The shooting of Oscar Belgal, with his five-year-old son in the car, is the latest example of ICE’s violent and unlawful behavior toward our fellow New Yorkers. Professional Staff Congress/CUNY condemns the attack and opposes any coordination or cooperation between ICE and the NYPD. ICE’s recent escalation in New York City communities, resulting in more than 2,000 detentions in July and August alone, has left families shattered, schoolchildren terrified, and some CUNY students afraid to come to campus. These assaults must end now.

New York is a city of immigrants and that has defined us for centuries. The obstruction of due process and basic human rights is reprehensible and, as a labor union representing 30,000 CUNY faculty and staff, we say, ICE out of our communities, ICE out of the courts, ICE out of New York.

On Friday, October 9, PSC members joined an emergency demonstration at Foley Square shooting of Oscar Belgal.

Elections 2026: Make it Count

With just two weeks until early voting and three weeks until Election Day, our union needs all hands on deck to help elect/re-elect our endorsed CUNY champions and flip critical congressional seats in the Hudson Valley, Staten Island and New Jersey. And the struggle to defend our votes may extend long past Election Day. Save the Make It Count Calendar below, mark your own calendar, and sign up to get involved.

PSC Endorsements

The PSC is proud to endorse a slate of candidates who will fight for working people and higher education at every level of government. Click here to see all of PSC’s endorsements for the general election, including statewide, congressional, state senate and assembly candidates.

Get Out the Vote

PSC members are on our phones and knocking on doors every week until Election Day.

• Click here for the list of events with sign-up links.
• Click here to tell us you’ll help build excitement and momentum to show union power by wearing red at work on Tuesday October 27, a week before Election Day.

We’ll be knocking on the doors of fellow NYSUT members in Congressional District 17 (Westchester, Rockland, Dutchess and Putnam counties) on Saturday, October 17 to help elect Cait Conley and oust Trump ally Mike Lawler. It’s all hands on deck in this district that could decide control of the House, so please sign up with your personal email address here to join us on Saturday, October 17th. Most PSC members will meet at the headquarters of 32BJ at 25 W. 18th Street this Saturday morning to get on the bus headed to White Plains. Breakfast will be available at 8:00AM. Please arrive at 32BJ by 8:30AM. Others will carpool in coordination with PSC staff. We’ll meet local residents in time to start door knocking at 10:00 AM. More phone banks for Cait Conley are also scheduled.

We’ll be on our phones starting October 20th for virtual phone banks calling union households in Congressional District 11 (Staten Island and South West Brooklyn) to elect Mike Decillis and oust Trump Ally Nicole Malliotakis.

We’ll be door knocking and/or stationed near polling sites to help elect Chris McCreight in Assembly District 46 (Coastal Brooklyn and parts of Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Gravesend) on Sunday, November 1, the last day of early voting.

We’ll be phone banking from the PSC office and stationed near key polling sites with the Working Families Party throughout Election Day. High turnout on the WFP ballot line for Governor Hochul will mean a prominent place on the ballot for the party in the next election. It will also help hold the governor accountable to progressive voters.

 Election Protection

Defending Our Voice, Our Vote, Our Democracy

NYC Labor Rally & Press Conference
Thursday, October 15, 3:00-4:30 PM

New York City’s labor unions will gather at the Farley Post Office in Midtown Manhattan tomorrow, Thursday, October 15th, to announce an election protection labor coalition to defend the right to vote and the integrity of elections. As the Trump administration escalates attacks on democracy, labor unions must take steps to ensure that eligible voters are safe at the ballot box and every vote is counted. Click here to let us know you’ll be there with the PSC on the steps of the post office (421 8TH Ave., across from Madison Square Garden).

