Category: Blog Post

This is a repost of an email sent out to PSC members and adjuncts earlier today:

Welcome back! As the fall semester begins, we wanted to reach out to you with some updates about the current contract negotiations and to encourage you to join us in the struggle to win a good contract for all PSC members that includes a minimum $7K per three-credit course for adjunct faculty.

As many of you may know, our contract expired nearly two years ago. Our union’s elected bargaining team has since failed to secure any increase in funding from either the CIty or the State, and current funding levels do not even keep pace with inflation—much less the cost of $7K per course for adjuncts. So now our union is stuck fighting for crumbs from an ever-shrinking pie to bring our wages closer to parity with full-time lecturers.

Unfortunately, instead of calling on the full power of the membership to keep the pressure on Albany, PSC-CUNY leaders have urged us to sit back and wait for the bargaining team to do its work. Meanwhile, the leadership have been silent on the recently approved tuition hikes that management claimed were needed to pay for our contract demands. While we don’t know what’s being discussed in the closed-door bargaining sessions, many of us fear a compromise that will not get us to $7K and may even deepen the two-tier system by expanding pay gaps among different categories of adjuncts, dividing our union even further. Since PSC-CUNY has declined to bargain over class sizes, we are also concerned that framing any increase for adjuncts around productivity, as the bargaining team has done, opens the door to making us work more, when we are already working far more than the hours we are paid for.

We know that a strike is a big undertaking, especially when the Taylor Law threatens us with serious penalties, but we also know that until we really stand up together to fight for a fully-funded CUNY and a fair contract, the budget will keep getting slashed and our working conditions—which are our students’ learning conditions—will keep getting worse.

$7K or Strike is currently mobilizing for a series of special chapter meetings and town halls over the coming weeks to discuss the contract crisis and to put forward resolutions calling for a strike authorization campaign.

We need your help to make this happen. In order to make quorum, we will need every adjunct who supports going on strike for $7K to be at their chapter meetings ready to vote yes.

To get involved, contact your campus steward or $7K or Strike.

And please join the $7K or Strike contingent at this year’s Labor Day Parade, this Saturday, September 7, to promote a strike authorization campaign and to build solidarity with rank-and-file members of other unions. Meet us at 10am with the PSC contingent on 44th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. Look for the $7K or Strike t-shirts. The parade is scheduled to start moving at 10:15am.

In Solidarity and Struggle,
$7K or Strike!
7korstrike.org

We are honored to reprint this statement from the Rutgers Adjuncts Rank-and-File Caucus in solidarity with the campaign for 7K or Strike, which also outlines strategic imperatives for a radical academic labor movement, drawn from their important work at Rutgers. As the professional labor bureaucrats and aspiring movement managers congratulate themselves for “revolutionary” austerity contracts and attempt to move “beyond the rank-and-file strategy,” this is the kind of vision we need!

The Rutgers Adjuncts Rank-and-File Caucus applauds adjuncts at CUNY and their progressive $7k or Strike campaign. Redress of adjunctification must be centered in any progressive movement within academia, particularly when adjuncts, graduate workers, and tenured faculty bargain side by side — to do any less is a rejection of solidarity and an acceptance of the corporate hierarchical status quo.

Adjunctified professors deserve more than to be paid a pittance at any college or university, but it is especially unethical that adjuncts who live and work in New York City, the world’s economic hub, receive poverty wages. $7,000 per course should be the absolute minimum for adjunct professors at CUNY; anything less than $7,000 fails to provide a basic living wage and does not create equal working conditions.

Like adjunct experiences across this nation from Rutgers to Tulane, the present system at CUNY is untenable. We call upon the tenured faculty, students, and CUNY management to recognize the fundamental need of their professoriate to be paid respectable wages (at least $7,000 per course). We also encourage PSC CUNY to learn from the lessons of Rutgers’ recent contract ratifications: as you continue to mobilize and bargain, recognize that a win that does not meet the needs of your most vulnerable workers falls short of a win and is a hollow victory.

If CUNY management attempts to force a contract on adjuncts via a summer ratification, the Rutgers Adjuncts Rank-and-File Caucus will defend $7k or Strike and endorse a campaign against ratification, as they stood with us during our #RUVotingNO campaign. Adjuncts are stronger when they are united.

Adjunct organizers at CUNY continue to inspire contingent faculty around the country to resist the insidious corporatization of the university as well as the tepid leadership of existing corporate union structures. We look forward to forging new bonds between our respective groups, and fighting together to bring adjunct issues to the forefront of all discussions about higher education.

About the RA-RFC: Established in April 2019, the Rutgers Adjuncts Rank-and-File Caucus is a growing coalition of adjunct professors (PTLs) on all three Rutgers University campuses—New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden—as well as those who teach through Rutgers online and at remote sites. For more information, visit rutgersadjuncts.org.

