Standing Up for Immigrants and the Right to Protest

Now that we have a finalized agreement, PSC is pressing CUNY for quick payment of our $3,000 signing bonus, retroactive pay, and salary increases. We’ve added more detail to the title-specific summaries on the new contract webpage and are rolling out newly formatted, annotated salary schedules that better explain how the scheduled contractual raises and the salary steps interact. Schedules in the new format are posted now for most full-time faculty, CLT, and Graduate Assistant titles. Others will be posted this week. The teaching adjuncts schedule requires a different treatment, but it, too, was updated recently to clarify the per-contact-hour course compensation and red-circled pay rates. Click here for additional information about the newly ratified contract.

On Monday, February 3rd, over 100 faculty, staff, and students organized by the PSC chapter at Queens College defied their administration’s new interim policy that restricts protests to five campus locations, bars indoor demonstrations, and requires three days’ advance permission for protests. The action began with a rally outside Kiely Hall, a location barred under the new policy. After entering Kiely Hall to deliver a petition demanding the right to protest, the crowd marched to locations significant to the campus’s history of activism, including the Rosenthal Library clock tower named for the civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, a Queens College student, and Michael Schwerner who were lynched in Mississippi in 1964. Some demonstrators carried posters with pictures of historic Queens College protests that the interim policy would now ban. Read more here on the PSC website and see videos from the action on the PSC’s Instagram.

Hundreds of students, faculty and staff will gather in Albany on Wednesday, February 26th for the annual Higher Education Action Day. Sign up here to join us as we rally inside the State Capitol and meet with over 100 state legislators to lobby for funding to hire new faculty and staff, update our crumbling facilities, and tuition-free education.

We’ll be lobbying alongside coalition partners from across New York State, including union siblings at SUNY (UUP and CWA/GSEU), student organizations (CUNY Rising Alliance, CUNY USS, and SUNY SA), and community partners including NYPIRG and Young Invincibles. Lobbying experience is not required. Transportation and lunch will be provided.

Buses will depart from several city locations (location TBD) around 6am and return in the evening.

REGISTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION ACTION DAY

The PSC is part of The People’s Plan, a citywide coalition of groups opposing Mayor Adams’ fake austerity and demanding a municipal budget that offers care, dignity, and justice for all New Yorkers. The coalition’s FY26 People’s Budget Campaign will begin with a rally and press event Wednesday, February 19th at 11 AM at the steps of the Tweed Courthouse (52 Chambers St). It will be the start of a five-month public campaign to push the Mayor and the City Council to deliver a better budget for all, including funding for public schools, 3K, CUNY, safety programs, and other essential services. PSC members will be there to support the campaign. Let us know you’ll be there.

RSVP: PEOPLE’S BUDGET, 2/19

The PSC’s statewide affiliate, NYSUT, is marking Black History Month with a poster celebrating Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman and first former federal public defender to serve on the United States Supreme Court. A limited run of printed copies are available in the PSC’s main office, and the poster is available for members to order for free or to download at nysut.org/publications.