DECEMBER 20, 2004 CONTRACT UPDATE

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HERE’S WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR: increased salaries restored Welfare Fund benefits improved working conditions and equity WHAT’S AT STAKE IN OUR CONTRACT? what kind of university CUNY becomes what kind of professional lives we lead at CUNY what kind of education we’re able to offer to the people of New York

DECEMBER 20, 2004
CONTRACT UPDATE

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Click here for bulletin on management's initial offer

 

The report on the 12/17 collective bargaining activity is about a protest, not a negotiating session. CUNY management notified the union late 12/16 that management was canceling Friday's session.  Having learned that we were planning to have a larger-than-usual number of observers at the session, Vice Chancellor Malone called and told us that she would go forward with the session only if we would limit the observers to five or six people, and give their names in advance.  We refused, as there was no agreement between the parties on ground rules limiting observers.  (At the outset of the bargaining, management had proposed such a ground rule, but we refused.) Our position is that faculty and staff are entitled to observe the collective bargaining about their own contract.  Further, the presence of members has not and will not impede the progress of the sessions.  The union bargaining team was ready for a productive session; we had proposals and counterproposals prepared, and we had hoped to make progress. But we were not silenced or invisibilized. Over 100 PSC members gathered at 8:30 in the morning in front of the 80th Street building to protest our exclusion from the bargaining session.  With a unity and militancy that has visibly increased at PSC events this fall, we chanted and marched, carrying signs that said "A Great Contract = A Great University."  Scores of members wrote letters on the spot to Chancellor Goldstein protesting the cancellation and urging a fair resolution of the contract.  We also signed a poster-size petition with the following message: We the undersigned protest in the strongest terms the cancellation of today's PSC bargaining session.  We are entitled to observe collective negotiations, and the tactic of excluding us by canceling the session is untenable.  We are the union, and we deserve a fair contract. After almost two hours of lively protest, we arranged for five PSC members and the PSC president to present the petitions and letters to Chancellor Goldstein's office. The union is ready to go back to the bargaining table as soon as next week.  We also have three sessions a week scheduled for January.  PSC members, as they showed today, are committed to pressing forward and working until we get a contract worthy of our work. Add your voice of protest about management's economic offer by sending the Contract Now! letter from this website by clicking here. The letters make a difference. To sign up to receive regular Instant Updates on bargaining sessions, email your contact information to drosato@pscmail.org.   Click here to go to Contract Now