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.