Meeting on Winning a Just Contract!

• Hiring From Within? A Clarion Retraction

• 10/6 CUNY For Abortion Rights Walkout

• The Committee for Adjuncts and Part-Timers Returns

• Cross-union Organizing Committee (CROC) Halloween Rally, 10/27

• Open Bargaining Forum Report

• Wonder what the Principal Officers are saying about Open Bargaining?

• CUNY Adopts the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

• RAFA-MAC Teach-in on Breaking Unjust Laws 

• Labor Notes NYC Troublemakers School Coming Soon!

• PSC Team at the Organizing for Power Trainings

• Class Struggle Unionism Reading Group

TONIGHT! Attend the 10/26 PSC Mass Meeting on Winning a Just Contract!

A mass, online meeting is scheduled to take place tonight, Wednesday, 10/26 from 6:30 - 8:30 to “show our strength, to hear from the bargaining team and ask questions, and to learn about the campaign for a just contract.”

We urge RAFA members and everyone else to attend the meeting to advocate that the Negotiations Committee open the bargaining process and that the Demand Develop Committee put forth a bold vision for CUNY in the form of a maximalist list of demands.

Register for the event here: 10/26 Registration

Hiring From Within? A Clarion Retraction

By Olivia Wood, Lecturer, CCNY

As a CUNY PhD student and adjunct hired into one of CUNY’s new full time lecturer lines, Clarion asked me to write a short piece for the October issue on how my new job will impact my life and what I think it means for the union as part of the Hire From Within campaign. Prior to publication, Clarion deleted two key components of my statement that were critical of the campaign, which changed the meaning of my piece significantly. Below is my statement as I originally wrote it. Additionally, while I have worked as a graduate assistant and adjunct within the PSC for the last four years, I was not already working at CCNY specifically. For that reason, many people in my department view me as an outside hire (a view I find very understandable). 

***

After writing about why I was applying to these positions for a previous issue of Clarion, I was very fortunate to be offered a lecturer position at CCNY this year. My field, English composition, had many open lines across almost all of the senior colleges. I applied to eleven positions, all at CUNY schools. Most adjuncts, teaching in other fields, probably didn’t have as many opportunities to be considered. 

Above all, the way this job most benefits me is in stability. This was going to be my last year with PhD funding, and I didn’t know what I would do for money or for health insurance after that, since my fellowship was close to half of my income. This job means my partner and I are able to begin seriously discussing when we want to start a family. A NYS pension means I have a retirement plan beyond “hope that capitalism is overthrown before 2065” (although I do still hope for that). 

However, I don’t think this symbolizes very much for the union. I was fortunate — that’s all. Many of these lines are going to external hires. Someone I know found out that the hiring committee in her department was specifically looking for folks with research experience, postdoctoral fellowships, and publications, even though these lines are supposed to be for dedicated teachers. These hiring committees consist of our fellow union members. We failed to convince many of them that the importance of hiring from within outweighed other factors. 

I have no idea what other outreach the union did on this matter other than the Clarion series, and I’m a very involved member. I think a better approach will be to negotiate for new lines dedicated explicitly to adjuncts, as we have done in the past, and create a system of conversion, where any adjunct who wants to be hired full time will automatically be converted into a full time lecturer once they meet the conditions. Adjuncts teaching as much as they can under the 9-6 rule are already teaching a full time teaching load, so I think in most cases, the course sections already exist for the workload of converted full time roles. The need is there. CUNY just doesn’t want to pay the salaries and benefits of lecturers, when adjuncts are so much cheaper. 

10/6 CUNY For Abortion Rights Walkout

On October 6th, hundreds of CUNY students and workers joined together in walkouts and rallies for abortion rights, trans rights, and other forms of reproductive justice. Organizers estimate about 250 people joined the protest at Hunter College, 40 at Brooklyn College, and 150 at the Graduate Center. 

These walkouts, organized by, CUNY For Abortion Rights, were part of a National Student Day of Action co-organized by the Graduate Student Action Network (GSAN) and Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), which included students from over 50 schools across more than 30 states. While the PSC as a whole has not taken up the walkouts, instead encouraging members to attend the event organized by the Women’s March on October 8, the Graduate Center chapter passed a resolution on September 30 endorsing the action and pledging support to any students or workers penalized for participation. Elected leaders from the PSC’s Graduate Center chapter (Zoe Hu and Giacomo Bianchino) both spoke at the rally.

The Committee for Adjuncts and Part-Timers Returns 

After several months of inactivity, the Committee for Adjuncts and Part-timers (CAP) reconvened on 10/7 for its first meeting of the year to discuss the upcoming contract negotiations. Members of the Platform Committee gave a presentation on the Vision for Equity, an important and visionary set of demands that would provide a path toward equity between full-time and part-time workers. 

The meeting also featured demand development breakout rooms to discuss what adjuncts and part-timers want out of the next contract. Of course, job security, higher pay, and more robust benefits are at the forefront of all CAP members’ minds. As well, the breakout rooms discussed how we can mobilize the power of the rank and file to push both the Negotiations Committee to adopt the Vision and fight CUNY on behalf of all adjuncts, part-timers, and graduate student workers. We understand that power comes from the organized rank and file, and we plan to use that power to push for open bargaining practices and the demands as laid out in the Vision for Equity.

We also want to thank Rosa Squillacote for her service as VP of Part-timers and congratulate on her new full time position. 

If you support the Vision for Equity, please sign this support pledge: I Support the Vision for Equity

Cross-union Organizing Committee (CROC) Halloween Rally, 10/27

New York City Municipal retirees have fought for over a year to keep the City from switching our excellent traditional Medicare with supplement to a privatized Medicare Advantage Plan.  We won a lawsuit protecting us, and now the City is doing an "end run" by trying to get the City Council to change the law--Admin. Code 12-126!   This change  will not only affect retirees but could diminish current city workers' health benefits as well.

We are sharing the announcement of the upcoming Halloween Horror Press Conference on Thursday 10/27 at 12:30PM (see below)  in the CROC's  fight  back and educational efforts to preserve our health care benefits as well as important updates.

The Mayor and the key leaders of the Municipal Labor Council (MLC) are openly moving forward in their draconian efforts to balance the budget on the backs of all of us : retirees and current municipal employees. This past Friday, the City issued a document soliciting expressions of interest from vendors to provide health benefits for current NYC employees.

We are gathering once again when the  Council is in session to tell them— VOTE NO! You can find the contact information for your City Council representative here: https://council.nyc.gov/districts/ 

In the meantime, we are sharing a victory that is  inspiring us in our fight. On 10/20 a judge in Delaware halted the state’s efforts to move all of its 30,000 retired employees off of their traditional Medicare – a similar victory to the one we had in NYC in March 2022 that is being appealed by mayor Eric Adams.

For more information or get involved with CROC please email: crocnyc22@gmail.com 

Open Bargaining Forum Report

On October 12th, PSC Members from across CUNY attended the RAFA/Action Committee Forum on Open Bargaining, featuring a lively discussion on the need to demand open bargaining from CUNY and from PSC leadership, and how to go about winning this important step. 

We discussed components of open bargaining, including access to bargaining meetings, timely and detailed reports to members, and the sharing of proposals from both sides. There are multiple reasons for unions to embrace open bargaining: it wins better contracts, it mobilizes the memberships and gets members to experience their union as a site of collective power rather than a service provider, and it is key to building an anti-racist union. 

We went through common arguments union leaders make against open bargaining. Watch the video recording and contact RAFA or the Action Committee if you’d like to get involved in this struggle!

Wonder what the Principal Officers are saying about Open Bargaining?

One of the four Principal Officers visited a recent chapter meeting and fielded a question about whether the PSC will be implementing open bargaining in the upcoming contract struggle. RAFA members took notes. Here are some of the points the PO in question made, and our response:

1. “We have come up with a workable process that isn’t quite open bargaining but a form of open bargaining.” By this they mean that members will be invited into key sessions for particular viewpoints, a model that has been used by the PSC in the past. But these invitations have in the past come with a gag agreement which prevents members from reporting openly on the sessions afterwards. Since the bargaining team decides who gets to be there and how much they can disclose, this is not open bargaining. 

2. “We have formed a Demand Development Committee that is pivoting to work with Campus Action Teams (CATs) on demands.” As far as we can tell, the Demand Development Committee is comprised solely of Executive Council members, and CAT teams are similarly limited in scope. At at least one major CUNY campus, the CAT hasn’t even met yet this year. There need to be clear paths for member involvement in formulating demands, rather than the “death by committee” approach. 

3. “Open bargaining would be too unwieldy for a union of 30,000 members.” Yes, a bargaining session with thousands of members might be chaotic. But open bargaining is not a free-for-all and is premised on the notion that there is power in numbers. You can choose a maximum number of participants and have people sign up beforehand, rotating through different attendees for each session. The caucus structure means that members know to remain quiet during negotiations and debrief with the bargaining committee during breaks. There can be structure and limits to open bargaining. 

4. “We would look weak if only five people showed up.” So, which is it? Are the POs worried about too many or too few people attending bargaining sessions? It is true that some unions practicing open bargaining have struggled to activate members as participants in the sessions. But this is all the more reason why we need to start building our member power now, and spread as much political education as possible. Members can help each other understand that they can have a meaningful role to play in their own contract negotiations, rather than believing their voices don’t matter or expecting others to fight on their behalf in a top-down structure. Who better to advocate for part-time CLTs than someone currently holding that role? This union is our union, not the leadership’s union, and open bargaining is a process that can begin today. 

5. “We sometimes worry that the focus on open bargaining distracts from building power among the members.” (Yes, this is a direct quote). We at RAFA know that the whole point of open bargaining is building member power. If you are accustomed to showing up at pointless publicity events or filling out surveys whose results are never released, you’re not going to believe turning out to negotiations is worth your time. On the other hand, if we build a union culture that values and amplifies all voices and encourages active and horizontally balanced participation, open bargaining will become a natural outgrowth of the kind of vibrant union we’ve cultivated.  

Open bargaining does not happen in a vacuum, curtailing other approaches to building power. On the contrary, it is an umbrella term that encompasses many other actions and mobilizations as members see fit, while becoming increasingly activated and enraged by the betrayals and hypocrisy of CUNY executives. It is also not an all-or-nothing feature of negotiations, but rather a process (like strike readiness), a muscle we must flex and strengthen over time. Rather than shutting down dialogue by claiming that “the PSC already practices a form of open bargaining”--which we have heard asserted in various contexts-–the Principal Offers should practice openness to more transparency and new forms of member engagement as we approach the upcoming round of contract negotiations. After all, more members involved would ultimately make these leaders’ taxing jobs easier!

CUNY Adopts the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

CUNY For Palestine at the October 14 Day of Rage event with Within Our Lifetime 

As reported in the New York Post, the CUNY Chancellor has caved to pressure from right-wing politicians and announced that CUNY is adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The Jewish Law Student Association at CUNY Law (JLSA) characterizes the IHRA definition as “conflating antisemitism with opposition to Israel’s settler-colonial ideology.” 

They further point out that this definition means that “not only are Palestinian voices silenced, but Jewish students are painted as a monolith, and the long and deep history of Jewish antizionism and Jewish dissent is erased.” Read the full JLSA statement and join other CUNY students, staff, and faculty by adding your name in support. 

CUNY For Palestine is holding a teach-in, “IHRA and the Co-optation of the Struggle Against Antisemitism: Intersectional Palestine Organizing at CUNY and Beyond on Wendesday, October 26, 1-2pm on zoom. To register: http://tiny.cc/C4POct26IHRA. 

RAFA-MAC Teach-in on Breaking Unjust Laws 

Rank and File Action is partnering up once again with our counterpart in the SUNY union, Member Action Coalition, for an event on the Taylor Law. Rather than rehash all the history and details of this law that penalizes strikes for public sector workers in New York, we will focus on organizing to fight and break the Taylor Law. Unjust laws are meant to be broken! The event will feature leaders of two unions that went on strike and broke their state laws - and won. 

Save the date for an inspiring discussion with organizers from the Eastern Michigan University AAUP and Brookline Educators Union. 7pm, Thursday November 10th, more details to come

Labor Notes NYC Troublemakers School Coming Soon!

We at RAFA are huge fans of Labor Notes and their vision of rank-and-file led, militant unionism. We encourage any and all union members to attend this day-long Troublemakers School on November 19th for a series of workshops that are sure to be helpful in both your day-to-day organizing and in building for the long-term. You are sure to bump into a few RAFA members if you attend, so make sure to say hi!

On a related note, RAFA members participate in weekly meetings of the Labor Notes group specific for public university union members: the Public Higher Education Workers (PHEW) Network. If you would like to attend a PHEW meeting and learn from/with other higher ed workers around the country as they build bottom-up union power on our campuses, email Gerry for more info.

PSC Team at the Organizing for Power Trainings

A team of PSC members, a number of them in RAFA, have been attending labor organizer and scholar Jane McAlevey’s recent Organizing for Power training Power and Participation in Negotiations. We’re learning from other unions how powerful transparent, big, and open bargaining can be–not just in winning stronger contracts, but in cultivating greater member activism and democracy. So far it has been an inspiring experience, and gives us concrete examples of why open bargaining is the way forward!

Check out Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor’s new report, “Turning the Tables” to find out more about the fundamentals of open bargaining, including case studies where big wins were made thanks to high member participation.

Class Struggle Unionism Reading Group

September Dispatch

In this issue:

• PSC 50th Birthday Picnic

• Medicare privatization 

• CUNY For Abortion Rights Oct. 6 Walkout 

• Saturday, Oct. 15 @ The People’s Forum: All out for Abortion Access! Organizing at CUNY and Beyond

• RAFA at the NYC Labor Day Parade

• Solidarity with workers struggles at the New School and Columbia

• Platform Committee’s Vision for Equity & CAP Meeting Oct. 7th

• Public Sector Workers Rank-and-File Organizing Builds Steam

• The Bronx/Hostos Action Committee & RAFA Present a Forum and Discussion on Open Bargaining for the Best Contract

• PSC Executive Council Rejects Opportunity to Democratize Bargaining

• NYU Adjuncts Hold Strike Authorization Vote!