RSVP: DEFENDING OUR VOTE, 10/15

Hands Off Our Vote

Saturday, Nov 7, Time and Location TBD

Hands Off NYC is calling for a mass mobilization the Saturday after the election to demand accurate vote counts and defend the results of the midterm elections. Every vote must be counted, because every vote counts. Every PSC member who signs up on the general Election 2026: Make it Count action link will be on-call to join us in the streets to defend the election if the need arises. We’ll post more details about the November 7th action as they become available.

SAVE THE DATE, NOV 7

This fall, we are bringing adjuncts together with colleagues across titles and campuses to demand the stability we all deserve at work. The status quo of uncertain appointments, class cancellations, late pay, and management disrespect is unacceptable. Together, we can demand that CUNY management fix these issues.

PSC members from across the university have submitted the PSC’s Part-timer Workplace complaint form. We’ve identified 180 instances of late pay via form submissions. But we know this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you experienced late pay recently or are still owed pay, please fill out the form! Help spread the word to your adjunct colleagues by sharing this graphic.

Monday, October 19, 4:30 PM, John Jay College

Every semester, hundreds of adjunct faculty are paid late by CUNY. This can have disastrous consequences on our ability to pay rent or put food on the table.

PSC members are mobilizing to meet at John Jay College (Gerald Lynch Theater – 524 W 59th St) for the next CUNY Board of Trustees Borough Hearing to demand on-time pay. Join us and register to testify if you are an adjunct who has been paid late. The Chancellor and the CUNY Board of Trustees need to hear our stories. This action is part of the PSC’s campaign to push the administration to solve this problem once and for all.

***** To Register to Testify you MUST EMAIL: [email protected] before noon on Friday, October 16, 2026.****

Your name, college, and contact information should be included in the email. Substitution of registered speakers is not permitted. Please also fill out this PSC form to let us know you will be there and so we can invite you to a prep session.

Bringing a written version of your statement to submit to the Board when you testify is recommended, but not required. Testimony is limited to 3 min per person. Here is the official hearing notice.

Members will also testify about other issues, including the need for Immigrant Student Centers on all campuses. Follow the instructions above if you wish to testify on other topics related to our work.

More than forty faculty, staff and students demonstrated outside the office of the Bronx Community College President, Dr Larry D. Johnson, Jr., on Tuesday, October 6th to demand on-time pay for CUNY adjuncts. The protesters chanted, distributed flyers, and shared powerful testimony about working and learning under such precarity. The action was an escalation that followed a pressure campaign of emails to the president from PSC members, including adjuncts whose first paychecks were late.

The email campaign and the PSC chapter’s planned public demonstration moved President Johnson to action. After meeting with PSC Chapter Chair Stephen Duncan, the president emailed the campus community saying that “Employees who have performed their work should be able to depend on receiving their compensation accurately and on time.” He apologized for the “disruption and frustration,” reported on immediate efforts with “daily accountability” to make the unpaid workers whole, and pledged to address the systemic problems that lead to late pay.

Get involved with the PSC Committee for Adjuncts and Part-timers or your campus chapter to help grow our CUNY-wide campaign for Stable Jobs, Stable Lives, and Stable Pay.

6:00 PM – Food and Networking for In-Person Attendees
6:30 PM – Program Begins for In-Person and Online Participants

The BIPOC Working Group was created to build community, foster connections, and create support structures for underrepresented faculty and staff in the Professional Staff Congress and across CUNY campuses.

Our contract shapes so much of our working lives: our salaries, workload, sense of security, evaluations, reappointments, and promotions. Join BIPOC colleagues from across all titles for a conversation on how it affects us. Click here to register for a hybrid town hall to discuss the next contract campaign and to build connections and community with other PSC members of color.

RSVP: BIPOC CONTRACT TOWN HALL

Freedom From Workplace Bullies Week, October 18-24, is an annual opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to eliminating workplace bullying from our university. Guidance about how to address bullying when you experience or witness it can be found on the PSC website, on the CUNY Anti-Bullying Awareness page, and on the website of the Workplace Bullying Institute. Also contact your department chair, your campus HR office, and your PSC chapter chair if you are a target of or a witness to bullying at a CUNY workplace.

