A STATE OF EMERGENCY
IN
CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS
Click
here
for
printer
friendly version
Whereas, the collective bargaining agreement between the
Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New
York expired on October 31, 2002, and CUNY faculty and staff
have not had raises since August 1, 2001; and
Whereas, during the same period that PSC members were
without a raise and experienced a reduction in the real
value of their salaries, CUNY’s top management accepted
raises with a total cost to the University of $2.1 million a
year; and
Whereas, the Chancellor’s Office has launched an
expensive fund-raising campaign whose motto is “Investing in
Futures” while failing to invest in the people who create
the real future of the University—the faculty and staff;
and
Whereas, the financial offer on the table from
University management, currently 1.5% over four years with a
small one-time bonus of $400 (pro-rated for part-timers)
both insults people who routinely work their hearts out for
CUNY and forecasts a deeply inadequate final offer; and
Whereas, in order to offer quality education, build a
strong University and sustain our own lives in the
profession, the PSC needs more than a minimal contract: that
is, we need a contract that offers increased Welfare Fund
contributions and money for equity advances as well as
salary increases above the level of inflation; and
Whereas, PSC members have endured painful reductions in
Welfare Fund benefits over the past two years, including a
shift of approximately one-third of the cost of prescription
drugs and a significant portion of dental care costs from
the employer to the employee; yet escalating healthcare
costs mean that without a substantial increase in employer
contributions the Welfare Fund reserve will be depleted in
less than a year; and
Whereas, the PSC has made a fair, reasonable financial
proposal: the settlement achieved by the SUNY faculty and
staff (approximately 15% in salary and other improvements
over four years) plus the added money required to stabilize
and enhance our Welfare Fund; and
Whereas, the University management offer of 1.5% (with a
$400 lump sum and a further 1% available if we pay for it by
increased “productivity”) covers none of these needs; and
Whereas, a refusal to invest in CUNY’s faculty and staff
would be ultimately a refusal to invest in CUNY’s students,
because our working conditions are their learning
conditions; and
Whereas, the failure to resolve the PSC contract has a
direct impact on students, who have also been repeatedly
battered by tuition increases and the systematic withdrawal
of public funding from CUNY; the PSC’s agenda of creating
competitive salaries, benefits and working conditions at
CUNY is directed toward strengthening the University and
enhancing the education, research and service in which it
engages; and
Whereas, the PSC has tried every other tactic to press
for the settlement we need: we have engaged in serious
collective bargaining; we have worked to narrow our areas of
difference with management; we have collected thousands of
signatures on petitions to the Chancellor and college
presidents; we have appealed directly to the Board of
Trustees—presenting them with letters at every meeting since
May 2004, organizing a member presence at every meeting
since May and requesting meetings between each individual
Trustee and the PSC president; we have sent hundreds of
faxes to the Chancellor about our contract needs; we have
met with college presidents, picketed on campus, received
the support of students, met with the City and State, met
with the CUNY Chancellor and shown the support of the entire
membership for the position that a minimal contract is not
acceptable; and
Whereas, despite the Chancellor’s public statement in
May 2004 that he did not intend to offer the PSC an
austerity contract, the management of the University has
failed to respond to these powerful and unprecedented
expressions of our need—and the University’s need; and
Whereas, a contract at the level suggested by
management’s 1.5% offer has already begun to result in an
inability to recruit and retain high-quality faculty and
staff, with several departments reporting their difficulty
in attracting the candidates they seek when candidates learn
of the teaching load, salaries and working conditions at
CUNY; and
Whereas, CUNY management’s failure to offer an adequate
economic framework for the settlement is coupled with
demands that represent a direct attack on faculty autonomy,
availability of research time, job security and the ability
of the union to represent its members and enforce the
contract; and
Whereas, the 20,000 faculty and staff represented by the
PSC have given their professional lives to CUNY, enduring
substandard salaries and working conditions, making do with
inadequate research time and resources, existing in a
permanent culture of scarcity—out of commitment to a vision
of what a public urban university could be, out of
dedication to our students and out of understanding of the
value of intellectual work; therefore be it
Resolved, that the PSC declare a state of emergency
in the contract negotiations and that we call on every
member of the faculty and staff to become a part of the mass
effort that will be required, given the current political
climate, to win the contract we need; that we rededicate the
union to old-fashioned, one-on-one organizing so that every
member is informed and engaged, so that every member becomes
part of the campus and worksite campaigns that will direct
our political force toward a good contract; and be it
further
Resolved, that the chapters of the PSC prepare the
membership for decisions at the Delegate Assemblies this
spring on the increasingly militant actions that may be
required to win a contract that meets our needs—by engaging
in broad-based discussion of the full range of actions in
which unions historically have engaged and their relevance
to our current campaign: leafleting, letter-writing,
protests, demonstrations, lobbying, media campaigns,
coalition-building with students and other groups, direct
action, special assessment of members for union defense
funds, and job actions up to and including strikes.
Adopted unanimously,
January 27, 2005
Click
here
for February '05
Clarion Editorial on the
DA resolution by Barbara
Bowen, PSC President
Click
here
for printer
friendly version of this
DA resolution