With the new school year beginning, we want to welcome everyone back with the first issue of the RAFA Dispatch of the semester. In this issue, we are proud to highlight work around abortion rights and public sector organizing our members are engaged in, as well as our adjunct comrades at NYU who are voting to strike over pay and working/learning conditions.  

We also look toward our future contract struggle, emphasizing members’ work in advocating and organizing for open bargaining in the next contract negotiations alongside demands for adjuncts, part-timers, staff, and graduate student workers. We believe we win together through open democratic practices and through the power of rank-and-file members, and you’ll read about these beliefs put into practice here. 

We ask anyone interested in being involved in our struggle to please join us.

In Solidarity,

Rank and File Action

PSC 50th Birthday Picnic 

Over 100 PSC members, including approximately 20 RAFA members, came to the 50th Anniversary Picnic in Prospect Park on August 28th. It was great to celebrate with comrades from around CUNY! Happy birthday, PSC!

Medicare privatization

PSC was one of a handful of unions opposing the privatization of Medicare for city retirees. The Municipal Labor Council caved to city administration demands to change a city law that requires the city to provide free health insurance to city workers and retirees and dependents. Now the City Council will vote on the change in city law that will allow the creation of different tiers of workers. Retirees will be moved from the traditional Medicare plan to the privatized Medicare Advantage plan. 

Medicare Advantage limits people to certain doctors and hospitals, denies coverage for some medications and procedures, and has higher out-of-pocket costs. Those who want the better traditional plan will have to pay a premium. The City has been trying to push this plan without a change in law but has been blocked by a judge. Not only are we all, hopefully, future retirees, but the two-tier system is coming for active workers next. We already have a multi-tier workforce in New York City, and at CUNY, with higher-income workers and retirees more likely to be white, and lower-income retirees and workers more likely to be people of color. This makes Medicare privatization a racial justice issue. 

Join a rally against privatization in front of City Hall on Thursday, September 29 at noon. Sign the online petition here: https://bit.ly/3L9J5XX.

Send a letter to your City Council Member. 

CUNY For Abortion Rights Oct. 6 Walkout 

CUNY For Abortion Rights is participating in the National Student Day of Action for Reproductive Rights. Walkouts are being planned at the Graduate Center, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College. 

Saturday, Oct. 15 @ The People’s Forum: All out for Abortion Access! Organizing at CUNY and Beyond

The PublicsLab and CUNY for Abortion Rights welcome you to an in-person gathering at The People’s Forum to learn and strategize with the movement for safe, legal, and free abortion access. In an opening panel, breakout sessions, and a concluding assembly, we will exchange lessons between organizers, scholars, and frontline workers. All participants will emerge from this event with connections and tangible skills to contribute to the urgent struggle for reproductive justice in New York and beyond. RSVP/event schedule here.

NYC Labor Day Parade 

RAFA members participated in the PSC contingent marching in the Labor Day Parade on September 10. This is a yearly parade organized by the Central Labor Council, featuring local unions, workers’ organizations, and politicians. The conservative old-school labor movement nature of the parade was apparent in the law enforcement union contingents, the profusion of US flags, and the blessing of the parade by Cardinal Nolan. At the same time, it felt good to see members of Amazon Labor Union, Starbucks Workers United, and Delivery Workers United. 

The PSC marched behind The United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which was attacked by a handful of protestors who turned out to express their outrage at vaccine mandates in schools. Part of our contingent were members decrying the privatization of Medicare (known as Medicare Advantage), endorsed by most union leaders in NYC, who shared information on fighting against this betrayal. As a social justice union, we should more clearly express our values at future Labor Day Parades by openly challenging the presence of police unions. After all, the Delegate Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution in 2020 that called for defunding the NYPD and for the AFL-CIO to end its affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA). 

Solidarity with worker struggles at the New School

On September 14, PSC members joined the Rally for Respect at the New School in solidarity with the school’s part-time instructors who are fighting for a fair contract. Part-timers at the New School who are members of UAW Local 7902 have been without a contract since 2019. Adjunct workers held up signs that said “We Are The 87 Percent” to bring home the extent to which the New School is run on adjunct labor. Many enthusiastic New School students were in attendance, holding up signs that called out the supposed social justice mission of the New School in light of egregious exploitation of their teachers. Union members and their supporters marched to the townhouse of the New School president, where they proceeded to deliver their letter while shouting demands. We stand in solidarity with New School workers and hope to learn from their organizing efforts, not least going to where management lives and disrupting the peace. 

Platform Committee’s Vision for Equity 

The Platform Committee, which was established by the Committee for Adjunct and Part-timers (CAP), has developed the Vision for Equity. The “Vision” is a comprehensive proposal of demands that would affect all adjunct and part-time titles across CUNY, including Graduate Assistants. We are at a critical juncture as a union, and the “Vision” sees a future of CUNY with better pay, benefits, and job security for all. We believe these demands are a crucial step toward equity across titles and will begin the process of closing both the pay-gap and benefit-gap between part-time and full-time titles. 

The vision includes demands for:

• $13,000 per course adjuncts

• Compensation work reduced or canceled classes for any reason as well as severance pay

• Create an Adjunct Certificate of Continuous Employment (CCE) with eligibility regardless of course/workload

• Significant increase in full-time lines and departments and demanding departments Hire From Within

• Adopt a straightforward, transparent seniority system, such as one based on date of hire

• Health insurance for all part-timers, including family coverage, upon hire as well as the same paid medical leave for full-timers and health insurance in retirement

• For NTAs and CLTs, reset the semester cap on hours to 450 (full-time equivalence) and allow it to be accrued across campuses

As well, Graduate Assistants have crafted a set a demands that include:

• Health insurance eligibility for all GAs, regardless of all other factors

• Childcare stipends for GAs who are the primary caregivers of minors

• Extend all 5 year fellowships to 6 years, permanently

• A bulk increase in total compensation to bring GA income up to the ALICE Survival Budget Threshold for a single adult in Manhattan

• In each subsequent year of the contract, that the annual across-the-board raises negotiated by the PSC apply to total compensation for graduate assistants

• Annual increases for all job titles should keep pace with inflation

• Increase funding to the Teaching and Learning Center so that it can pay graduate assistants for attending professional development workshops

If you support the Vision for Equity we ask that you sign this form: https://forms.gle/koqa2eBvqZSp1a3N6

As well, the Committee for Adjuncts and Part Timers (CAP) plans on holding its first meeting of the semester on Friday, October 7th at 1pm. The meeting will discuss the “Vision,” as well as the state of negotiations so far.

Public Sector Workers Rank-and-File Organizing Builds Steam

In our Summer Dispatch, we reported on a new formation of cross-union public sector rank-and-file workers who have been meeting regularly for planning meetings Thursdays at 6 p.m., and organizing two major events at the People’s Church in East Harlem with the intent of building networks of trust and community and learning to fight the boss together. We have been keeping each other apprised of action (and inaction) in our respective unions around impending contract negotiations, and have been debating how best to build meaningful channels of communication that confront the closed-door policies of official bargaining sessions. 

Our second event was held on Saturday, September 24th with about 40 attendees and 20 additional remote participants in a survey that went out the day before the event (and which is still accepting responses as we continue to grow, so please consider filling it out!). There was broad consensus around such contract demands as raises that match steep inflation rates, comprehensive health care including resistance to privatization, eliminating multi-tiered systems that pit workers against each other, hiring additional staff to counter workload creep, remote work options, and adequate compensation for additional work obligations. Beyond these material necessities, though, we are strategizing how to build democracy in our unions and our workplaces, including opening up bargaining sessions, addressing racial and gender inequality, and encouraging community involvement and input. 

With the added draw of socializing over beverages and food afterwards, these events have fostered meaningful connections with radical unionists and visionary workers across the city. And there is sure to be more to come! If you would like to get involved or be added to the email list for the public sector workers group, please email Boyda at johnstoneb2@gmail.com. 

The Bronx/Hostos Action Committee & RAFA Present a Forum and Discussion on Open Bargaining for the Best Contract

PSC Executive Council Rejects Opportunity to Democratize Bargaining

RAFA members have been among those PSC members pushing for a more democratic bargaining process in the next PSC/CUNY contract. This has included asking for the PSC Delegate Assembly (DA) to discuss what form bargaining will take, and asking the opponents of open bargaining in the PSC leadership to specify why they object. (More on open bargaining from the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center here; more on why RAFA supports it here.)

Unfortunately, we got neither of these things: the President’s Report at the September DA shows that the PSC’s Executive Council has already selected a bargaining team (and they only chose themselves to be on it), and that bargaining will continue to happen behind largely closed doors. The Executive Council would not even agree to share the proposals that the PSC and management make during bargaining. A middle ground proposal on the make-up of the bargaining team, where PSC members could at least nominate and vote for who they want on the bargaining team (even if we could not get to open bargaining), was also not something that the Executive Council was interested in considering.

While the PSC constitution gives the Executive Council the power to make these decisions unilaterally, there is no reason why our leadership couldn’t have chosen to incorporate more democratic input in these decisions. Moreover, some PSC leaders lined up to tell concerned delegates that this decision was not a top-down one… even though these same leaders did not allow debate before making their decisions, nor even explain their reasoning in any detail.

While losing on an issue you care about is never pleasant, it is more upsetting to lose when there was never a vote or open debate. RAFA will continue to push for a greater culture of democracy within the PSC, both at the bargaining table and elsewhere. We are excited to see that our comrades in the Bronx/Hostos Action Committee are keeping the discussions around open bargaining going, even after this disappointing decision by the PSC Executive Council.

NYU Adjuncts Hold Strike Authorization Vote!

The members of the Adjunct Faculty Union at NYU (ACT-UAW 7902) are currently voting on strike authorization. Facing a predictably intransigent administration, workers at one of the wealthiest private universities in the country are moving quickly to signal their willingness to strike to improve pay, working conditions, and learning conditions. Voting continues until October 7th. Encourage anyone you know in the bargaining unit to vote yes and be ready to join the pickets that may become necessary! Their struggle is ours both because these conditions are structural across academia, but also because an increasing number of us have to cobble together a living by teaching at multiple campuses. 

RAFA brings the heat with the Summer 2022 Dispatch!

Circulated via Mailchimp on July 21, 2022

In this issue…

RAFA at the Labor Notes Conference

RAFA and MAC Townhall on Democratizing the Bargaining

Palestinian Solidarity Organizing at CUNY

The Platform Committee’s Vision for Equity and Job Protection

Public Sector Cross-Union Strategizing Summit

RAFA at Labor Notes

In June, members of Rank and File Action and other PSC members went to the Labor Notes conference in Chicago. With an unprecedented 4000 labor militants attending, it is no surprise Jacobin billed it the beating heart of the US labor movement. A combination of big sessions with the likes of ALU’s Chris Smalls and Bernie Sanders and dozens of workshops, Labor Notes was an intense and inspiring immersion into a vision of rank and file-led, militant, democratic unionism that Labor Notes has long championed and supported. 

Highlights from the conference include a 200-people strong higher education industry meet-up, where undergraduate and graduate workers, staff, and faculty of all ranks shared rank and file challenges and wins. Multiple workshops on open bargaining brought home the fact that open bargaining is an essential tool for building union power and winning good contracts, no matter the size of the union (nudge nudge, PSC). 

RAFA members helped lead workshops on campus institutional debt and using social media to organize. Connecting with militant rank and file organizers across different industries gave us a boost of energy to keep fighting for a more democratic and powerful PSC. 

Packed house for the higher ed meetup

Crowd at the ‘Using Social Media to Organize’ workshop

Gerry and Sofya speak about using Twitch to democratize union meetings at the Using Social Media to Organize workshop.

Joint RAFA-MAC Townhall on Democratizing Bargaining

In late June, RAFA and Member Action Coalition of the United University Professionals (the SUNY union) held a joint townhall to discuss democratizing the bargaining process in both of our unions. 

UUP has begun bargaining its contract, and the PSC will begin next year. Members of both unions are facing stagnant wages further slashed by inflation, contingency, unhealthy working conditions in the continuing pandemic, and more. These challenges are best tackled by a powerful union with members who are informed, engaged, and ready to fight for the contract they deserve. However, both the UUP and the PSC currently embrace undemocratic and nontransparent bargaining processes where they essentially bargain behind a wall of silence with minimal and tokenized engagement from rank and file members and limited and vague communication. 

At the townhall, we heard from Barbara Madeloni of Labor Notes and Marisa Chappell of United Academics of Oregon State University how other unions break down that wall of silence, from sharing every proposal on their websites to inviting rank and file union members to bargaining sessions. These practices build union power and result in concrete wins at the bargaining table. Moreover, as Barbara pointed out, open bargaining leads to member militancy: union members who are ready and willing to escalate tactics all the way to strikes—yes, even in states where unjust laws make public worker strikes illegal. We look forward to continuing building with MAC comrades. 

RAFA Members Participate in Palestine Solidarity Organizing at CUNY

Several RAFA members participated in Palestine solidarity actions via CUNY for Palestine in June. These actions were organized around the New York City Council Higher Education committee “hearing” on alleged anti-semitism at CUNY initially planned for June 6 and then rescheduled and held on June 30th. This included a social media and email/phone call campaign targeting the CUNY Chancellor to oppose the CUNY administration’s participation in this sham hearing as well as participating New York City Council members. 

CUNY for Palestine also released a statement to explain how the “hearing” is part of a broader zionist backlash, including defamation, character assassination and harassment, that followed the successful mobilizations across CUNY in the spring of 2021 against Israel’s accelerated settler colonial and apartheid violence. CUNY4Palestine also released its own “Peoples Resolution” as a response to the resolution presented by council members Eric Dinowitz and Gale Brewer “calling upon the City University of New York to compile data on bias incidents and hate crimes.” The CUNY4Palestine resolution details numerous incidents of racism, particularly anti-Palestinian racism, across CUNY that are intentionally obscured by the New York City council sham hearing. It also announces the organizing of a People’s Hearing for Fall 2022 that will bring together various anti-racist, anti-colonial, and social justice formations at CUNY to shine a light on these incidents as well as other forms of institutional racism at CUNY and to demand action from the administration. More details to follow!

