Author: cunystruggle

by Glenn Kissack

Glenn Kissack is a retiree representative on the PSC Executive Council. He posted this statement on the PSC Delegate Assembly listserv explaining why he couldn’t support the resolution to endorse Bill de Blasio for re-election.

An endorsement of Bill de Blasio for re-election would be inconsistent with the progressive principles of the PSC.

We Should Receive Support In Return For Our Endorsement

We should only endorse candidates who pledge to support our most important demands. For instance, we support the CUNY Student Bill of Rights, which among other things calls for adjuncts to “have secure positions and pay parity with their full-time colleagues.” Political candidates should be asked: “Which of these goals can you publicly support and advocate for?” Their answers should determine our endorsements.

Does de Blasio support the CUNY Student Bill of Rights or our demands for full funding of CUNY? There’s no evidence he does. And what was his reaction to Cuomo’s proposal to cut state funding to CUNY by 4.1% — the worse CUNY budget in many years – and to raise tuition by $1250 over five years? In his City Hall budget presentation on January 24, de Blasio praised Cuomo’s “tuition plan” (which will not benefit any student with a course load under 15 credits a semester) and said nothing about the 4.1% proposed cut. Continue reading “Why We Should Not Endorse Bill de Blasio for Mayor”

by Jarrod Shanahan

On January 26th, organizers with CUNY Struggle attended a meeting of the PSC’s Delegate Assembly (DA) to speak out about the union’s pending endorsement of Bill de Blasio for mayor. Despite his left-talking posturing against Donald Trump, de Blasio has been a sweetheart of cutthroat developers like Bruce Ratner, who are aggressively making working class life impossible in New York City, and law and order police advocates like Bill Bratton, a pioneer of the “Broken Windows” policing tactic who this “liberal” mayor brought back from the Giuliani Administration to lead the NYPD. Broken Windows has terrorized hundreds of thousands of working class New Yorkers, including many students in the CUNY system, and predominantly people of color in neighborhoods facing gentrification thanks to de Blasio’s developer pals.

Like de Blasio, the PSC’s ruling clique, the New Caucus, has a long history of loudly adopting rhetorically righteous progressive positions on issues like the Iraq war, the Flint water crisis, and now anti-Trumpism, while quietly supporting regressive policies like a widening pay gap within its ranks, and promoting an internal union culture that spurns democratic participation in favor of secretive top-down leadership. The PSC’s reputation as a “progressive” union derives from the fact that the further an issue gets from the bottom line of the New Caucus’s cynical realpolitik, the more left-wing their rhetoric becomes. Continue reading “The de Blasio Dead End”

As we begin a year that will find the PSC back at the bargaining table with CUNY management, CUNY Struggle has prepared a comparison of the most recently won PSC-CUNY and LIU-Brooklyn faculty contracts. Both bargaining units work at campuses in New York City, and are affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Looking at the two labor agreements side-by-side brings to light the stark differences between what the PSC has achieved at CUNY and what was achieved at LIU. Continue reading “What a CUNY Contract Can Look Like”

Trump’s Supreme Court will crush public sector unions unless we mobilize now to fight and win big in the next contract.

In February 2016, Antonin Scalia’s death ended his 30 year tenure on the Supreme Court just as a ruling was expected on Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. The plaintiffs in the case had argued that “agency shop” laws, which require public sector employees to pay dues as a condition of employment rather than on a voluntary basis, were unconstitutional. Had Scalia lived, the court would have decided in favor of Friedrichs, and “right-to-work” — the prohibition of agency shops — would have become the law of the land. But with Scalia gone, the court split 4-4 and denied a petition for rehearing. His passing was heralded as an intercession from above by folks in labor movement. While we all cheered the near-miss and vowed to prepare for the next round, some remarked somberly that unions had done precious little to prepare for a ruling that seemed like a sure thing until Scalia’s unexpected demise. Pinning the survival of labor unions on the timely death of their opponents is not a great long term strategy.

After a brief flurry of perhaps misplaced glee, labor resumed its dormancy. The expectation was that Scalia would be replaced by a moderate picked by Obama or his likely successor, Hillary Clinton, and the court would lean liberal for the next few decades. But these idle dreams came crashing down when Trump ascended to the presidency having campaigned on a promise to tap a justice “in the mold” of Scalia. We can now expect that another lawsuit seeking to destroy agency shops — Friedrichs 2.0 — is waiting in the wings, and that the new Supreme Court will likely enshrine a version of right-to-work within 18 months of the inauguration. [Updated: this is exactly what is happening.] Rather than passively bracing for the inevitability of right-to-work, as the PSC and most other unions did during the deliberation of the Friedrichs case, we need to get organizing. It is now or never for public sector unions.

