Be With Us at the Bargaining Table
Sign the New, Stronger PSC Membership Card
Increase the union’s power before the first bargaining session for a new contract on Wednesday. If you haven’t already, please add your name to those of thousands of CUNY colleagues who have reaffirmed their dues-paying membership in the PSC by signing the new, stronger membership card. (If you signed the new membership card in the last week or two, no need to sign again. We are updating the database with recent signatures.)
The first thing CUNY management will look at when they assess our power is the size of the union’s membership and the extent of our financial base. In this period when union solvency is under attack through the Janus case in the Supreme Court, CUNY management will be trying to determine whether the PSC still has the support and the resources to fight. We need you with us to win our demands!
$7K Advocacy Day, Albany—April 24
Get on the Bus!
It will take more than a strong argument and the moral high ground to win our demand for $7,000 per course minimum pay for adjuncts. It will require a campaign to break the grip of austerity on CUNY, an effort that will build power on campus, support in the community and leverage at the bargaining table. Outreach to legislators will also be essential. The University’s two-tiered labor system is a direct result of years of disinvestment by the State; it will take significant reinvestment to more than double adjuncts’ starting pay.
PSC members, full-time and adjunct, faculty and staff, will travel to Albany on Tuesday, April 24 to make the case for $7K and inform legislators about the vital role adjunct faculty play in educating CUNY students. Click here to sign up. This is a one-day event. The bus will leave NYC early in the morning and return later that evening. When you sign up, a PSC organizer will contact you with more information.
New Yorkers to Albany: Tax Stock Buyback Trades to Protect Healthcare, Housing and Education
The PSC is partnering with the Strong Economy For All coalition to campaign for progressive tax policies that will ensure that New York’s budget is not balanced on the backs of working people. Last Friday, the union helped to organize a demonstration and press conference outside the New York Stock Exchange calling for a Stock Buyback Transfer Tax. Large, profitable corporations are using their windfall from the federal tax cuts to buy back stocks and make their richest shareholders richer, rather than to create jobs and to increase worker pay. A mere .5% transfer tax on stock buyback trades could raise $2 billion a year in New York for affordable housing, healthcare and quality public education from kindergarten through CUNY. Click here for a cable news piece about the tax featuring our coalition partners from the Fiscal Policy Institute, which aired throughout upstate New York. Click here for photos and the release about the Wall Street event.
Urge Your Legislators to Invest in CUNY
We need your voice in the PSC’s campaign to win increased State funding for CUNY. If you haven’t already, please send this letter urging support for the PSC’s budget demands. The letter says that CUNY needs significant investment in full-time faculty, adjuncts and advisors to ensure student success.
Save Student Activities and Democracy at CUNY
Students’ right to engage in free speech and participate in self-governance—to decide upon, participate in, and organize the activities of their choosing—is a fundamental right that should not be abridged. Yet the CUNY Board of Trustees is considering a proposal to restrict the way student activity fees can be used on all CUNY campuses. Hundreds of students rallied and testified last night at a CUNY Board of Trustees hearing to push back against this attack on students’ rights.
PSC President Bowen supported the students in her testimony. She has also sent a letter to the CUNY Board of Trustees calling on them not to diminish CUNY students’ rights. The letter urges the Board to engage with CUNY student groups and student leaders in an open process before reshaping the rules for the student activity fee.