As part of its support for Palestine liberation solidarity organizing at CUNY, RAFA also endorsed the statement “CUNY Jewish Antizionists in Solidarity with Palestinian Liberation,” signed by Jewish students, workers and alumni, as well as organizations (CUNY or Non-CUNY) that wish to demonstrate their “solidarity with Palestine liberation organizing at CUNY and opposition to the weaponization of antisemitism to undermine this organizing.”

The Platform Committee’s Vision for Equity and Job Protection for Adjunct Faculty and Part-Time Personnel

Summary of the Vision:

The Platform Committee was established as a subcommittee of the PSC’s Committee for Adjunct Faculty and Part-Time Personnel (CAP) back in 2019. It met for two years with the goal of preparing for the next round of contract bargaining. This spring, members of the Platform Committee reconvened to move forward with the agenda. They reviewed earlier work, incorporated suggestions and created the following platform document, “The Vision for Equity and Job Protection for Adjunct Faculty and Part-Time Personnel.”

The Vision is based on the following principles:

• Move toward one faculty, one staff, one CUNY

• Attain equity in pay, benefits and job protection

• Strengthen job security to eliminate contingency

• Embrace rather than replace adjunct faculty 

• Bargain for all to receive the same benefits with respect to health care, sick leave, disability insurance, family leave, tuition reimbursement, etc

• Smaller classes

The Vision includes multiple provisions to improve job protection including, introducing an Adjunct CCE after five years of service, a seniority system that starts when hired and broad eligibility for the three-year contract for protection prior to obtaining the CCE. As well, it expands options for moving to full-time secure work that include additional dedicated lecture lines and other mechanisms for advancement toward full-time work. The Vision takes the approach that transitions to more full-time positions or increasing course load for some should not be done by displacing other adjuncts or reducing their course load.

The salary demand is for $11,000 for three contact hours with the recognition that parity must include additional compensation for the costs of contingency. Other provisions include compensation for course cancellations and for over-tallies, equity in benefits, including enhanced health insurance eligibility, health benefits in retirement, and disability insurance. The Vision also calls for an end to the workload restriction known as the “9/6” rule where adjuncts are limited in the number of courses they can teach. 

We need to dismantle the multi-tier system that perpetuates significant inequities, exacerbates increased work demands, undermines faculty governance in the university, and weakens the union.

Summary of the Work of the Platform Committee:

The Platform Committee was established as a subcommittee of the PSC’s Committee for Adjunct Faculty and Part-Time Personnel (CAP) back in 2019. The Platform Committee was established with the idea of preparing for the next round of contract bargaining. In order to bring adjunct faculty and part-timers across CUNY together to build our strength and better influence the bargaining agenda, the Platform Committee felt we needed to develop a visionary platform that would address our key needs, undermine the two-tier system, and serve as the basis for contract bargaining. While developing and circulating the platform was the first goal, a second, equally important goal, was strategizing about how to best to wage the fight to win these visionary demands.

So, the Committee worked for two years on the platform which was presented at a CAP meeting in May 2021 and a great discussion ensued. The next steps of incorporating suggestions and finalizing a draft did not take place right away when CAP meetings appeared to be on pause.  

This spring members of the Platform Committee reconvened to move forward with the agenda. Members reviewed the earlier work, incorporated suggestions and created the following platform document, “The Visions for Equity and Job Protection for Adjunct Faculty and Part-Time Personnel.” New members have joined the Platform Committee and contributed in many different ways to its work. This Vision is being circulated with the goal of engaging others, getting feedback and seeking support for the Vision’s basic principles and its provisions (or most of them). 

For more information or to get involved with the Vision Statement organizing, contact: clarkehc@aol.com

Public Sector Cross-Union Strategizing Summit

This year, most of the 300,000+ NYC public sector workforce are going into negotiations with the Mayor Adams administration. The stakes are high with inflation spiraling and an austerity-minded mayor in office. Nurses, teachers, and other essential workers in this city are facing unprecedented burnout, a fresh round of budget cuts, and new economic challenges within our communities. As with all things, mounting any resistance must be led by rank and file efforts.

We are stronger together, and plans are in the works for a cross-union public sector summit, scheduled for Saturday, August 27, to share assessments of the balance of forces and combine our efforts for strategy heading into the year. The event will welcome rank and file activists from UFT, PSC, DC37, NYSNA, and other public sector unions to discuss what to expect from the mayor and our union leaderships, assess how to build confidence and willingness to wage a fight amongst our coworkers, share some ideas and concrete tactics for building democratic contract campaigns, and brainstorm sector-specific and cross-sector common demands and how to achieve them. 

This coalition arises from the Public Sector Workers Unite group that formed in 2020 to address exigencies of the pandemic. We organized a march in the cold on Biden’s Inauguration Day, a teach-in centered around taxing the rich in March 2021, and a contingent for the Queer Liberation Marches in 2021 and 2022. 

For more information about the cross-union summit and/or to get involved, email Boyda at johnstoneb2@gmail.com. 

MAY DISPATCH

In this issue:

Call for solidarity with Chipotle workers

Why Roe v Wade is a labor issue

Latest updates on Palestine solidarity at CUNY

Rank and filer testimony from the Amazon United rally

UFT Elections

Mercy College adjuncts almost striking 

Open bargaining and cooptation

RAFA at the Labor Notes conference in Chicago 

Call for Solidarity with Chipotle Workers!

Following the historic wave of organizing spearheaded by Amazon and Starbucks workers, Chipotle workers in NYC are also trying to form a union. The plan to win a union at Chipotle relies on rallies, actions, and militancy. Winning the first fast food union in the country would be historic, but it hinges on good turnout from workers and allies in the labor movement. All supporters are encouraged to join two actions:

- Wed., May 18, noon, outside the Chipotle at 464 Park Ave. South, between 31st and 32nd in Manhattan

- Wed., May 25, noon, in Bryant Park

Especially if you'll be at the GC, SLU, or Guttman those days, show your solidarity by turning out! Chipotle workers need your support. And since many Chipotle workers are CUNY students, they would be awed to see solidarity from their teachers. The hours, wages, and scheduling issues at Chipotle get in the way of their education, so improving their working conditions will improve their learning conditions!

Why Roe v. Wade is a Labor Issue

Rank-and-file union members — especially in teachers’ unions — organizing independently from their leaderships have already played crucial roles in the fight for abortion rights in Argentina, Poland, and Ireland. If we want to fight the right wing and defend our rights, we need to build that kind of movement in the United States, tied directly to our workplaces and places of study, because that’s where our power lies– in the fact that they need us to make the world run. CUNY students, faculty, and staff are already organizing a cross-campus, cross-title CUNY For Abortion Rights committee, which you can join here. Please forward this link to your students and coworkers, or follow on Facebook or Instagram. 

Just current CUNY students and workers make up more than half a million people. The sit-in movement to desegregate lunch counters began with just four college freshmen, and it spread across the entire South — imagine what we can do if we can mobilize even just a small portion of our forces. Already we have seen middle and high school students in Washington State and elsewhere organize walkouts for abortion rights. And we need to do that here. CUNY is unique in that we’re a whole bunch of different schools much closer together physically and closely interrelated organizationally than other public university systems. We have an advantage, and we can use that advantage to lead the way and be role models for other universities and other workplaces in New York and across the country. 

On Friday, May 13, students, faculty, and staff at Brooklyn College walked out and held a rally, and on Saturday, May 14, many more members of the CUNY community marched for abortion rights at various events across New York City, including the Planned Parenthood National Day of Action march. Get in touch with CUNY For Abortion Rights to stay up to date with future actions and planning meetings.

Latest in Palestine solidarity at CUNY

CUNY Staff and Students Say No Bridges with Apartheid States

On Tuesday April 26th, Chancellor Matos-Rodriguez sent out a statement announcing that he and 12 CUNY college presidents were heading to the occupied Palestinian territories as part of a program called “Scholars as Bridge Builders.” This program, instituted by the Jewish Community Relations Council in 2019, markets its goals as “Building relationships, connecting communities, meeting challenges.” This academese obscures the fact that the JCRC is “Building Bridges” to a settler-colonial state (Israel) whose policies of ethnic segregation have earned it a designation as an apartheid state by Amnesty International as recently as February 2022. Felo and co. planned to tour Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, and condescended to dip into Ramallah if time permitted. This direct appeal to Israeli universities comes on the heels of an IDF military order to restrict the rights of Palestinian universities “in the Judea and Samaria Region” to hire whomever they please. The delegation also decided to tour the area on the weekend of Eid-al-Fitr, and in the weeks before the annual remembrance day of the Nakba. Finally, it came at a time when Israel was escalating the violence it uses to maintain its domination of Palestine.

The indifference to the oppression of Palestinian academics shown by the CUNY administration is exceeded only by their crass insensitivity to their own Palestinian and Muslim students. In response to this, comrades from Within Our Lifetime, Cuny For Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Cross-CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism, the PSC’s Anti-Racism Committee, and RAFA came together at a moment’s notice to coordinate a response. Within a few days, CUNY For Palestine promulgated a statement condemning the visit. A protest was also organized to coincide with a snap rally against Israeli violence at Herald Square. Around 100 comrades from across CUNY and the Palestine solidarity movement came together in front of the Graduate Center to express their outrage, and to name and shame those who had joined the visit to the occupied territories. As speakers from the different groups connected the oppression of Muslim students to CUNY’s pro-Israel policies, regular New Yorkers stopped to show support, and passing drivers showed their solidarity. The event was followed by an Iftar at John Jay, where people talked about the way to move Palestinian solidarity forward at CUNY. The ability to turn out a strong show of support and to coordinate a response to CUNY’s complicity with apartheid regimes shows that our community is no longer ready to accept business as usual. CUNY is an international institution, and international solidarity with our oppressed comrades abroad is as important as our agitations and struggles at home.

Resistance to John Jay administration’s cancelation of Palestine Lives event 

CUNY administration came back from their tour of Israeli universities to cancel a long-planned student-organized event at John Jay College days before it was supposed to happen. The Palestine Lives Conference was organized by John Jay Students for Justice in Palestine, the John Jay student government, Within Our Lifetime, and Existence is Resistance as part of the commemoration of the massacres and ethnic cleansing behind the establishment of Israeli settler colonial rule in 1948 (“Nakba Day”). The pretext for canceling it was that there is not enough “security”. This decision is part of a broader zionist backlash against Palestine liberation organizing at CUNY and contributes to a generalized climate of anti-Palestinian racism and political repression at CUNY. Hundreds have already signed CUNY for Palestine’s petition demanding that the administration reverse its decision, reimburses the organizers, and commits to Palestinian liberation.

Grad Center chapter events on Internationalism and Palestinian Solidarity 

​​As part of the PSC’s Resolution In Support of the Palestinian People, the Political Education Subcommittee of the Graduate Center Chapter has been organizing events on international labor solidarity. The first of these, which took place on the 30th of March, was centered on the question of internationalism at large. We heard from comrades within the PSC (Corinna Mullin from the International Committee and Lawrence Johnson from the Anti-Racism Committee) about the history of global labor solidarity and the fight for internationalism within CUNY itself. We also heard from Lisa Milos from UPTE-CWA 9119 Local 7 about individual resolutions passed in support of struggles abroad by labor unions on the West Coast. This was followed by a conversation about how we, as the PSC, can orient ourselves towards international solidarity. The second meeting, which took place on May 6th, focused explicitly on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions as a strategy for labor solidarity with Palestine. We heard from Lara Kiswani of the Arab Resource and Organising Centre, and Michael Letwin of Labor for Palestine, about how unions like ours can support the BDS picket line, and about inspiring examples of solidarity like the Block the Boat Campaign. We then had a long conversation about what concrete steps we can take as a union. The debate was extremely constructive, built around a shared sense of the urgency of international solidarity within the PSC. The Political Education Subcommittee hopes to continue organizing events like this in the Fall. If you are at the GC (or really any college), and have ideas about events you’d like to see around the question of Palestine or labor struggles generally, email Giacomo.bianchino@hotmail.com. 

Bringing Solidarity from RAFA to Amazon Union - PSC Rank and Filer testimony

It was great fun to bring Rank and File Action solidarity to the rally for LDJ5 workers on April 24 in Staten Island. Being able to show solidarity with working class workers of color is critical for us as too often academic unionists are perceived as not connected on the ground. Christian Smalls, Derreck Palmer, Angelika Maldonado, Michelle Valentin Nieves, and other young organizers of color have created an absolute fear of revolution in the hearts of the crony capitalists of Amazon. Although the vote for the second warehouse went down, the organizers are not daunted and continue to fight bringing their issues nationwide. Lots of politicians came out for the rally but the most interesting voices at the rally were the organizers themselves–their stories of being fired countless times, of not getting enough hours to survive, and constant injuries due to the work showed the need for unions everywhere and especially with the largest, most abusive corporate overlords. The best part for me was meeting one of the organizers who is also an artist who has been painting the union revolution with ALU, and I was honored to donate and buy a print to support the movement. #StatenIsland gets a bad rap in #NYC and this was the best time I’ve ever had in that borough. The youth of color and allies are unionizing corporate USA and we as academic unionists need to be there for them in person, online, and in donating to the cause. #SolidarityForever #BlackLivesMatter #BlackJoy 

By Stuart Chen-Hayes, Professor/Dept. Chair, CLLSE, Lehman College

UFT Elections

United Federation of Teachers - the public school teachers union in NYC - has long been dominated by the notoriously undemocratic and corrupt leadership of Michael Mulgrew and the Unity Caucus. But New York teachers don’t just sit around and wistfully watch the radical teacher uprisings from Los Angeles to Chicago to West Virginia. They built rank and file power through union democracy caucuses like Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE), which took part in running an opposition slate in UFT’s elections this month. Although the United for Change slate lost the overall election to the Unity Caucus, it seriously undermined the old guard’s hold on the union, with 42% teachers voting for United for Change and winning the high school executive board. The fight for a democratic union includes a fight for a robust election process. UFT elections continued to be marred by confusing mail-in ballots, lack of electronic voting, and election violations, which all led to low voter turnout and awareness. Nevertheless, we are inspired by our union siblings in UFT and their ability to put on a competitive election with multiple slates and close results rather than the single-slate system currently dominating the PSC. 

