PSC President James Davis was reelected to a second three-year term this spring, signaling strong membership approval of his administration’s record of intense campus-by-campus organizing, ambitious bargaining strategy and a practice of member engagement.
Davis’s first term began in the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. He and the new officers hit the ground running to fight against job losses and for worker protections as the union and the rest of the labor movement navigated the transformed political and social terrain. Since then, the union has won arbitrations protecting members’ rights, saved jobs and attracted massive political support and media attention to the New Deal for CUNY, the union’s legislative campaign to fully fund CUNY, hire more faculty and staff and make CUNY tuition-free again.
UNITED
With members united behind them, the principal officers are energized and eager to complete negotiations on a strong contract, fight for full funding for CUNY and bring more workers into the union membership.
“It has been a privilege to serve PSC members in this role,” Davis said. “I am grateful for their support for another term – we have so much to achieve together for our members, students and the city’s working people. Just think of what this union has recently accomplished – from handling management’s incoherent vaccine mandate, to winning funding for hundreds of new full-time faculty, to waging local struggles on our campuses, fighting for retiree health care, and forging coalitions – PSC members built the solidarity needed to secure a great new contract and are poised to do much more. The newly elected executive council is a formidable group of veteran and emerging leaders.”
NEW OFFICER
Jen Gaboury, who previously served as a University-wide officer on the executive council and as the chapter chair at Hunter College, was elected as first vice president. Gaboury, a lecturer and adviser in the women’s and gender studies department at Hunter College, had previously been highly active in the union’s legislative and political organizing – she has worked closely with members in her home borough of Brooklyn to elect lawmakers supportive of the PSC’s agenda.
Since her election, she has already dived headfirst into the union’s campaigns to win more revenue from the city and state, working closer with PSC member activists, the legislative committee and PSC staff. It’s a lot of work, she admitted, but she comes into the principal officer role excited and ready. “It’s all labor I’m honored to do,” she said.
Felicia Wharton, the treasurer, was reelected to a second three-year term. Andrea Vásquez, who previously served two terms as first vice president and before that as the chair of the union’s higher education officer chapter, was elected secretary, replacing Penny Lewis.
BIG MOMENT
Lewis, who will return to teaching full-time at the School of Labor and Urban Studies, was elected vice president for senior colleges, and hopes to work closely with the other vice presidents in the executive council and with campus leaders and PSC organizers. This kind of synergy between the executive council, the principal officers and campus leaders is at the center of the Davis administration’s vision of the PSC.
“I see this as a really big transformative moment for the organization,” Lewis said. “Our union is only as strong as our campus chapters.”
Published: August 1, 2024 | Last Modified: August 5, 2024
