2023-2027 Contract Ratified

The timing of payment of the bonus and back pay are still being determined. Payments should be made and pay rates should be adjusted as soon as practicable in the Spring of 2025. The union is pressing CUNY and will inform members as soon as dates are known, giving as much advance notice as possible. The timing is affected by CUNY’s payroll processing and by processing at the City (for Community Colleges) or State (for Senior Colleges) Comptroller’s offices.

Equity raises are increases in pay that are in addition to the “across-the-board” raises.  One of the major economic victories of the proposed contract is that it provides equity increases in salary for Teaching Adjuncts, Non-Teaching Adjuncts and other hourly workers, Graduate Assistants, and full-time employees including the CLT series, Assistants to HEO, and CLIP and CUNY Start Instructors.  See the chart below for a summary of equity raises:

• Beginning March 1, 2027, NTAs I & II, Adjunct CLET, Adjunct Senior CLT, and CET-H will receive an additional equity increase of two dollars per hour.
• Top-step Assistants to HEO will receive the $1250 increase for members at the top step instead of the $1000 equity increase.

*Compensation for courses other than three hours will be adjusted proportionally by the teaching contact hour. For adjunct lecturers, that will mean an increase of 37.7% from $6,875 to $9,467 per four contact hour course

Red Circled Adjuncts

Over the life of the contract, the red circling of adjuncts whose hourly rates exceeded the single rates established in the 2017-2023 contract will remain in effect. They will be held harmless and will receive the across-the-board raises. Their pay WILL NOT go down to match the new single rates. By the end of the contract, the scheduled increases in pay will overtake most of the red circled rates. When the increase due to the single rates is higher than the increase that would result from the across-the-board raises, the adjuncts will receive the higher single rate.

Our contract expired on Feb. 28, 2023. Two of the raises we just negotiated have taken place in these past two years so you are owed the difference.  In the coming months, you will receive in your paycheck the amount of our past raises in one lump payment that is called retroactive pay.

Retroactive pay (back-pay) is the difference between what you were actually paid since our last contract expired and what you would have been paid if the new contractual higher rates had been in place at the time.  Full-time and part-time faculty and staff who have worked at CUNY after March 1, 2023 are due back pay.

We expect retroactive payments to be made in the Spring 2025 semester.

If you worked at CUNY in a title represented by the PSC after March 1, 2023, you are due to receive retroactive pay for the period that you worked. You should contact the HR office of the campus(s) at which you worked to confirm that they have all the correct information on file for you. The timing for retroactive pay is affected by CUNY’s payroll processing and by processing at the City (for Community Colleges) or State (for Senior Colleges) Comptroller’s offices.

The proposed contract includes a new pilot provision for multi-year adjunct appointments  The vast majority of adjuncts at colleges around the country have no access to job security. This provision is a victory achieved in the face of management’s persistent efforts to undermine any stability for adjunct faculty and their refusal to renew the adjunct job security pilot agreement established and continued in the last two contracts. The new multi-year appointment is not the full job security that CUNY adjuncts deserve, but it is a binding, contractual bulwark against management’s vision of a vastly more precarious CUNY teaching force. There have been changes that benefit affected adjuncts and changes that acknowledge departmental needs. 

The proposed contract would allow two-year appointments that may, after the first year, be extended to three-years at departments’ discretion. The number of semesters an adjunct must teach in order to qualify was extended by two semesters. But all adjuncts who qualified under the terms of the previous agreement, including in the year of its lapse, are grandfathered in.  Adjuncts working under the provision will be able to look to other departments or colleges if their home department cannot offer a course they need to stay eligible. They will have more stable access to health insurance, too, thanks to a provision providing temporary COBRA payments from CUNY if an adjunct in a multi-year appointment is not assigned credit hours needed to stay eligible for health insurance.  The union will keep pushing for a real certificate of continuous employment and job security for all adjuncts.  

In securing continuation of adjunct job security, PSC members rejected management’s efforts to set us against each other. We mobilized ourselves and our allies in State and City government and in the labor movement to decisively reject management’s demand to more than double the time-to-qualify for a multi-year appointment from 5 years to 12 years. 

Teaching adjuncts remain hourly employees through Spring 2027, and the minimum rate for teaching a 3-contact hour course (Adjunct Lecturer) will increase to $6,750 in Spring 2026 and $7,000 in Fall 2026. Beginning in Summer 2027, teaching adjunct pay will change from an hourly to a per-course/contact hour basis, and the minimum will increase again to $7,100 for a 3-contact hour course and $9,467 for a 4-contact hour course. Course-related professional activities and required trainings will be incorporated into the increased compensation, not counted against weekly office hours.

Examples of course-related professional activities include submitting one’s textbook information, learning the basics of the college’s learning management system, and completing the state-mandated workplace violence prevention online workshop. Service to the department or college is not a teaching-related professional activity. Here are some examples of service that are not part of an adjunct’s work:

• Committee Participation: Serving on hiring, curriculum, or governance committees.
• Program Review and Accreditation: Assisting with self-studies, accreditation documents, or program assessments.
• Advising and Mentorship: Providing academic or career advice to students outside assigned courses.
• Departmental Leadership: Acting as a program director or coordinating academic initiatives.
• Institutional Events: Organizing or attending conferences, workshops, or outreach activities.
• Community Engagement: Representing the department or college at external events.