Mercy College adjuncts almost go on strike

Leading up to May Day, Mercy College adjunct workers called on the NY higher ed unions to show solidarity by turning out for their planned strike actions. Mercy College is a private college in Westchester, where 70% of courses are taught by adjuncts. Mercy administration has been negotiating a contract with Fac­ulty For­ward/​SEIU Lo­cal200 representing adjuncts for over two years. After the threat of a strike, the union and the administration finally reached an agreement. While strengthening job security, this contract fails to provide living wages, increasing salaries from $3000/course to $3400 per course over the next three years - an abysmally low and insulting rate. The new contract does signal a major concession by Mercy, making the college a union shop where all adjunct instructors are required to join the union. We stand in solidarity with our fellow higher ed workers in the NY area, and call for a truly visionary and ambitious pay goal for adjunct instructors, in line with rampant inflation and out of control living costs. Time of 15K/course! 

Open bargaining and cooptation

RAFA is committed to political education and campaigning for opening up and democratizing the bargaining processes in the PSC. After our note on open bargaining in the April issue of the RAFA Dispatch, and multiple PSC delegates bringing up the issue on the Delegate Assembly listserv, there are reports of our union leadership mentioning open bargaining in recent chapter meetings and Campus Action Team meetings. Unfortunately, some of those instances have been claims that the PSC has “always had some form of open bargaining”. Let’s review what open bargaining means: Rank and file union members, and even non-union community members, are invited into the negotiating sessions to observe and testify. Members are involved in every step of the process. They work on title and issue-focused committees, they participate in planning meetings, do outreach, and conduct research. Open bargaining lends the union legitimacy and real power – power that we give up by continuing to bargain behind closed doors. Allowing members to silently observe some session or trotting out selected members for testimony is not sufficient to harness the power of open bargaining. Open bargaining is something many other unions do, such as faculty and staff unions at Oregon State and UMass Boston whose leaders came to explain how they do it in a Grad Center chapter event last semester.

Labor Notes conference

RAFA is proud to take part in the Labor Notes conference, an enormous gathering of grassroots activists and rank and file organizers that will take place in Chicago in June. In a social media panel alongside Tik Tok-using teachers, Strippers United, and Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, RAFA members will share what we learned from streaming a PSC zoom meeting in the fall of 2020 using Twitch, allowing interactions and commentary that was sorely missing. RAFA members will also take part in a workshop on institutional debt that draws on our participation in the CUNY Debt Reveal and ongoing debt organizing with the Debt Collective and Public Higher Education Workers network.

April Dispatch

In this issue!

RAFA and UUP Member Action Coalition (MAC) Statement on the New York Budget

An update on CUNY writing centers 

On democratizing contract negotiations

ALU’s union victory and CUNY

Who are the lecturer lines going to?

A report on the 4/14 Delegate Assembly 

A history of the Adjunct Faculty Association

Join the New Member PSC Book Club!

RAFA and UUP Member Action Coalition (MAC) Statement on the New York Budget

Rank and File Action and UUP Member Action Coalition are angered by the Enacted Budget that Governor Hochul and the legislature approved last Friday. After decades of state austerity in public higher education that has created racialized patterns of acute underinvestment across SUNY and CUNY, New York politicians promised this would be the year of massive reinvestment. In the end, they delivered a miniscule percentage of the many billions in cumulative cuts in real core operating dollars to CUNY and SUNY since the Great Recession.

It is past time for our unions to rethink lobbying as our primary tool in winning a just state budget. We call for a strategy that also includes preparing for job actions, up to and including strikes, timed around key budget dates. And we call on PSC and UUP leaderships to provide the support required by members as we collectively organize toward these actions, in coalition with higher ed unions, community partners, students, and their families. The power of unions is in rank and file members, not relationships with politicians, and it’s time higher education unionists start acting like it. We can and should do much more to fight for the state investments in CUNY and SUNY that our students so richly deserve. Together, we can win!

An Update on CUNY Writing Centers

Olivia W

Last month, we shared some information about the outsourcing of CUNY writing centers. Several folks got in touch with further information about this topic. One person shared that at BMCC, and likely at other campuses, writing center tutors are paid for by grants through the Research Foundation, which is un-unionized at most campuses. Even tutors with graduate degrees, who would be hired as non-teaching adjuncts under a PSC title, make less than $20 an hour, less than half the NTA rate of $46.49.

Democratizing Contract Negotiations

More and more unions–including higher ed worker unions–are adopting open bargaining procedures, where rank and file members are invited to participate and contribute to contract negotiations. Given management’s access to expensive union busting lawyers and other resources, the worker side is at a disadvantage when negotiations take place behind closed doors. 

Opening up bargaining taps into the power of the union, which is its membership. Higher Ed workers who participate in open bargaining emphasize the organizing force of members hearing for themselves how management talks to and about workers. Management fears open bargaining –because it makes the union stronger. Multiple PSC delegates have raised PSC bargaining procedures on PSC listservs in the past month, explaining the advantages of open bargaining (see the GC chapter event on this). So far, the PSC bargaining team, limited to the Executive Council members, has remained silent on the subject of bargaining procedures, open or closed. On 04/11, PSC president James Davis sent a bargaining agreement for research professors to the Delegate Assembly, asking delegates to approve it mere three days later, raising concerns about transparency of the process. Looking forward to the the negotiations of the next contract, a member of the Executive Council told the Delegate Assembly that “no decisions have been made about what tactics and which process would work best in winning a good contract for PSC members.”

We look forward to participating in this decision making process. RAFA and allies plan to include open bargaining in our tabling, phone banking, and outreach campaigns as a key issue that connects to our vision for a democratic social justice union.

If you would like to table on your campus please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/c7vXchhAWr1izYqm6

The Staten Island Vote Heard Around The World 

Chris S & Jay A

The Staten Island working class has sent an important message that has been heard above all the hype and propaganda about wars at the Oscars and Ukraine–there is no war but class war! 

Despite Bezos and his henchmen and women spending millions on consultants spewing anti-union propaganda, including compulsory worker attendance at re-education meetings/camps, and all kinds of other forms of intimidation and repression, including NYPD arrests of organizers, SI Amazon workers won the union election vote–2,654-2,131.

We at the CSI Department of Sociology & Anthropology are especially proud about this victory since Karen Ponce, one of our graduates and part of the CSI Solidarity community, has been a worker-leader on the battlefield taking on Bezos and the billionaire class. Kudos Karen!

Although not endorsed by the chapter, Rank and File members of the CSI/PSC chapter worked with Karen and other ALU militants, along with longtime SI community and labor activists, to organize solidarity action at the SI Amazon warehouse on Sunday March 20, a few days before the vote started.

Of course, while the election was a huge victory, the next phase of winning a good contract against criminals who plan to not offer anything at the bargaining table has now begun. To win at this stage we must make the struggle at SI Amazon into a fight of the entire working class, including those of us at CUNY. The March 20th action was  a small step in that direction.

One way to connect would be to invite Amazon workers, like Karen, to give a report on the struggle to our union meetings. That would be much more productive than officials from the Democratic Party, who have prosecuted the decades long war against unions, that we usually get. 

Another possible way of connecting the struggles is regarding the partnership CUNY has with Amazon on tuition reimbursements. Instead of these crumbs, we need to demand a wealth tax on the billionaires like Bezos to pay for a FREE CUNY for ALL, ending the multiple tier divides, money for research, and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure–which the additional crumbs from Albany this year go nowhere near what we need.

And let's remember that stepping up the class struggle at home–which the ruling class fueled war fever, on all sides, is designed to smother–is key to building an effective anti-war, anti-imperialist, movement.

No War But Class War! 

Who are these Lecturer Lines Going To? We need to Hire from Within! 

It’s currently unclear how many of the full time Lecturer lines are going to candidates from within the CUNY system. A new “Hiring from Within for Excellence and Justice” campaign within the PSC is pushing for hiring committees to prioritize internal candidates, recognizing the hardships our adjuncts have faced for years and trusting that they have the skills, the credentials, the institutional knowledge, and the commitment to the CUNY population to be strong and viable candidates. We are going to need a lot more than statements to change the culture from within and put real pressure on P&B committees across CUNY. 

We need mandates (as much as is possible); we need both pressure and support from PSC leaders and department chairs; and we need open conversations about implicit biases and assumptions that cause our very own adjuncts to be overlooked, contributing to their sense of being altogether undervalued and unseen. We also need conversion lines and clearer pathways to full time work that do not involve competition with external candidates who carry fancy credentials and the veneer of newness. No one measure is going to address this problem, or indeed the problem of full time positions potentially taking away courses from adjunct lecturers who depend on this ongoing paycheck. 

One very small measure–that, again, will not fix the system or fix the culture, but may work in service of shifting it incrementally in the right direction–is to provide resources that help internal candidates understand and master the job search as a whole. 

A cross-disciplinary professional development workshop on job market materials is being planned within the PSC for Friday May 6, 3:30-5:50 PM, over Zoom. There will be breakout rooms by discipline, and opportunities to form support groups afterwards to maintain contact throughout the summer, and to ensure that we don’t let the system of competition divide us. 

Please look out for an official PSC email announcing the event with Zoom information, but if you would like to make sure you receive it, simply write to rafa.cuny@gmail.com and we will make sure it gets to you. 

Report on the 4/14 Delegate Assembly 

The PSC Delegate Assembly quickly and almost unanimously passed a resolution calling on President Biden to cancel student debt, joining the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties and Rutgers AAUP-AFT who passed similar resolutions this week. The resolutions follow an effective Debt Collective action in Washington D.C. earlier this month, that resulted in yet another postponement of student debt collections. Student debt cancellation will benefit higher education workers saddled with debt–especially those already more precarious–as well as our students, families, and community members. It’s a no brainer! 

In the same meeting, delegates voted to approve the memorandum of agreement that the PSC negotiated on behalf of the newest category of members, Research Professors. Many concerns and questions were raised about the process and content of the agreement, not least the measly raises that constitute pay cuts, and the sinister implications for other job titles. 

In a discussion of the failed New Deal For CUNY, the Brooklyn College chapter executive committee broke away from the “celebrating the loss as a win” narrative with a strong statement decrying low expectations and refusing to thank Hochul, instead condemning her for a slew of reprehensible policies like the rollback of bail reform. The BC EC stated its commitment to getting strike ready. 

The Adjunct Faculty Association: A History and a Legacy

Nic N

The CUNY Digital History Archive aggregates the digital (and digitizes the analog) history of CUNY and pulls together flyers, pamphlets, articles, and talks that create the story of CUNY. Within that story, exists the now-defunct Adjunct Faculty Association–a cousin and precursor to RAFA. And much like this dispatch, the AFA had its own newsletter and issued its first edition in February of 1974.

As 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the formation of the PSC, the importance of looking back seems obvious. And in that looking back, it is clear that from the beginning the division between full time and part time faculty (and staff) representation within the union is both a key feature and the union’s greatest, continuous failure. In negotiating that first contract, an ad hoc and autonomous committee was created to advocate for adjuncts and part timers: the Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty Caucus. The Caucus decided on 19 demands, with equal pay and benefits for equal work at the center of their platform.

From that first contract, a strategy for winning benefits for adjuncts and part timers would oscillate between inside and outside tactics. After what was seen as a failure of a first contract for adjuncts and part timers (partially because the Caucus was shut out of the bargaining by the Board of Higher Education and the PSC because the request came too late), the Caucus abandoned its inside tactic–which called for adjuncts to join the union en masse to influence the bargaining. In the wake of the contract and its failures, they embraced a more outsider role, and the Adjunct Faculty Association was born as an organization to agitate and advocate.

It is clear the issues adjuncts and part timers faced in the 1970s are the issues we face today, and in their first newsletter they write about disproportionate pay and pay cuts among other issues. It was an organization promoting material equality for adjuncts and strike readiness as can be found in their 1975 pamphlet “An Appeal to the Faculty to Vote for a Strike.” Although there isn’t a plethora of materials from the AFA in the digital archive, it is clear they were functioning until at least 1994 when the John Jay chapter of the AFA issued the flier “Equal Pay for Equal Work.” The flier made several demands to address the adjunct/full time pay gap including: “salary adjustments, paid office hours, job security, governance inclusion, job flexibility, and support for scholarly activities by adjuncts” according to the archive. 

Whether or not history is repeating or simply rhyming, the issues we are confronting today have existed as long as the PSC has, and that the legacy in which RAFA finds itself is a rich one filled with dedicated activists and organizers. As we discussed above, open bargaining in the next contract is crucial to fighting for adjunct and part timer rights and benefits. Although the 1972 Caucus was shut out of negotiations, the independent formation of the AFA paved the way for the fight for adjuncts and part timers from outside official union bodies at the very beginning of the PSC. It is fitting that the current contract expires as the PSC turns 50, and with this history in mind, we will be here, with our allies, to carry on the fight of the AFA.

New PSC Member Book Club!

A newly formed PSC Member Book Club will be tackling Democracy is Power at their first meeting.

On Democracy is Power:

Do you want to know how to run your local union more effectively or how to get more members involved? Democracy Is Power, by Mike Parker and Martha Gruelle, provide a blueprint for building a member-driven union. They demonstrate what member control really looks like, and why it is crucial to labor's future.

With a focus on union activity in the workplace, the authors describe democratic approaches to contracts, grievances, communications, and leaders’ relationship with members. They shine a revealing light on democratic union culture, yet also address the more obvious parts of democracy, like elections and bylaws.

The Book Club will meet on Saturday, May 14th, at 2pm, at an outdoor venue (TBD)

Democracy is Power is currently unavailable in physical copy (after the tragic damage to Labor Notes' home office after a flood), but RSVP here for a PDF copy. Please consider making a donation to Labor Notes if you will be attending, since we are not paying for each book.

RSVP here if you would like to attend (or even if you can’t but would like to be invited to future book clubs).

March Newsletter

In this edition:

- taking the Brooklyn Bridge

- building a social justice union

- outsourcing the Writing Center

- no bosses, no borders

- DSA for ND4C

- United for Change in the UFT

-Labor Notes conference and book club

Brooklyn Bridge Budget March: Strike! Strike! Strike! 