The PSC and CUNY management have addressed workplace bullying in several rounds of bargaining, in labor-management, and through a joint campaign announced in 2020. The joint campaign resulted in the addition of a section on preventing bullying in CUNY’s Workplace Violence Prevention Training. (Learn more.)

AFT President Randi Weingarten Visits Delaney Immigration Detention Center

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the PSC’s national affiliate, visited the Delaney Hall Immigrant Detention Center in Newark, NJ, Sunday, October 4 to bear witness to ICE’s inhumane treatment and honor the work that Dr. Norma Bowe and her team do for immigrant families with their mobile clinic. Dr. Bowe, a professor of public health and registered nurse, was assaulted by ICE agents outside Delaney Hall earlier this year.

Fifty-some union members from various AFT locals were present, including PSC members and others involved in the Labor Eyes on ICE coalition, which has organized monthly protests of the unsanitary, neglectful and inhuman conditions in the facility. The union-organized rallies have been an important part of the resistance to the ICE/Geo Group detention facility, where the terrible conditions for those kidnapped/detained inside have led to three deaths.

Photo Credit: Kingsborough Community College

Kingsborough Community College opened its new Resources for Immigrant Student Success in Education (RISE) Center with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 28. PSC Secretary Andrea Vásquez and KCC Professor Rob Cowan from the Immigrant Solidarity Working Group (ISWG) were there, part of a crowd of 150 students, faculty, staff, and administrators from across the university and the borough. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and PSC member Cynthia Carvajal, who runs the Undocumented and Immigrant Student Student Program, spoke to this success, along with the KCC president and a student. The RISE Center will be staffed by a full-time director and a part-time immigration attorney. It is now the sixth fully staffed immigrant student success center at CUNY, providing “coordinated and centralized academic, career, financial, legal, and mental health support for immigrant students and their families.” Read this post from KCC to learn more.

Local efforts to establish the RISE Center and a CUNY-wide ISWG campaign to bring fully staffed Immigrant Student Success centers to all CUNY campuses were detailed recently in Clarion.

On Thursday, October 8th, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) honored the PSC’s Immigrant Solidarity Working Group along with the broader community of NYC Courtwatchers at their annual “Mazals” awards. Each year, the Mazals recognizes individuals and organizations who have demonstrated “creative leadership in moving a transformative agenda” in New York; this year the NYC Courtwatch community was awarded alongside the organization Mi Tlalli, and the writers Molly Crabapple and Arielle Angel. PSC Secretary Andrea Vasquez and former PSC President Barbara Bowen accepted the award on behalf of our members, along with other leaders in the local fight for immigrant justice. Learn more.

While ICE has been grabbing more people in our communities than in the courts recently, they still occasionally detain people from check-ins and often just show up to instill fear. Our neighbors remain haunted at the prospect of attending immigration hearings, so our court watch work remains important. If you have been through the PSC’s online court support training, please join with fellow union members to bear witness and support immigrants who are called to the courts. Meet any Friday at Pret, 7:30 AM at 319 Broadway, across the street from 26 Federal Plaza. The next online court support training will be Monday, October 19 at 6:30pm. Register here for the Zoom.

In 2024, CUNY changed its learning management system to Brightspace, and for the first time, affirmatively required all instruction be integrated into the learning management system. The PSC grieved the issue to seek compensation for the large amount of time our members spent learning the Brightspace platform.

Unfortunately, we received an arbitration decision that denied the grievance. The Arbitrator largely adopted CUNY’s argument, relying on the technicality: CUNY required faculty to use Brightspace, but did not explicitly require that they be trained on how to use it. Without a directive to participate in training, the time spent learning the platform was not compensable. Instead, the Arbitrator viewed expertise in new educational technologies as a requirement for instructors to be proficient at their jobs.