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.