Rank and File Action members joined Hostos Action Committee, Queens College’’s Delany Hall contingent, and comrades from SUNY and Rutgers to march across the Brooklyn Bridge on March 6. PSC-CUNY and the United University Professions - the SUNY union - organized the march as part of the push for NewDeal4CUNY. We marched behind a beautiful hot pink banner proclaiming our fight for a free anti-racist CUNY and SUNY. Led by the chant maestro, Conor Tomas Reed, our part of the march called for defunding police, racial justice at Queens College, and striking as a viable tacting for achieving #ND4C. As shown in this video, the rank-and-file led the way! The energy was infectious, causing people looking down from the pedestrian walkway of the bridge to cheer and wave. Especially after long isolation of the pandemic, actions that bring people together are an important for building energy, creating a collective experience, and strengthening connections. They are best as part of an escalating plan of action towards a clear goal. So we are left to ask: if NewDeal4CUNY does not pass, how will the PSC escalate action? What is more disruptive than a mass march across Brooklyn Bridge?  

Discussions of the PSC’s Social Justice Efforts

The Resolution in Solidarity with the Palestinian People, passed at the June Delegate Assembly of the PSC, called for “discussions at the chapter level of the content of this resolution and [consideration of] PSC support of the 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).”  During the fall semester, several chapters (Retirees, CSI, Brooklyn) held such discussions.

On March 11, the John Jay and Baruch chapters held a joint chapter discussion entitled “Who We Are, What We Stand For: A Discussion of the PSC’s Social Justice Efforts.”  Some 30 members joined the virtual discussion. The chapters wanted to address the question of “social justice” following protests from some members about the relevance of standing up for justice in Palestine to the core commitments of the PSC. The chapters invited four speakers. Prof. Lawrence Johnson (Brooklyn) spoke as co-chair of the PSC’s Anti-Racism Committee; Prof. Nancy Romer (Brooklyn, emerita) represented the PSC’s Environmental Justice Committee; Prof. Jonathan Buchsbaum (Queens, emeritus) for the International Committee; Prof. James Davis, PSC President.  As many readers will remember, three committees drafted the original resolution submitted to the PSC Executive Council, which voted down the resolution and proposed a substitute resolution.  After several amendments proposed and voted on at the DA, the DA voted overwhelmingly in favor of the resolution (https://www.psc-cuny.org/sites/default/files/Final_Resolution_in_Support_of_the_Palestinian_People.pdf).

In 2007 the PSC passed a resolution opposing an academic boycott of Israel. The 2021 resolution in solidarity with the Palestinian people reflects a change in views over justice in Palestine, at least among the delegates, since the 2007 resolution.  As opinions evolve over a difficult issue for many members, and as our own faculty continue to develop and disseminate new knowledge about the international nexus of racism, settler colonialism and indigenous dispossession, speakers such as Buchsbaum expressed the hope that growing numbers of voices within the PSC will recognize the justness of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, and the PSC can take the progressive lead as an exemplar for other unions nationally, and internationally.

After the presentations by the invited speakers, chapter members offered criticism and support for the resolution. The entire discussion proceeded in a respectful and courteous manner. To the best of our knowledge, this event was the fourth chapter discussion organized around the resolution (following events last semester at Retirees, Staten Island and Brooklyn chapters). Hunter College will be the next chapter to hold such an event. We at RAFA encourage more chapters to take on the mandate of the resolution and host such discussions!

Fighting for Our Next Contract!

by Stuart Chen-Hayes (Professor and Chair, CLLSE Department, Lehman College) 

Over my 24 years at Lehman I’ve become increasingly radicalized by not seeing our union leaders push for enough resources for the most vulnerable—students, staff, and faculty in the least-well resourced status/titles. It’s time to change that. Over time I’ve come to realize that union democracy comes from the bottom up. We have to be the ones to push for equity. And two of the strongest tools to do that are open bargaining, which allows all of us to watch and contribute as the bargaining process moves along (no more backroom deals) and bargaining for the common good, which allows us to address community and student issues—not just staff and faculty issues. My heroes at Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) have really pioneered how to do this nationwide and we have much to thank them for reviving the strike movement in public education. Oh and last, we need to bargain away the Taylor Law. We can strike regardless but that should be a priority! 

Together in the next contract, let’s fight for: 

Raises in all titles with the largest % ones coming in the lowest paid titles

7K for adjuncts

Open bargaining

7K annual benefit for mental health--currently $500

Dental benefits increase

Contractual guarantees for adjuncts

Anti-racist, anti-oppression training for all faculty and staff and administrators

Bargaining for the common good:

-Free Transit in NYC

-Rent Control

-Guaranteed Income

-Counselors Not Cops

-No New Jails

-Close Rikers

-Eliminate Cash Bail

Outsourcing the Writing Center 

This week we learned that at least two CUNY colleges are outsourcing some of their writing center services to the private contractor Tutor.com. This means funneling public dollars into the hands of a private company, which is one aspect of the privatization of education, but it's much worse than just that. As of 2015, the starting wage for English tutors at Tutor.com was $10 an hour, significantly lower than New York City's minimum wage. By outsourcing writing center appointments, CUNY is able to legally pay workers much less than if CUNY hired local tutors to work in the writing center. An internet search suggests that peer tutors (fellow CUNY undergraduates) are paid $15.61 an hour --- still not very much --- and "professional" tutors (typically graduate students or those who already have advanced degrees) are hired as non-teaching adjuncts, with a minimum starting rate of $46.49. Outsourcing the writing center therefore also undermines the PSC by eliminating what would have otherwise been union jobs. It's especially ironic for CUNY to be doing this because Tutor.com is an online product, and CUNY's messaging over the past several months has emphasized the pedagogical value of in-person instruction and other activities. Clearly, this only matters when it saves the university money. 

No Bosses, No Borders event; PSC dues going to migrant criminalization

On March 4, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies hosted a panel on anti-capitalism and migrant justice organizing. The panelists discussed the failures of much of the immigrant rights and migrant justice organizing to seriously engage with anti-capitalist analysis, the corners of the movement where connections are being made, and vision for the future. The panel reminded us that union members who want to contribute to migrant justice work should fight for disaffiliation of law enforcement unions from their union federations. Local police, corrections - not to mention border patrol and ICE - are essential in criminalization, detention, and deportation of immigrants in the US. PSC members pay dues to the AFL-CIO, which includes the police unions. In June 2020, the PSC Delegate Assembly passed a resolution that called for defunding the NYPD. It included a call on the AFL-CIO to end its affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations, resolving that our representatives to the AFL-CIO will initiate the proper procedures for such a discussion in the AFL-CIO as soon as possible. A recent question from a delegate on the status of implementing this resolution went unanswered. The recording for the No Bosses, No Borders event is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irLZW3HJApc&t=4s 

DSA for New Deal 4 CUNY by Alex Pellitteri

Photo credit here 

In NYC-DSA’s 2021 City-wide convention, 98% of delegates voted to make the New Deal for CUNY campaign a chapter priority. Since then, both DSA and YDSA have been organizing at full speed for a ND4C. The DSA ND4C campaign has mobilized hundreds of people to attend PSC-CUNY rallies and other actions. We have spoken to thousands of students both through weekly tabling at our Hunter canvas and our Week of Action which was held at dozens of CUNY campuses. Most recently, our organizing has shifted toward the New York State budget where we are pressuring elected officials to include funding for the ND4C. We  have pressured elected officials on social media, promoted #CrumblingCUNY, held a Red 4 Ed day, and a town hall. This past Wednesday, nearly 2 dozen CUNY students went to Albany to ensure legislators include ND4C in the one-house budget. 

As a result of this organizing, Y/DSA has joined a movement of several groups organizing for a free CUNY and are working in coalition with groups such as PSC, CRA and RAFA. Furthermore, the ND4C campaign has exponentially grown our Hunter YDSA chapters, and was the catalyst for the formation of chapters at Lehman, Baruch and Brooklyn College. 

Over the next few weeks, we will continue organizing around the April 1st budget deadline to  ensure we see more funding for CUNY. After the deadline, we will continue talking to students and professors about why CUNY should be free and prepare for the next budget cycle and mass action at CUNY. So if you see a friendly DSA for ND4C activist at your local campus, stop by and say hello!

United for Change caucus in the UFT  by Ronnie Almonte 

This Spring the largest labor local in the country, the United Federation of Teachers, is having elections. The UFT has been controlled by the Unity Caucus since its founding in 1960. This year, the various opposition caucuses (including the Movement of Rank and File Educators, of MORE) formed a single slate, United for Change (UFC), to run candidates against the Unity machine. UFC is composed of teachers, paraprofessionals, related service providers, retirees, and UFT-represented support staff, along with major caucuses and groups, who want to see a positive and meaningful change at the top of our union, in our contract, policy, and decision making, and in our school communities. We are committed to transforming our union from one that relies on making backroom deals with indifferent politicians, to one with an active membership empowered to confront the employer. We want to end the union’s era of concessionary bargaining, and put our union in a position to leverage its power democratically for reduced class sizes and case loads, protection against abusive admin, equitably pay, and more.

 For more info and information about voting procedures, check out their website! Please spread the word amongst DOE/UFT comrades.  

We’ll see you at the Labor Notes Conference this June!

This year’s Labor Notes Conference will be in Chicago from June 17th-19th and we hope to see you there! Register before May 1st for a $45 discount on the regular price: https://labornotes.org/2022 

If you are unfamiliar with Labor Notes, it has been a vital resource for union organizers since its founding in 1979. They offer organizing training, books, and (most famously) a monthly magazine that covers the labor movement. RAFA members will be helping plan a panel at the event with our comrades from the Public Higher Education Workers Network–a group that brings together union members from across North America to strategize and support each other’s fights for more democratic and militant unions within higher education. The conference is a fantastic chance to learn from workers in unions from a variety of sectors, and to take lessons learned back to our own organizing spaces.

New PSC Member Book Club

A newly formed PSC Member Book Club will be tackling Democracy is Power at their first meeting.

On Democracy is Power:

Do you want to know how to run your local union more effectively or how to get more members involved? Democracy Is Power, by Mike Parker and Martha Gruelle, provide a blueprint for building a member-driven union. They demonstrate what member control really looks like, and why it is crucial to labor's future.

With a focus on union activity in the workplace, the authors describe democratic approaches to contracts, grievances, communications, and leaders’ relationship with members. They shine a revealing light on democratic union culture, yet also address the more obvious parts of democracy, like elections and bylaws.

The Book Club will meet on Saturday, May 14th, at 2pm, at an outdoor venue (TBD).

Democracy is Power is currently unavailable in physical copy (after the tragic damage to Labor Notes' home office after a flood), but RSVP here for a PDF copy. Please consider making a donation to Labor Notes if you will be attending, since we are not paying for each book.

RSVP here if you would like to attend (or even if you can’t but would like to be invited to future book clubs).

#WelcomeBackFightBack Spring 2022 newsletter

Here’s what you’ll find when you scroll down!

1. #WelcomeBackFightBack: Press Conference and #BrunchWithFelo Actions

2. Reportbacks from Official PSC Spring Semester Opening Actions: What’s Missing?

3. Solidarity with the Admissions Action at the Grad Center

1. #WelcomeBackFightBack: Press Conference and #BrunchWithFelo Actions

Faced with an increasingly dire health and labor situation at CUNY, Rank and File Action (RAFA) together with other CUNY community organizers are coming together to fight back! On Monday, January 24, RAFA organized a press conference and rally at the CUNY central office- the first of a series of actions as part of the #WelcomeBackFightBack Spring semester program. Co-sponsoring organizations include the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) and Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA) at CUNY Law, Free CUNY, Hostos Action Committee, Student Organization for Every Disability United for Progress (SOFEDUP) Club at Brooklyn College, Cross CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism, John Jay Student Council, Limited Equity & Affordability in Penn South (L.E.A.P.S.)/Chelsea Rising, United Front Committee for a Labor Party, Parents to Improve School Transportation (PIST NYC), NYC-YCL, National Writers Union-NY Chapter. The turnout for the rally and press conference was strong, despite the freezing cold weather. 

Credit: Erik MGregor Photography, @Bike_at_W4 (Twitter) @ministererik (Instagram)

The #WelcomeBackFightBack series of actions continues on Saturday, February 5 with a noon #BrunchWithFelo rally and caravan at the CUNY chancellor’s home in Pelham, starting at 11:45am at the Pelham Metro North station. We hope you will be able to join us for this important action! RSVP at tiny.cc/CUNY2022, and share the FB event page at https://fb.me/e/2Mipy7gW8. Are you an adjunct who has lost classes, or who had other significant disruptions to the spring semester? Please tell us your story by filling out this (anonymous) form, and we will do our best to print out submissions and leave them at the chancellor’s doorstep! 

Despite the ongoing public health crisis, CUNY continues to insist on a return to 70% in-person instruction and work for the Spring semester. Workers and students are faced with the choice of risking exposure to the virus or losing their job/dropping out of college. 

The “CUNY administration is failing our students; the state is failing our students,” said Naomi Schiller from the Brooklyn College Antiracism Committee (ARC). “Austerity only becomes acceptable to our elected and appointed leaders because our majority students of color do not have the power, resources, and lobbyists required to get what they need and deserve.”

CUNY administration (in)actions have led to a cataclysmic drop in enrollment. Community colleges are currently at 58% of last year’s enrollment figures, and senior colleges at 84%. In the face of this, CUNY administrators have responded with extreme callousness, encouraging mass course cancellations and in some departments effectively firing all adjuncts who don’t currently have a three-year appointment. Hundreds of people face losing their jobs, with new cancellations announced daily.

As Alex Pellitteri from Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA)- Hunter Branch explained: “With so many millionaires and billionaires in this city, and with some college presidents making nearly half a million, it’s not a question of if we have enough money to fully fund CUNY, it’s a question of whether we are willing to spend it on CUNY.” 

Rank and File Action joins concerned CUNY students, workers, and community members in calling for action now to demand:

1. No class cancellations, no layoffs! Use federal pandemic funding to keep all classes open, all students enrolled, and all staff and faculty employed.

2. Respond to student demands by providing more online course options and meeting accessibility needs.

3. Allow staff and faculty to work remotely on request, in accordance with student needs--cancel the arbitrary mandate to keep 70% of classes and staff time in-person.