Continue reading “It’s Now or Never for the PSC”

Earlier this week, amidst mounting pressure from localized rank-and-file initiatives at over a dozen CUNY campuses demanding the university become a “sanctuary campus”, Chancellor James B. Milliken released a statement outlining CUNY’s commitment to protecting its undocumented students — or, more accurately, CUNY’s lack of any such commitment.

Every substantive commitment Milliken makes to protecting undocumented students is followed by a qualifier which renders it moot: “CUNY will take no action to assist in the enforcement of the immigration laws except as required by law”, “CUNY will not turn over student information to immigration enforcement authorities except pursuant to court order”, “CUNY will not permit immigration enforcement officials to enter its campuses except to the extent required by a warrant or court order” (our italics). This prevarication is consistent with the conspicuous absence of the term “sanctuary” from Milliken’s statement. It’s impressive how Milliken is able to use so many words to say so little, but then again, this is the hallmark of a successful administrator. Continue reading “Empty Words from Chancellor Milliken”

By John Ehrenberg

The lockout at LIU is over. The following message was posted by John Ehrenberg, chair of the Political Science department, to the mailing list of the New Political Science Section of the American Political Science Association. John has graciously given us permission to reprint his statement.

—Editors

The students and faculty at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus have won a clear, unambiguous and historic victory against the forces threatening our livelihoods and our profession. In a brutal act that is without precedent, President Kimberly Cline locked out the faculty in the midst of negotiations for a new contract. She went all in with her nuclear option, and her reckless cruelty ignited a firestorm that buried her. The faculty refused to yield, the students were with us every step of the way, the press was friendly, local politicians supportive, fellow unionists in solidarity. We organized a ferocious counterattack that threatened the University’s accreditation, worked with sympathetic members of the City Council to deny millions of dollars in funding, had the Mayor on the verge of intervening directly and personally, contacted State Ed in Albany who wrote Cline a threatening letter. None of this, as important as it was, would have been possible without the alliance with the students, who boycotted, walked out, protested, petitioned, complained to the Department of Consumer Affairs, confronted, sat in. LIU’s Brooklyn Campus is an urban, working class institution filled with students of color, women, immigrant kids and first-generation college students. They work hard, juggle several balls at the same time, and rose to the occasion with historic acts of rebellion and defiance.

This is a very important victory. The lockout was the first one affecting college and university faculty in the history of the United States. Like it or not, we were in the front lines. This wonderful victory will make University Boards and Presidents think twice about trying this again.

There’s a lesson for all of us: Ronald Reagan is no longer President. This is the United States of Occupy, of Black Lives Matter, of Bernie Sanders, of the Standing Rock Sioux, and a hundred other democratic initiatives that are developing. No matter what happens in the election, the lesson is that courage, resistance, and principle can win in a struggle against a brutal, dishonest enemy.

VICTORY!!!!!

As the Fall Semester kicks into high gear, we are happy to announce the release of our back to school guide, entitled “CUNY at the Crossroads: A History of the Mess We’re in and How to Get out of It”.

This guide is meant as an organizing tool with which to engage our students, classmates, colleagues, and friends. Read or download it here!

We have also printed hard copies for distribution on campuses. If you would like a high volume of copies to distribute contact cunystruggleinfo@gmail.com.

The PSC-CUNY contract has been ratified by 94% of 72% of the union’s eligible voters, in a deal Governor Andrew Cuomo called “truly equitable for everyone involved”. While this victory for the status quo saddens us, it comes as no surprise. The PSC leadership did not campaign for a yes vote based on the strengths of the contract. Instead they played on the fear of what would happen were the contract not accepted, and the temptation to simply vote yes and receive a one-time signing bonus and back pay.

Fear mongering mass-emails from the PSC leadership admitted as much, flatly stating that this contract was the best possible deal and that subsequent offers would only be worse. PSC members, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, were asked to abandon till next time their hopes that the two-tier system would be addressed, and asked instead to calculate the cash the contract would bring them, with a reminder that these funds would only be delivered upon the passage of the contract.

Continue reading “The Contract Debate is Dead, Long Live the Contract Debate”

By Andy Battle

Professional Staff Congress leadership, feeling the heat in the midst of a sustained outbreak of critical thinking on the latest status-quo contract they are trying to slide by the membership, have sent out one of their most reliable adjunct allies, College of Staten Island instructor Michael Batson, who has taken to the pages of Alternet (several weeks after we did) to urge adjuncts to rein in their anger and their strategic imagination and admit, as the leadership does and as CUNY management desperately needs us to do, that There Is No Alternative to the present status quo, whereby the college teaching workforce is composed of a shrinking tier of relatively privileged full-time faculty protected from the worst ravages of the anti-teacher, anti-student agenda of right-wing politicians like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo while they are gradually replaced by a new kind of teacher—the permanently poor, permanently cowed, permanently disposable worker known as the adjunct.

Continue reading “We Need to Break Some Rules”