Per-course salaries will depend on the number of contact hours and the adjunct’s title. Workload requirements to qualify for health insurance, tuition reimbursement and other workload-credit-based eligibility requirements will remain the same despite this change to the compensation structure in 2027.  

The minimum pay for an adjunct teaching a three-credit course will be $7100 by 2027. That represents a 29.1% raise, and brings the base pay of an adjunct lecturer who teaches the same annual course load as a full-time lecturer within a few thousand dollars the full-time lecturer’s annual salary, depending on their salary step. Note that full-time lecturers, unlike teaching adjuncts, also have a service obligation on which they are evaluated.  The PSC Bargaining Team has  again prioritized equity raises for adjuncts and our other lowest-paid colleagues. Combating the crisis of contingency, winning pay parity, expanding access to full-time jobs, and defending adjunct jobs in periods of instability are fundamental to our union’s mission. 

The University’s remote work policy has not changed as a result of the contract negotiations. The current Remote Work Agreement remains in effect. Renewed annually since the start of COVID, it provides a framework for arrangements between workers and their supervisors about the schedule and duration of remote work and guarantees certain protections when we are working remotely.

PSC fought hard to win something on remote work but we did not succeed. No New York state public-sector union has achieved contract language establishing an entitlement to remote work. It is very disappointing but it became increasingly difficult to move CUNY and NY State government to make PSC an exception to other state contracts and allow us to include anything about remote work in our contract. The Remote Work Agreement will continue to be in effect so we do have this benefit now and we will need to continue to emphasize to CUNY how important this issue is to us.

Remote work is embedded in modern workplace culture and is essential to CUNY’s staff recruitment and retention. It will remain a PSC priority. We have as strong a policy on hybrid and flexible schedules as any New York State union, but we know CUNY staff deserve more. We think we’ll be in an even better position on this issue in three years, when many of us will have been working remotely for nearly a decade.

The proposed agreement includes a two-part path for lecturer promotion

Part one: a lump sum payment on attainment of CCE

• Lecturers and Doctoral Lecturers including those at EOCs will receive a one-time lump sum payment of $2,500 if they attained a Certificate of Continuous Employment (CCE) prior to September 1, 2026. This lump sum will be paid on September 1, 2026 to all full-time Lecturers who have earned a CCE as of the disbursement date. Lecturers and Doctoral Lecturers including those at EOCs who attain a CCE after September 1, 2026, will also receive a lump-sum payment of $2500. 

Part two: new Senior Lecturer titles

• CUNY will establish the title of Senior Lecturer, with a higher salary schedule than Lecturer, and a corresponding salary schedule for Senior Doctoral Lecturer. CUNY will work with college P&Bs to establish the qualifications and criteria for promotion. Lecturers and Doctoral Lecturers will be eligible to be considered for promotion to a Senior Lecturer or Senior Doctoral Lecturer at the conclusion of one’s 8th year of continuous employment. The promotion would take place on September 1st of the 9th year. They would be moved up one step on the new salary scale. Lecturers/Senior Lecturers who attain their terminal degree shall be eligible for consideration for a promotion to a Senior Doctoral Lecturer. For those already past their 9th year of continuous service, Lecturers and Doctoral Lecturers will be eligible to be considered for promotion. Lecturers and Doctoral Lecturers not promoted to a Senior title in their 8th year of service will remain eligible.

Converting Clinical Professors and Distinguished Lecturers to Doctoral and Senior Doctoral Lecturers

Clinical Professors and Distinguished Lecturers may be eligible for appointment as Doctoral Lecturers and Senior Doctoral Lecturers. When that takes place, they’ll be placed on the step that is closest to their existing salary. If their salary is higher than the top step of the Senior Doctoral Schedule, upon notification to and agreement of the PSC, the salary shall be maintained and they’ll earn future across the board raises.

For the first time, HEOs who have accumulated compensatory time may, through a defined process, either utilize the time or, by mutual agreement, receive pay for the extra hours worked.

HEOs assigned to work more than 35 hours per week will be able to 1) carryover of unused comp time for up to 60 days beyond the current deadline of 30-days beyond the end of the quarter in which it was earned,  or 2) payout of unused comp time by mutual agreement of the employee and the college. 

The across-the-board raises of the contract keep pace or slightly exceed inflation in the contract’s own period to date. The raises for our lowest-paid colleagues exceed the public-sector pattern and beat inflation thanks to the equity raises they will receive. Our annual step raises combined with the across-the-board raises also beat inflation. But members receiving only the across-the-board raises will not exceed inflation. None of New York’s public-sector unions have negotiated across-the-board increases that overcome the recent pandemic-driven inflation. The ratification bonus ($3,000 for full-timers, prorated for part-timers) is meant to ease the sting of inflation.

Comparisons of Sample Member Salaries to Inflation Over Term of Contract

These charts compare the growth in salaries that members in certain titles will experience over the course of the proposed contract (shown in blue) with the projected rise in the consumer price index, a measure of inflation (shown in orange). Between across-the-board contractual raises and regular step increases, the sample members would all enjoy raises that significantly outpace the projected inflation between 2023 and 2027.