4. Prioritize safety: provide detailed ventilation information, free medical-grade masks, and free rapid testing/home tests for all students, staff, and faculty.

5. Full public funding of free tuition and support services for students, including mental wellness and accessibility; full transparency on how CUNY spends pandemic relief funds.

Speaking on behalf of Free CUNY, Marianne Madoré summarized the demands of the organizers: “we demand that CUNY prioritize safety for all students, staff and faculty: no class cancellations, no layoffs, courses that meet accessibility needs, and above all full public funding for CUNY, for free tuition, cop-free campuses, mental wellness and accessibility.”

#WelcomeBackFightBack: Press Conference Speeches 

In case you missed it, have a look at some of the 🔥 🔥 speeches and chants from the press conference here!

Check out media coverage of our #WelcomeBackFightBack actions:

“Nic Nicoludis Demands CUNY Change Mandate, Rehire Adjuncts,” The Indypendent

“As CUNY opens for spring semester on Friday, tensions continue to rise,” BX Times

“Cuny Rank-and-File Activists Fight for Safe Reopening,” Left Voice

2. Official PSC Spring Semester Opening Actions: What’s Missing?

Cross Chapter Meeting for Campus Action Teams

On Wednesday, January 26, PSC leadership hosted a cross-chapter meeting for representatives of Campus Action Teams (CATs). The CATs are part of the union’s Strategic Action Plan, which centers around lobbying for the New Deal for CUNY (ND4C) and organizing in preparation for bargaining for a new contract in 2023. In the breakout room report-backs, many people shared that health & safety/reopening issues were the biggest concern among members, and it is these topics that people were the most willing to mobilize around. As for meeting the CAT team representation and mobilization targets laid out in the Strategic Action Plan for the next ND4C action planned for March 5, many people reported that HEOs and CLTs on their campuses feel like the union is too focused on faculty concerns and does not do a good job representing staff interests. Therefore, getting HEOs and CLTs interested in participating in CATs and attending the action in March will be more difficult. Many people voiced concerns about a lack of political education and communication— if people do not know what’s happening on our college campuses or why different actions are important, how can they be expected to mobilize? Some members spoke of the energy they felt at the December 11 rally in Queens, and the disappointment that this energy was not channelled towards escalating action. We are not getting what we are demanding as a union, yet members are told to send form letters, sign petitions, and tweet, which is demobilizing. Even worse, there is no followup or escalation with these virtual actions; one petition or tweet storm follows another and we never hear about outcomes, so the whole thing gets forgotten instead of being integrated into a strong and escalating campaign. 

PSC Rallies at Bronx Community College and Medgar Evers

Just 10 minutes before RAFA’s Jan. 24 rally and press conference at CUNY Central began, PSC members received an email from union president James Davis announcing that simultaneous rallies would be held that Friday, January 28–the first day of the spring semester for most CUNY campuses–at Bronx Community College and at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. The surprise announcement followed a contentious Delegate Assembly (DA) meeting the previous Thursday, where many attendees expressed serious concerns about the lack of escalation by the union in the face of impending adjunct layoffs, course cancellations, and overall CUNY chaos. Several delegates urged the PSC leadership to back RAFA’s scheduled actions, since it at that point had none planned of its own. 

Nevertheless, RAFA members promoted and joined the PSC’s rallies on January 28. PSC members rallied at 12:30pm at the front gates of Bronx Community College, one of the campuses hardest hit by the racist austerity gripping CUNY. It is not surprising that the first guest speaker at the rally was a NY politician, and not a laid-off adjunct or a struggling student. RAFA members and other militant union members were there with signs that said: “Faculty, Students and Staff – Unite and STRIKE Against Racist Austerity.” This is the same message we will take to the Chancellor’s house on Saturday, February 4, and we hope you will join us!

At the same time, about 40 PSC members turned out at Medgar Evers college in Brooklyn to protest the inability of the administration to provide a safe return to campus. This comes after reports that HVAC facilities are not operational at the college, and that CUNY is not providing appropriate precautions for those returning to in-person work and learning. There are also widespread reports of class cancellations, including anecdotes about classes being cancelled as the classes were in session. From the PSC, President James Davis, Treasurer Felicia Wharton, and Medgar Evers Chapter Chair Clinton Crawford spoke on the structural issues at the college, while District 35 Council Member Crystal Hudson spoke about the role of the college in local life and the racism associated with its underfunding. No students or other faculty or staff from Medgar were asked to speak. The crowd then marched across the road to the office of college president Patricia Ramsey, who was in a labour management meeting with Dr. Crawford, and chanted with cowbells and megaphones for the ensuring of a safe return. They then marched back, where Davis gave summary remarks. RAFA members who were present called for people to attend the #BrunchwithFelo action for a more militant demonstration of labor’s power. 

3. Admissions Action at the Grad Center

RAFA stands in solidarity with the Concerned Coalition of CUNY Graduate Neuroscientists in their demand to get paid on time! We are glad to see that the GC President, Robin L. Garrell, has responded with a step in the right direction by stating in a February 1 letter that the administration is “committed to resolving the situation for the students who are impacted now, and also preventing problems going forward”. Any plans to resolve this situation must include full consultation with the Concerned Coalition of CUNY Graduate Neuroscientists! We also recognize that this is a structural issue that impacts graduate students in many departments and needs to be systematically addressed. All CUNY workers and students deserve to be paid on time! 

Concerned Coalition of CUNY Graduate Neuroscientists Statement:

Across the City University of New York (CUNY) bench science graduate programs, 75% of graduate workers experience significant delays in payment while obtaining their doctoral degree. CUNY STEM PhD students are guaranteed a ~30k stipend plus health insurance for 5 years. Despite repeated efforts by graduate workers to bring these systematic issues to the attention of CUNY administration to this problem, which has existed for nearly a decade, no action has been taken to solve it.

These issues are pervasive, demoralizing, and affect not only the financial, but mental well-being of those in the student body. To ascertain whether funding issues were problematic, in a poll of CUNY Biology graduate workers in early 2021, 32% of graduate respondents were behind on pay, and 70% reported having had issues in the past. Of that 70%, more than two thirds reported that it had taken over 3 months to fix the issue. Because resolving lapses in pay takes months, CUNY graduate workers are often left with a Hobson’s choice between taking out loans or facing credit debt. In the same poll, an alarming 72% of respondents reported that their mental health was worsened by payment related issues. Just as alarming is that 17% of those polled reported unintended gaps in their healthcare during a pandemic as paychecks are directly tied to health insurance (NYSHIP) appointments. 

These data reflect pervasive financial mistreatment of graduate workers at CUNY who are already paid significantly less than other metropolitan graduate workers, especially those in New York City. Despite this continuous mistreatment by CUNY administration, we have continued to conduct benchwork, teach classes, publish papers, obtain grants, mentor students, and positively amplify the program. We interpret this lack of action by administration as signifying the apathy the CUNY administration has towards the well-being of its graduate workers. 

CUNY graduate workers cannot strike due to the Taylor law, unlike Columbia graduate students who recently won their strike. Nevertheless, we are forced to escalate the recognition of ongoing funding problems. Hence, we have decided to withhold voluntary labor; 95% of neuroscience PhD student respondents stated that they will not be participating in 2022’s admissions season. As many may know, graduate programs rely on current students during admissions season. We, the graduate workers, are vital in recruiting new students to the program, and this is done via positively amplifying the program, speaking about life in NYC, etc. If we cannot be compensated for the work we are paid to do, then it is unwise of us to further volunteer our time on behalf of the program. Secondly, we do not believe that we can act as good faith advocates for CUNY in representing the program, as we would be obligated to inform prospective students of CUNY’s mistreatment towards their graduate workers. 

As this has been a pervasive and systematic problem for nearly a decade with no end in sight. We have collectively decided to make this a public concern. Currently, CUNY administration is well aware of these systematic issues and have not yet made any substantial action towards their alleviation. 

Signed,

Concerned Coalition of CUNY Graduate Neuroscientists

Get Involved!

Here are ways for you get involved, even if you can’t make it to #BrunchWithFelo!

Share information about our actions on social media! If you tag Rank and File Action in your posts we will retweet/like/etc.

Donate to Rank and File Action so that we can cover the costs of travel for those able to make it to the #BrunchWithFelo action!

https://www.rankandfileaction.com/donate

Venmo: rafa-cuny Paypal: @rafacuny Cashapp: $RAFACUNY

December Newsletter

This newsletter was dispatched via Mailchimp on Dec. 31, 2021; we apologize for the delay in getting it up on the website.

Inside this month's issue... Columbia workers still on strike, People's Rally for the New Deal for CUNY, a victory for the BDS movement at CUNY Law, the fight for social justice unionism continues within the PSC, and CUNY students and faculty travel to Alabama to support striking coal miners!

Columbia Graduate Workers are Still on Strike!

Columbia Student Workers are still on strike! Currently they are fighting for full recognition of their bargaining unit. Please donate to their hardship fund here and consider sending this Action Network letter about the latest contract package. Finally, read RAFA member Olivia Wood's excellent and timely piece about Why Scabbing is Bad.

PSC Members March for a New Deal for CUNY

Despite the threat of rain, the PSC rally for a People’s CUNY and New Deal for CUNY on Saturday, Dec. 11, drew many hundreds of attendees. The march was an encouraging sign that the PSC is able to turn out solid numbers of members, students, and community members with sufficient outreach. It is likewise encouraging that the march generated a sense of energy and solidarity. Among a sea of mass produced PSC signs were poignant and inspiring handmade signs and banners pointing out adjunct exploitation, calling for strike readiness, and connecting the fight for a Free CUNY to the struggle for an anti-racist, anti-colonialist university. Striking graduate workers at Columbia University joined the march in solidarity, as did members of UUP Member Action Coalition from SUNY. Unfortunately, too much microphone time was given over to politicians who primarily use these events to bolster their campaigns but disappear when it comes time to stand up and fight for CUNY. At the same time, there were not enough voices from some of the most exploited members of our union, including adjunct faculty. A well-turned out march must be part of a plan of escalating actions in order to be effective. What is next for the PSC if/when we don’t get ND4C? Will we march outside the homes of legislators and board of trustees? Will we withhold our labor to win a free CUNY?

CUNY Law Student Government Passes BDS Resolution

In late November, the Student Government at the CUNY Law School passed a resolution in favor of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that Palestinian civil society has called for since the mid-2000s. The full text of the resolution can be read here.

A Setback for Social Justice Unionism

In our October issue, we wrote about the so-called “resolution on resolutions,” which ended up being tabled in October’s Delegate Assembly. Unfortunately, the Res-on-Res has been resurrected, and this time it’s around to stay. At the December DA meeting, delegates who opposed the Palestine solidarity resolution passed in June introduced their own version of the proposed changes to PSC resolution policy. The union’s Executive Council responded to their resolution with a substitute resolution omitting  a clause about “fact-checking” that implied previous resolutions (i.e. the Palestine resolution) had not been fact-checked and contained bias and inaccuracies. But the proposal’s key feature remained: imposing a month-long delay between when a resolution is introduced and when it is voted on at the DA (unless a two thirds supermajority votes on its immediate consideration, prompting some comparisons to the filibuster in the US Senate).

Authors of the EC’s substitute resolution alleged they had responded to criticism of the previous Res-on-Res by changing language of necessity to that of suggestion, and removing the contentious descriptor “urgent”--so that, they claimed, this does not water down the PSC’s social justice objectives, and serves the laudable aims of engaging more members in the process and policies of the DA. However, the EC rejected a proposal made at the October meeting that it take responsibility for notifying members about resolutions submitted to the DA and telling members how to contact their delegates. Too much transparency would be a liability, apparently. 

The PSC’s International Committee objected wholesale to the Res-on-Res, remarking in a statement that “these new procedures would make it much more difficult to pass resolutions concerning issues of international solidarity and racial justice that fall outside of the narrowly defined ‘bread and butter’ concerns of business unionism,” and questioning who will decide whether a resolution’s criteria will have been met. 

The Res-on-Res passed overwhelmingly at the December DA, providing union leadership with a tool to stifle and undermine rank-and-file-driven resolutions designed to shape PSC policy. Moving forward, we will need even more foresight, even more rank-and-file participation to ensure that our union remains committed to strike readiness, and willing to stand in solidarity with communities under attack by structural racism, imperialist wars, settler colonialism and apartheid. Let’s not be discouraged, but let’s hold our union bureaucrats to the promises they’ve made and facilitate even more conversations on the importance of social justice unionism and agitation among the rank-and-file members of our union.

CUNY Students and Faculty Support Striking Coal Miners

During finals week, a group of CUNY students and faculty travelled to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to support the striking miners of the Warrior Met Coal mine. This multi-racial group of miners have been fighting against the rapacious New York investment firm Blackrock, which owns a majority stake in the mine. While raking in more than $5 billion in revenue in the 3rd quarter of 2021, they have slashed the health care of miners, who risk their health and lives every day. For over 9 months, these workers have held the line, making the the longest strike in Alabama history! 

Our small CUNY contingent went down to bring a message of solidarity from workers and students who are facing the same racist attacks, but in different form. We were lucky to be able to help organize a Christmas party for the miners and their families. We distributed food and helped set up donated toys and clothes so that families could find a measure of joy in these difficult times. 

The strike continues and plans are being made to return some time in January or February. If you think you'd like to join the next solidarity trip, let us know!  

Omicron and Workplace Safety

Despite record-high case numbers of COVID both in New York and around the country, the CUNY administration continues to demand that 70% of classes be conducted in-person in the spring, while simultaneously dragging their feet on making sure that classroom and office conditions are safe. Moreover, CUNY staff are expected to work in person for seven out of each ten work days, even when the work they do in the office or on campus is virtual. In other words, in the midst of unprecedented COVID rates, many workers take poorly ventilated public transportation to sit in poorly ventilated offices and… conduct meetings on Zoom. Rather than encouraging remote work, CUNY management seems primarily concerned with worker discipline and surveillance. The chancellor’s announcement that CUNY testing sites would now be open to all with a CUNY ID is pathetic, given that universities across the US have long provided testing on demand to their workers and students.

