This article goes to press at a tense time in the PSC-CUNY contract negotiations. It is a moment when many union members are exasperated by management’s stalling and are planning the next phase of the contract struggle. Bolstered by the support of PSC members, the union’s bargaining team is seizing this moment to press for a strong settlement this semester.
CUNY management presented their initial economic offer more than a year after the last contract expired in February 2023 and, as of this writing, has not put another dollar on the table since then. There are several open and contested issues to resolve in order to reach a settlement, but the economic framework is critical.
FRAMEWORK
PSC President James Davis getting arrested at John Jay College. (Credit: Erik McGregor)
That framework affects not only across-the-board raises, but also any retroactive salary payment, ratification bonus, additions to the PSC-CUNY Welfare Fund, and resources available for equity raises to the lowest-paid job titles and for the top step of the salary schedules of full-time faculty and staff. The parties have held 34 bargaining sessions, including 14 sessions since the Spring 2024 semester ended, working through the summer. But management’s intransigence on the economic offer continues to hold us back from reaching a fair agreement.
The bargaining team decided not to accept management’s initial offer of a 4.5-year contract with across-the-board raises of 3% in each of the first two years and 3.125% in the third and fourth years. That decision gave us leverage to press on other fronts, and we have made significant progress on key issues that our members told us are important, including professional advancement opportunities, job security, adjunct equity, educational technology provisions, remote work and flexible scheduling. But the path to a strong settlement still rests on the value of our economic framework.
WHY WE FIGHT
That is why hundreds of PSC members demonstrated at John Jay College on October 21, to tell the CUNY Trustees and administrators inside that they are tired of waiting for a fair agreement. That is why we disrupted their hearing and why 30 of these members, representing 13 different CUNY colleges and many job titles, blockaded the door of the building in which the Trustees were meeting. We demanded, at the risk of our arrest, that management make us a new, stronger economic offer. Because management still refused to do so – nearly 20 months into these negotiations – we spent that Monday evening in jail. But the support for the PSC’s position is much deeper than those who risked arrest, deeper even than those assembled on October 21. It extends to the PSC members who have participated by the hundreds in observing our bargaining sessions or who taught a class so that their colleague could participate in a union action. It extends to our allies in the labor movement and in the legislature. And it extends to our students, alumni and members of communities we serve as CUNY educators.
What comes next? If CUNY management puts a new economic proposal on the table, the PSC bargaining team will assess whether it recognizes the work of our members and determine our next steps. If they persist in withholding a new economic proposal, the PSC will further escalate our campaign. That discussion is already taking place among the union’s chapter chairs and delegates. Despite management’s apparent expectation that a prolonged negotiation would wear the PSC out, it has only strengthened our resolve for the struggle ahead.
Published: October 29, 2024
