As unpaid rank-and-file members of the union, we have made many contributions to the chapter, to adjunct organizing within the union, and to uniting our struggles with that of CUNY students. Here are a few examples:
In March 2016, we organized a Popular Assembly that brought together over 100 activists from across CUNY, including undergraduates and CUNY workers, to link the fight for a new contract with student struggles for free tuition and against campus policing.- We wrote and published a back-to-school zine called “CUNY at the Crossroads: a history of the mess we’re in and how to get out of it,” which tackles austerity at CUNY, the rise of contingent academic labor, policing and the suppression of free speech on CUNY campuses, and a brief history of resistance. This document serves as the basis of our strategy and we have distributed almost 500 copies.
- We organized a workshop on building an intersectional movement for free tuition at CUNY at the BLM occupation of City Hall Park against broken windows policing and then-police commissioner Bill Bratton.
- We organized with long-term adjuncts to mount a spirited “Vote NO” campaign against the last contract, featured in the Huffington Post, Politico New York, The Chief, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Jacobin.
- We helped build X-Campus Rank and File, a citywide network to foster solidarity among academic workers, with graduate workers from other NYC universities.
- We built the CUNY Struggle listserv as an open, CUNY-wide, multi-tendency forum to help coordinate the efforts of the PSC rank-and-file, especially adjunct-led efforts to put pressure on the union leadership.
- We organized a series of open meetings culminating with a public speak-out at Hunter College last spring, with wide participation from both PSC rank-and-file and undergraduate social justice clubs.
- We regularly participate in the PSC-wide Committee of Adjuncts and Part-Timers and organized meetings on the campuses to mobilize adjuncts, including establishing the Hunter Adjunct Committee.
- We participate in a coalition with the Adjunct Project and the GC Chapter of the PSC to determine non-negotiable contract demands for adjuncts and ways to ensure these demands are heard, which produced this text, now central to contract discussions.
- Many of our candidates work as PSC shop stewards to deepen the union’s connections to graduate students, expand the grievance process, and sign up new members.
- CUNY Struggle members actively participated in the chapter’s efforts to sign up 700 fee-payers, including tabling in the lobby and reaching out to agency fee payers in their departments.
- Four of our candidates have served as elected DSC steering officers and department representatives.
- CUNY Struggle co-sponsored a multi-day Verizon picket in Herald Square along with the GC Chapter of the PSC.
- CUNY Struggle agitates at GC chapter meetings and at the Delegate Assembly against the perpetuation of failed incremental strategies and for the democratic restructuring of the union.
cunystruggle.org 