PSC-CUNY elected leaders have asked union members to write emails to the Chancellor and their college presidents/deans, and have apetitionfor safe return in the Spring. Before the spring semester, however, there are weeks of winter intersession during which PSC members are being forced to work in unsafe conditions. What are the escalating organizing steps beyond emails and petitions? How will we protect the health of our coworkers and communities as a union? It is encouraging that some individual PSC chapters are engaged in active campaigns to put pressure on local administration. Local pressure on the chapter and campus level has resulted in some CUNY sites going de facto remote in the winter. At the School of Public Health, staff are working from home, and only 30% of spring classes will be in person. If your campus administration is pointing to CUNY Central as an excuse to enforce unsafe working conditions, keep pushing for them to do better. Email campaigns and petitions are a good start, but plan your next steps to build power on the local level. (For ideas on turning up the heat on the boss, check out this Labor Notesarticle.)

PSC chapter elections: Jan. 7 open meeting on strategy

Sixteen PSC chapters have elections coming up in April 2022. Members of these chapters will vote for the delegates and alternate delegates who represent them at the PSC Delegate Assembly. The deadline for filing a Declaration of Candidacy form to run in any of these elections is coming up fast: January 14, 2022. What does this mean for those of us who want a strike-ready social justice union capable of mobilizing the member power needed to win real gains through collective action? 

Should you run for a delegate or alternate position as an independent candidate? Can you join with comrades to form an alternative slate? Should you try to join an existing slate controlled (at most chapters) by the New Caucus that has ruled the union for 21+ years? And at Kingsborough Community College, will someone challenge the rightwing caucus that holds onto its power through bullying tactics and frivolous lawsuits against union members who dare to stand up to it? Will Zionist PSC members who are angry about the Palestine solidarity resolution try to use these elections to gain seats in the Delegate Assembly–and if so, can supporters of justice for Palestine defeat them?

RAFA is not an electoral caucus and we don’t have all the answers but we’re calling an open meeting to discuss these questions and share information on Friday, January 7, from 5:30pm to 7:00pm. If you share RAFA’s principles and are interested in learning more and/or possibly running for a delegate or alternate position at one of the campuses listed below, RSVP here to get the Zoom link for the meeting.

College chapters with Spring 2022 elections:

• Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC)

• College of Staten Island (CSI)

• Kingsborough Community College

• Lehman College

• Medgar Evers College

• NYC College of Technology (City Tech)

• Queensborough Community College

Other chapters with Spring 2022 elections:

• Hunter College Campus Schools (K-12)

• Higher Education Officers (HEOs)

• Research Foundation Central Office

• Research Foundation Field Units

• Retirees

• SUNY Educational Opportunity Center (EOC) chapters:

  • Brooklyn EOC

  • Bronx EOC

  • Manhattan EOC

  • Queens EOC

November newsletter

In this edition….the fight for office space at Brooklyn College, the struggle intensifies at College of Staten Island, solidarity for Columbia Workers, turning up the heat in the New Caucus, organizing against CUNY debt, and more!

Brooklyn College Adjuncts Fight for Office Space

As we return to campus for the Spring semester, it’s clear to many that we cannot go back to the way things were pre-COVID. Adjuncts have rarely had access to safe, dignified office space at CUNY. With ten or twelve adjuncts crammed into a space meant for four, malfunctioning or totally absent computers and printers, and little privacy to meet with students, most of us accepted these conditions as the status quo, along with poverty wages and lack of job security. Adjuncts at Brooklyn College are fighting back, saying “NO” to suggestions from admin that we simply meet with students in loud, crowded cafeterias, that we risk our health and safety in dilapidated, poorly ventilated adjunct “offices,” and that we continue to normalize a dysfunctional instructor/student dynamic. The Brooklyn PSC chapter is engaged in ongoing negotiations to convert the old Bookstore in Boylan Hall to permanent adjunct office space, which could accommodate up to 185 adjuncts with proper semi-private cubicles, computers, and printers. While sitting atop millions in CARES Act funding, so far administration has been non-committal, and is merely taking our plan for the space as “advice.” But we know that our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions, and adjuncts and union comrades are beginning to prepare escalation strategies for our return in Spring if admin backslides on the desperate need for safe accommodations. If you’re a Brooklyn adjunct who wants to join the fight for actual office space, contact: tomorgnyc@gmail.com

CSI Action Committee update

After another massive rejection of CSI President Fritz's top-down authoritarian governance plan, the president announced his resignation, effective the end of the calendar year. In December 2020, an overwhelming majority of the Faculty Senate voted "no confidence" in President Fritz's leadership. Regarding the new misgovernance plan, there was a vote last Spring, and Fritz lost. Then this Fall,  students, faculty and staff at CSI came together in a referendum where 87% voted the plan down. While the effort at CSI has been commendable, CSI still has a long way to go if it actually intends to join students, staff, and contingent and full-time faculty in the struggle for a better CUNY. During the push for referendum votes, there was a call to "get the adjuncts involved" and a flurry of emails and calls, but it was a little too opportunistic. Many of the full-timers did not actually want to discuss adjunct exploitation or make a serious pledge to fight it.

We see this contradiction in other ways too. The CSI chapter has organized two events in response to the PSC Palestine Resolution, which is positive, but there are two problems which must be mentioned. One: the decision of who would speak at these events was made by the CSI EC without input of the rank-and-file. The Action Committee was explicitly kept out of the discussion. We suggested Jeff Schurke, a scholar of the AFL-CIO's—especially the ATF— long collaboration with US imperialism, including in backing Israel, as a speaker. Our meeting was called 'unofficial' by chapter President George , who mocked us by calling us the Big Action Committee. The other problem is that the CSI EC asked Cary Nelson to speak, who was a leading defender of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign's decision to fire Steven Salaita over his support for Palestine, and opposed the AAUP's decision to censure the university because of this decision. The top down organizing of the event crystalizes the larger problems in our union that has undermined building a real fightback against the ruling class attacks we have been facing for decades, and that are intensifying.  

Columbia University Student Worker Strike

Watch RAFA member Giacomo’s rallying speech on the picket line here

On We​​dnesday, November 3, graduate students at Columbia went on strike after several rounds of bargaining over their new contract. Student Workers of Columbia, a UAW- affiliated grad teacher union, authorised the strike back in September. Their main demands are for a living wage, full healthcare, recourse to external arbitration for dealing with sexual harassment and bullying, and the ability to organise all titles recognised by the National Labor Relations Board. This is not the first time the Student Workers have struck this year; in fact, it’s just one more chapter in the story of struggle with Columbia management, who have failed to improve conditions during COVID, including access to the full range of healthcare benefits. In addition, most Columbia grad students live in Columbia-owned housing, so an enormous amount of their paychecks goes directly back to the university.

The good news is, however, that the turnout for their inaugural strike rally was huge, and consisted largely of undergrads. Since then, the picket has been robustly attended, and supported by many members of faculty (who themselves cannot, as tenure-stream private university professors, legally form a union). Even this internal support, however, won’t be sufficient for the student workers to win at Columbia. The administration has already sought scab labor from among its own staff, but also from external sources. They changed the usual schedule for distribution of stipends in order to make a strike that much harder. As academic workers on the bottom margin of vulnerability, we must show support to the strikers in whatever ways we can. RAFA and the PSC are organising a number of visits to the picket line as well as donation drives. If you’d like to help, email us at rafa.cuny@gmail.com.

Uniting our Union Slate in the New Caucus

A group of nine reform-minded comrades, including two RAFA members, ran on a slate entitled Uniting Our Union for Governing Board in the PSC New Caucus (NC), an election that only happens every three years. The New Caucus has been the leadership electoral caucus of the PSC since 2000. Only by joining the NC can PSC members vote in the election for Governing Board, whose members propose the New Caucus slate for the Executive Council of the PSC every three years (further, they had to join the NC by September in order to vote in this November election). No more than half the GB can consist of current EC members. Given the current absence of a competing electoral caucus, the New Caucus effectively decides on who runs for PSC office. 

The nine members of the Uniting Our Union slate

You can read more about the slate members and their points of unity here. Candidates on this slate have been heavily involved in a number of organizations designed to push the PSC in a more militant and anti-racist direction. These range from official PSC committees such as the Anti-Bullying Committee, the Anti-Racist Committee, the International Committee, and the Membership Retention Crisis Committee, to PSC-adjacent groups such as the Cross-campus Strike Readiness Committee and the Cross-CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism (and, of course, RAFA). 

Congratulations to the four members of Uniting Our Union who succeeded in winning seats on the Governing Board: Stuart Davis, Rulisa Galloway-Perry, Amy Jeu, and Glenn Kissack! All slate members, including those who lost, received an outpouring of support, reflecting an earnest desire for change and transformation in the caucus. In a 100-person meeting, the lowest-ranking candidate still received almost 40 votes. We at RAFA hope that through elections like these and by embracing a new wave of rank-and-file activism, the New Caucus will continue to live up to its promises of standing up for workers’ rights and social justice unionism.

Campus Workers Organizing Against Debt

In April of 2021, the Graduate Center Chapter PSC budget committee organized a Debt Reveal event, unveiling CUNY’s significant institutional debt and its social and racial ramifications. Not only do payments towards CUNY’s debt comprise more than a third of student tuition, but this debt means that decision-making at CUNY is driven by credit rankings. To get a high credit ranking, CUNY has to emphasize attracting high-revenue students, cut spending, market and brand itself, reduce barriers to raising tuition, place finance executives on the Board of Trustees, and control labor costs. Since the Debt Reveal, CUNY workers have been participating in a series of national debt events with The Public Higher Education Network and Labor Notes, engaging in popular education and organizing a national movement against institutional debt in higher education. These events included workshops on “Organizing Around the Other College Debt Crisis” and “How We Are Organizing Around Campus Debt: Practical Ideas and Resources”. On November 30, the latest workshop, “How Debt Robs Us and How to Take What is Stolen Back” will demonstrate how debt leads to shutting down programs, firing faculty, undermining democratic governance, and shifting even more debt burden to students - and how to take this information and use it to organize. Register here.

December 11 March from LaGuardia to CUNY Law

The PSC-CUNY is organizing a march for “A People’s Budget, A People’s CUNY” with students, families, and allies: “It's time for a New Deal for CUNY and a budget that's worthy of CUNY, a people's university. Time to end the racialized austerity and tuition hikes, the faculty and staff shortages, and the adjunct exploitation.” Even if your faith in Democrats and legislative lobbying as a union strategy has been tested, we urge you to turn out for this march - not only to show public support for the New Deal For CUNY, but also to be with and talk to fellow union members and build towards collective power that will enable us to put real muscle behind our demands. Join RAFA sign-making party on Friday, Dec. 10.

Adjunct Testimony, New York City Council Higher Education Committee on Adjunct Faculty Employment

Watch the full November 12 City Council hearing here. 

On the Poverty of Adjunct Life: 

Honestly, I'm angered that we live in a world where you are asking me, an overworked, underpaid Adjunct, to give even more of my time to make a testimony about how I am being exploited. You should know this already! It is obvious to anyone who looks. My fiance and I are living in my mother's house for the second time(!) since the pandemic hit. She has had no job for two years. I have barely been able to support us on my adjunct salary. We can not afford rent! And forget about getting married and having kids. We can not afford to have a wedding. My fiance has an infertility issue and would need (proper) health insurance to see a specialist. I have no job security nor is there hope of a full-time position. This is not because of laziness on my part. Since the pandemic, I have published an article in a major journal and have two more forthcoming. That makes four articles in all. Shouldn't that be enough for a job? And, not to toot my own horn but, giving credit where credit is due, I am a beloved teacher by students and colleagues (just check RATE MY PROFESSOR as well as my teaching evaluations!). All this to say, the situation is obvious and it is well past time that something be done. How many more times do I need to yell: "I AM BEING ABUSED!!!!"? We need a Free CUNY and the end of adjunctification! We need to rebuild crumbling infrastructure. For adjuncts this means simply "equal pay for equal work." It is outrageous that adjuncts do the same work as 'full timers' but get paid a fraction. This needs to end. I hope that the conscience of whoever reads this is pricked and that you are spurred to action! A fight is coming against the neoliberalization of the university. Which side are you on? We need a massive reinvestment to make CUNY the People's University it was always meant to be.

In Solidarity with Workers Everywhere,

Christopher Santiago

Adjunct at CSI

October Newsletter

Updates from across the CUNY system, with a focus on social justice unionism and rank and file organizing.

RAFA is happy to present the second edition of the RAFA Dispatch - a monthly newsletter highlighting the work of PSC members and students across the CUNY system as we fight for a more just, anti-racist and inclusive university.

What's inside this month's issue:

• Spotlight on the "Resolution on Resolutions" at the PSC-CUNY Delegate Assembly.

• Recap of the the Cross-Campus Strike Authorization Vote Committee event on October 12th to discuss the importance of open bargaining - where all union members have direct access to contract negotiations - in creating a more democratic, transparent and accountable union structure.

• Recap of the Cross CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism series of events centered around the recent PSC resolution in support of the Palestinian people.

• Student-speak out event and Bronx Hostos Action Committee Organizing.

Keep your eyes on this space for the monthly newsletter and get in touch with your campus RAFA contact if you'd like to get more involved!

The Resolution on Resolutions

In recent weeks, DA attention has mostly been turned to a recent “resolution on resolutions” (as it has come to be known) which is a clear reaction against the Resolution in Solidarity with the Palestinian people that was passed overwhelmingly by the Delegate Assembly in June. Over a hundred Zionists have exited the union since that vote, throwing the Principal Officers into a tailspin. While we are facing urgent issues (adjunct layoffs, health and safety, workplace bullying), it’s telling that the principal officers seem most concerned with erecting roadblocks to intra-union democracy.

The frustratingly meta and obfuscatory ‘resolution on resolutions’—which ended up being tabled at the October DA, perhaps to be resurrected at a later time—creates a mechanism by which resolutions will be subject to a month-long “pause” before assembly debate and vote. Its proponents including the Executive Council claim that this serves the interest of engaging more members in the work and decision-making policies of the DA, which we all agree is a worthy goal. But in practice, it will make it much harder for our union to pass resolutions in solidarity with racial justice causes across the globe and indeed to pass resolutions in general. A supermajority vote of 2/3 is needed to deem a resolution “urgent” enough that it can be debated and voted on right away. It remains unclear how we will know to vote as a bloc when an issue is ‘urgent’ enough. In fact, according to the logic of its proponents, the charge of urgency obviates the mandate to spend time in discussion with members.