Last Friday afternoon, nearly 80 adjuncts and allies gathered at a meeting of the Committee of Adjuncts and Part-Timers at PSC headquarters to vote on three resolutions proposed by members and to hear from PSC President Barbara Bowen on the state of the contract negotiations.

President Bowen gave a lackluster “update” on the ongoing negotiations, providing no information that hadn’t already been emailed to the membership over a week ago. She reiterated the union’s tired strategy of lobbying Albany. There has been no response from management to the PSC’s sell-out counter-proposal. She claimed, without a shred of evidence, that the union was in a position to pressure the state and the city before the end of the legislative session on June 19th. As a member pointed out during the Q&A, the union, not management, is under pressure in this situation. Vice-President Andrea Vasquez, a longtime labor bureaucrat and former chair of the HEO chapter, used her time on the mic to tamp down expectations, telling members it was not possible to get everything at once and to depict the leadership as the vanguard in the fight for $7K/course for adjuncts.

In sharp distinction to the vague and unmoored leadership strategy, the rank and file delivered three strong resolutions on how to move forward. The first resolution addressed the need to reach out to working class New Yorkers across the city and organize a rally for $7K this fall. It passed nearly unanimously.

Amidst rumors, confirmed at the meeting by President Bowen, that the bargaining team is angling to force through another terrible summer contract, a second resolution called on the Delegate Assembly to postpone or table any vote on a proposed contract until after the summer, until it can guarantee a healthy debate about any proposed contract among all members of the union. Without holding a strike authorization vote, any proposed contract that failed to meet $7K should not be put to members for ratification. It also passed unanimously.

Finally, a third resolution outlined a strike authorization campaign the union could implement. Among many creative ideas, it proposed to convert of the duties of Adjunct Liaisons from simply meeting membership card quotas to organizing toward a strike, and to create an online fundraising platform to build a “militancy fund” to support members during a strike.

The meeting, which was the most highly attended in recent history, starkly revealed the poverty of the union leadership’s strategy. The rank and file are leading the way with a clear strategy, one that fits on a two-sided sheet of paper. Meanwhile, the leadership has already surrendered and is ready to sheepishly take advantage of the summer months to push through a contract that does not get adjuncts to $7K. The rank-and-filers in the room were of one voice, $7K or Strike!

It’s going down! Saturday June 8th, 1pm at the People’s Forum, join rank-and-file organizers from CUNY Struggle, 7K or Strike, and Rutgers Adjuncts United for a rowdy discussion of fighting austerity from the bottom-up, and what to do when your union becomes another branch of management. A can’t-miss event! RSVP here or else just surprise us.

After months of intensive organizing in classrooms, faculty offices, adjunct cubbies, and hallways at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, an overflowing, standing-room-only PSC chapter meeting on April 15th, 2019 adopted a “$7K or Strike” motion without amendments, 62–48–4. In doing so, John Jay becomes the eleventh CUNY chapter to pass a $7KOS resolution. The feeling in the room was electric. Members across job titles expressed our commitment to standing up for each other, and to building the capacity to press our non-negotiable demand to make adjunct working conditions livable. Students, alumni, PSC workers from other units, and community members all joined to show their support, swelling the meeting to well over 150 people, who spilled out into the halls and strained to hear the proceedings inside.

The verdict is in. After over a year of PSC’s (latest) costly and time-consuming effort to lobby “progressive” politicians and the Board of Trustees to enlarge CUNY’s budget, the new budget dropped on April 1^st. To say it is wretched is an understatement. It doesn’t even fund CUNY’s mandatory cost increases such as rent, energy, contractual step increases, and fringe benefits. It’s unclear how CUNY will even fund something President Bowen claimed was won in the last contract: a course load reduction for full-time faculty. For adjuncts, the situation is even more dire. There’s nothing even approaching $7K. Adjuncts are offered the same paltry 2% raise everyone else gets.

In short, all the bus trips to Albany, pep rallies for the cameras, endorsements of “progressive” Democrats, phone calls, postcards, and persuasive moral arguments at the Board of Trustees meetings have come to naught. This latest rebuke of the lobbying tactic might be brushed off by the relatively affluent full-timers who call the shots in PSC, and continue to cling to illusions that change will come from speaking truth to power. They are comfortable enough to be able to afford their fantasies. For adjunct faculty, however, these illusions threaten to rob us of our ability to keep the lights on, the rent paid, and our most basic needs met. For us, this foolishness is deathly serious.

The real story of last week was not the regrettable smear lodged against the $7K or Strike campaign by a small group of union politicians. Instead, it was the PSC bargaining team’s counter-offer, issued unilaterally to CUNY with no consultation even with our Delegate Assembly. Depending on who you talk to, this offer could represent a retreat from the demand for a $7K/course adjunct minimum wage that has been a cornerstone of contract negotiations until now. Is it any wonder President Bowen took this moment to attack the activists fighting hardest for $7K?

The following statement was written by a comrade at Borough of Manhattan Community College, and distributed to members of their PSC chapter shortly after the counter-offer was announced. We welcome analysis about the meaning of this offer moving forward. We refuse to be distracted from the real issues, and we sure as hell won’t stop building a movement to win #7KorStrike.

The New Caucus and the leadership of the PSC CUNY have already begun to back away from the demand for $7K. The rank and file must say NO to this betrayal. 

Last week the New Caucus Leadership unveiled its counter-proposal to management’s first economic offer and the results are not promising. What has happened and what can we do?

reposted from our comrades at Queens Adjuncts Unite

At the Queens College chapter meeting of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) on Wednesday, March 20, 2019, a vote was held on a resolution in support of going on strike if CUNY does not agree at the bargaining table to pay adjunct faculty $7k per course minimum. Current starting pay is less than half of that amount, with many adjuncts teaching a full-time load for poverty wages of roughly $20k a year. Annual percentage raises won in prior contracts have only increased the salary gap between the lowest- and highest-paid faculty members.

The resolution sparked a lively discussion after PSC Vice President for Senior Colleges Penny Lewis reported on the state of the contract bargaining process and the union’s lobbying efforts to fund CUNY. At its peak, the March 20 meeting was attended by about 34 PSC members who work at Queens College. Of approximately 25 who were still there when the vote took place, 14 voted for the resolution, four voted against, and three abstained. Several people did not vote.

CUNY Struggle has been hard at work organizing with the campaign for #7KorStrike, a citywide coalition working from the bottom-up to win $7K per course for CUNY adjuncts by putting CUNY politics back in the hands of students and the rank-and-file.

In defiance of the snow and an asteroid belt of MTA delays, last Saturday’s 7K or Strike Conference & Organizing Day drew over 100 people from across CUNY and beyond, for a day of sharing knowledge, pooling resources, and strategizing for the fight ahead.

The campaign has also played a driving force in the movement of “grade-ins” for $7K, beginning with the grade-in for 7K or Strike last semester at Brooklyn College. Brooklyn remains the flagship of the grade-in movement, thanks largely to the solidarity from student groups like the Brooklyn College Student union. Check out these testimonials from the last grade-in, attended by over fifty people… the number to beat!

Grade-ins bring unwaged adjunct labor into the hallways of CUNY campuses, to call attention to adjunct exploitation while simultaneously building a movement to win $7K by any means necessary. Grade-ins have been held at Brookyn College, BMCC, Lehman, Hostos, and John Jay. If you’d like to see one on your campus, don’t wait for instructions from on high; organize it yourself! Just be sure to invite us 🙂

Check out the photo gallery below for a sample of what’s been happening at CUNY so far this year. If you’d like to get involved, what’s the holdup? We are the PSC, and we are CUNY! Join us. #7KorStrike

Tabling for #7KorStrike at BMCC

Student solidarity is driving the movement at Brooklyn College

Huge crowd at the People’s Form for the #7KorStrike Conference!

It’s nice to hear from more than one speaker at a union organizing event!

Selfies for #7KorStrike

Campus breakout group at the #7KorStrike Conference

Campus breakout group at the #7KorStrike Conference

Campus breakout group at the #7KorStrike Conference

#7KorStrike Conference panel on mapping and organizing your campus

Who says there’s nothing good on TV?

Tom Watters from Brookly College discusses building a rank-and-file movement on his campus

Noeleen McIlvenna from Wright State University discusses their recent strike

Panel on the Taylor Law at #7KorStrike Conference

Brooklyn College student Sarah Gee breaks down the natural solidarity between students and adjunct faculty

Grade-in at BMCC

Grade-in for #7KorStrike at Hostos

Grade-in at Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College draws a crowd!

Grade-in at Lehman College

#7KorStrike supporters at Lehman grade-in

BMCC Crew at it again, flyering the Public Advocate debate in the snow

Join CUNY Struggle and our comrades from the 7K or Strike campaign for a day of planning and scheming to win 7K per course by any means necessary!

This will be a CUNY-Wide Conference and Organizing Day on “7K or Strike,” organized by an ad hoc committee of rank-and-file activists from campuses across the CUNY system. The conference is part of ongoing efforts to build, broaden, and deepen support for the type of action needed to win the demand (now formally adopted by the CUNY faculty-staff union) for $7,000 per course minimum pay for adjuncts.

It will include reports from campuses where “$7K or Strike” resolutions have passed or are pending; organizing for next steps; and discussions on linking up with CUNY undergrads; lessons from education workers’ strikes, labor, and immigrant-worker struggles in NYC and beyond; and how to overcome obstacles posed by New York State’s Taylor Law and CUNY’s multi-tier labor system, in order to build the kind of power and unity needed to win.

For more information, write: 7korstrike@gmail.com or check out the event listing here.