Before the resolution was tabled, an amendment submitted by the Cross-Campus Antiracist and Anticolonial Working Group resolved that all PSC members be informed of resolutions submitted to the DA via email and website promotion within three days. While we at RAFA don’t believe in “resolutionary” change, this amendment would allow interested members to plug in to DA proceedings more easily and know whom to contact for further information and engagement.

Forming committees on anti-racism does not make us an anti-racist union any more than teaching majority BIPOC students makes us an anti-racist university. We need to turn the lens on ourselves to scrutinize the ways in which our own proceedings, strategies, and policies of inclusion and representation create roadblocks to true union-wide mobilization and liberation for all. We should not forget that the original resolution in support of Palestinian people, drafted and endorsed by three member-led committees in the PSC, did not even make it to the floor of the DA for discussion because the EC submitted a watered-down substitute resolution which took precedent. We don’t know how substitute resolutions will be treated under the new policy.

We also should not fool ourselves into thinking that any resolution can substitute for actual rank-and-file democracy and mobilization. Communicating with members, pursuing open bargaining policies, organizing within the union without cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles or cautionary blockages from leadership, taking job and strike actions seriously as viable tactics, and educating ourselves continually about the interwoven nature of ‘bread-and-butter’ issues and ‘social justice unionism’: this is what will save us.

Teach-ins on Democratizing the Bargaining Process

On October 12, the Cross-Campus Committee for Strike Readiness organized two teach-ins on democratizing the bargaining process. The teach-ins were hosted by the Graduate Center chapter of the PSC, with sponsorship from the PSC Committee on Adjuncts and Part-timers. The noon and evening session each featured leaders of faculty and staff unions at Oregon State University and University Massachusetts Boston. Our guests described the advantages of open bargaining, including building a more powerful union, engaged membership, and leverage at the bargaining table. United Academics at Oregon State is a new union that implemented open bargaining where all members are invited to bargaining sessions and all proposals are posted to the union website within 24 hours. For United Academics, open bargaining is just bargaining; it is part of their culture of union democracy.

Faculty Staff Union at UMass Boston had bargaining by a small team behind closed doors for years. They had to fight to open up their bargaining process, conducting popular education for members, and eventually pushing through a new policy at the general assembly of the union. Today, they have 30 slots in addition to the core bargaining team for members who want to participate in any given session, and use caucusing time during bargaining to get feedback from members and strategize. Administration at both universities fought against open bargaining - showing that they think it is a disadvantage for their side.

PSC members who attended the teach-ins discussed what more democratic bargaining might look like in the PSC, and how we might get there from our current closed process that emphasizes not sharing meaningful details bargaining proceedings with the members. If you missed the teach-in, recordings of both sessions are available to watch here.

 September Symposium and Teach-in Series

Following the PSC-CUNY Delegate Assembly's passage on June 10 of the resolution in Solidarity with People of Palestine, the Cross CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism—a collective of conscientious PSC union members, CUNY staff, faculty, students, and committed activists, including members and leaders of the PSC Anti-Racism Committee, International Committee, and Academic Freedom Committee as well as several RAFA members—decided to plan a series of symposiums and teach-ins on the struggle against racism and colonialism at CUNY and beyond. The working group met throughout the summer in order to organize these public events in anticipation of chapter discussions on BDS in Fall, as called for by the resolution. Although the union leadership ignored our requests to share information about the events via PSC communication platforms, we still managed to reach a wide audience, with nearly 750 people participating in these important discussions.

Events included: Sept. 2 two-panel symposium, Reckoning with Colonialism: Anti-Racist Struggle at CUNY & Beyond, Sept. 9 teach-in, Decolonizing Higher Education: Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Organizing, Sept. 23 teach-in, Policing, Surveillance, and CUNY's Relations with Institutions of Organized Violence, and a Sept. 30 teach-in, The Role of Unions in Resisting Settler Colonialism and Racism. All four videos can be found here. In addition to supporting and building our Palestine solidarity work, we hope they can be used as pedagogical tools for decolonial and anti-racist teaching across CUNY. Our work resisting racism and colonialism continues! If you are interested in getting involved, email us at NoRacismCUNY@protonmail.com. 

Student Speak-Out at Hostos

The Bronx Hostos Action Committee continues to organize students and workers in the Bronx. Our latest event was a student speak-out and demonstration against CUNY’s racist mismanagement of the Fall semester, especially the disastrous roll-out of the vaccine mandate that has seen hundreds of students withdrawn from their classes and unfairly financially punished. In typical fashion, CUNY’s policy has changed during the semester and been poorly communicated. At our event we heard from a number of students, including including one young woman who was vaccinated but was still removed from her class by security guards because she didn’t have the document properly uploaded. As we said at our event, it’s not about vaccination, it’s about mismanagement. The Bronx Times covered the speak-out; read the article here. Any readers in the Bronx who would like to get involved, please contact us at hostosactioncommittee68@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Instagram @bronxhostosactioncommittee.

September Newsletter

Updates from across the CUNY system, with a focus on social justice unionism and rank & file organizing

Cross CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism

Several RAFA members have been working together with other comrades- members of different PSC committees, including the Anti-Racism Committee, International Committee, and Academic Freedom committee, as well as other CUNY organizations, rank and file workers and students- across CUNY over the summer to broaden and deepen solidarity around the resolution in Solidarity with the Palestinian People that was overwhelmingly passed by the Delegate Assembly in June. The resolution draws connections between the Palestinian liberation struggle and other anti-racist, anti-colonial and freedom struggles at CUNY and beyond. The aim of this ad hoc group is also to strategize how to address the attacks being levelled at the resolution as well as its supporters by disruptive and anti-union elements within and outside of the union. We decided to call ourselves “The Cross CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism”. Our first task was to organize a symposium and series of teach-ins for September to help prepare for the PSC Chapter-level discussion on BDS that the resolution requires for the Fall semester. The September event will be launched by a two panel symposium “Reckoning with Colonialism: Anti-Racist Struggle at CUNY & Beyond” that will take place on Thursday September 2nd, from 5:30-9:00pm. This symposium will be followed by four teach-ins organized around the following themes: Decolonizing Higher Education; Empowering CUNY Staff; Policing and Surveillance at CUNY; How Can Unions Resist Settler Colonialism and Racism. For more info, or to get involved, email us at NoRacismCUNY@protonmail.com.

The Cross-Campus Strike Authorization Vote Committee

The Cross-Campus Strike Authorization Vote committee continues its grassroots organizing for a strong, democratic union. A working group on open bargaining is hosting an event on Tuesday, October 12 at noon and 6pm to discuss more democratic, transparent, and accountable models for PSC bargaining. It’s important to start this discussion well ahead of our next contract negotiations. Open bargaining - where rank and file members attend and participate in contract bargaining - is an increasingly popular strategy. It is premised on the assumption that the power of the union is not in esoteric expertise behind closed doors but in its membership. The panel will feature higher education union officers who have developed and implemented open bargaining policies in their unions at UMass Boston and Oregon State, as well as PSC members who have been involved in contract bargaining for a conversation on democratizing the bargaining process at CUNY. A working group on the PSC budget is developing proposals and strategies to make the union budget process - and the budget itself -- more transparent and accountable to members, starting with such basics as having a meaningful review, input, and informed vote on the budget in the DA before the budget is implemented, not after, and is urging the PSC to invest more resources in organizing and mobilizing the membership.

A Cross-Group Retreat

​On August 19, seven groups from across CUNY and NYC -- Adjunct Project, Cross-CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism, CUNY for Palestine, Free CUNY, No North Brooklyn Pipeline, North Bronx Collective, and Rank and File Action (RAFA) -- held a pre-semester retreat to strengthen our CUNY and NYC organizing ecosystem. Each group shared about capacities, highlights from the last year, principles/strategies/campaigns/actions/events for 2021-2022, and how to better collaborate with each other. Coming out of the retreat, we plan to create a CUNY movement(s) calendar and a September online "club fair" so that broad CUNY communities can get activated in these various groups. Moving forward, we intend to strategically entwine a focus on free college access, campus reopening safety, revitalizing Ethnic/Gender/Sexuality Studies, open bargaining and workers' protection, cops off campus and out of our neighborhoods, community control of land and ecological defense, solidarity with Palestine and other colonized peoples, and beyond.

Updates from College of Staten Island

Aside from rallying last Spring to defend shared governance from an attempted takeover by President Fritz (who already received a vote of no confidence from faculty and staff in December 2020) the CSI-PSC leadership has fallen short in nearly all other respects. Even though commissioned to form a strike readiness committee, they have not lifted a finger. It was only because of the action committee, a group of about 6 to 7 people, that anything was done at all. We held an educational event, titled "Why Strike?" where we provided information about 1) The Attack on Public Higher Education; 2) The Taylor Law; 3) How Do We Fight Back? on the need to build a mass movement for the common good. Regarding the Palestine resolution, we foresee a similar inactivity on the part of leadership. If our action committee does not do something, nothing will be done. While our chapter president voted in favor of the resolution, many CSI-PSC members have remained silent or have publicly supported Israel, calling the use of the word 'apartheid' a form of bullying. Expanding our focus to broader social issues, which are not separated from but are in fact intimately related to our everyday lives, allows us to make demands for the common good, in solidarity with working peoples everywhere. We want to join with the Amazon workers and plan to ask Chris Smalls to give a talk about the struggle to unionize Amazon on Staten Island. As education workers, we need to be connected to that struggle too. This strategy is critical to building the class power that we need to win a strike.

Organizing at Queens: happy hour, adjunct rights & cross-title solidarity

At Queens College, the PSC chapter is less bureaucratic and more open to active participation than some chapters, but figuring out how to get involved can be hard because the service model of unionism fuels passivity and not everyone seems to understand the need to get rank-and-file members invested in chapter decision-making and organizing tasks. QC Adjuncts Unite, an autonomous group organizing on campus since 2018, has been holding biweekly Monday evening Zoom “solidarity happy hour” events where adjuncts and anyone else from the QC community can drop in to chat about what’s going on. QC Adjuncts Unite also recently co-sponsored an adjunct rights Q&A session with the chapter featuring PSC adjunct grievance counselors. Members of QC Adjuncts Unite are also involved in building a strong network of rank-and-file department co-reps, including adjunct co-reps, across QC. Email QC Adjuncts Unite at qcadjunctsunite@gmail.com and follow @QcUnite on Twitter. \n\nQueens College has been doing somewhat better with reopening than other CUNY colleges, but that’s not saying much. The PSC’s QC chapter has had five campus safety walkthroughs that push management to be more proactive on safety, but the college still hasn’t released ventilation data despite a Freedom of Information Law request, so we have to assume that none of the spaces meet PSC safety standards. Informally it seems like requests by staff to continue working remotely are getting… well, not actually approved, but not quite opposed by QC human resources. Other unions at QC are mostly silent. Many college assistants, represented by DC37, are supervised by PSC members, some of whom are pushing them to return to campus. The PSC could be doing much more CUNY-wide to address power dynamics and build cross-title solidarity by urging its members who supervise others to approve requests for continued remote work as we are doing at QC.

Adjunct Committee at John Jay

In late May 2021, John Jay adjuncts began meeting to discuss specifically adjunct concerns at the college. We launched a poll in June to assess adjunct priorities. From the poll and discussions, we identified 4 priorities: Reasonable class size, preserving adjunct health insurance, concerns over last minutes decisions by management to make changes to teaching schedules, and a demand to rehire all laid off adjuncts. We sent a letter outlining these priorities to President Karol Mason and Provost Yi Li. We asked that the $55 million that John Jay has been allocated for institutional funding be spent at least in part on these priority areas, rather than on what we have heard may be the allocation of these funds to reduce John Jay’s budget deficit. We brought our concerns to a meeting with Mason and Yi on August 5th and were roundly dismissed. Our sense of urgency increased as we felt the management’s plan for re-opening was inadequate to protect the health and safety, and indeed lives of John Jay students and workers. We had originally planned to escalate our actions with a petition and protest to call for a delay in the move to in-person classes, following the examples of Lehman College, Queens College (and later Baruch), and to start classes online for as long as needed to ensure health and safety concerns are met. Our immediate plans were put on hold due to not having enough support for these actions. But we continue to organize and will be meeting again in two weeks!

Organizing in the Bronx

Rank-and-file members at the three Bronx campuses have been organizing alongside students during the entirety of the pandemic. RAFA members have been active in the Hostos/Bronx Action Committee and the Student Strike Committee, which have been leading the struggle in The Bronx. We have organized numerous events on our own and participated in union-led efforts to oppose the racist austerity that has tightened its grip on CUNY during this period. Overcoming opposition from the administration and union leadership, we have held two caravans to the Bronx campus presidents’ houses, we hosted demonstrations on the Grand Concourse, a town hall on the history of student activism at CUNY, and a Student Speak-Out on the need to cancel bursar holds, among other things. We are geared up and ready to continue to struggle during the fall semester and are planning a number of activities, including a solidarity action with workers and students in Haiti and a caravan to the Chancellor’s house. We invite all members and students in the Bronx to get active in RAFA and anyone who would like to join the Hostos/Bronx Action Committee, please contact us at hostosactioncommittee68@gmail.com.

PSC/Delegate Assembly News

Delegates have been largely concerned with safety protocols and vaccine and mask mandates for the return to in-person instruction for many CUNY professors and staff this week. There is a lot of confusion and uneven standards around what “hybrid” instruction means; at Baruch, which incidentally has the highest percentage of in-person instruction in the system, “hybrid” can mean only one or two in-person sessions, and the chapter chair informed faculty that they could use their own discretion in switching in-person courses to remote if they feel unsafe before the vaccine mandate has officially set in. At Hunter College, chapter chair Jen Gaboury reported that many windows simply do not open; and yet hybrid instruction must be at least 50% in-person. A petition has been circulating demanding that the return of in-person classes be delayed until the vaccine mandate is established, James Davis appeared on NY1, and PSC leaders held a press conference at CUNY Central Tuesday morning with about forty people attending.