Keep the Pressure on For Adjunct Health Insurance
The PSC’s all-out campaign to push CUNY to solve the adjunct health insurance crisis is showing results, but there is much more to do. To start, we need many more signatures on the petition. If you haven’t signed, please do so right now. If you have, please share the petition with your colleagues, both full and part-time. You can also get involved in on-campus actions being organized by PSC chapters through the remainder of October and November. This latest wave of activity will crest with the CUNY Board Trustees’ public hearing on November 21. Full-time and part-time members who want to testify about the importance of adjunct health insurance at the hearing should contact PSC Communications Coordinator Fran Clark.
Help Defend the Social Safety Net—Tuesday, October 25
Congress’s Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (i.e. the “Super Committee”) is meeting in secret, and making plans that could increase economic insecurity and reduce access to health care for millions of Americans. The fight is on to protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, employee health benefits, public-sector pensions and other safety net programs. RSVP today for a forum entitled A Call to Action: Defend the Social Safety Net on Tuesday, October 25 from 6:00-8:30 PM at the SEIU1199 Auditorium (310 West 43rd Street). Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, will keynote the event sponsored by our Social Safety Net Working Group.
Adjuncts, Now Is the Time to Enroll in Your Retirement Plan
Governor Cuomo wants major changes in pensions for New York’s public employees that would result in increased contributions and potential benefit reductions for new employees who join the pension system after the changes take effect. The PSC and other labor unions will be fighting hard to make sure that this proposal does not become law, but the outcome is unknown. Eligible adjuncts are entitled to a pension benefit; by enrolling now in TRS you make use of that entitlement and ensure that you are covered under the current rules. Learn more.
Labor Goes to the Movies
In keeping with this year’s theme of “Lessons,” PSC’s Labor Goes to the Movies film series will screen High School, a 1968 documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman. Cited by the Library of Congress as a National Treasure, Wiseman’s documentary of a Philadelphia high school quietly presents the effects of institutional education and the inevitable clash of generations. The film will be presented this Friday evening in the Union Hall (61 Broadway, 16th Floor) from 6:00-9:00 PM. Learn more about this week’s movie here.
Preaching the “Virtues” of Austerity
Konstantin (Costas) Panayotakis is a member of the PSC Delegate Assembly from New York City College of Technology. His alter ego, “Austerity Nut,” uses irony to get New Yorkers to think critically about the distribution of wealth in our society and policies that put the interests of the wealthy over the needs of ordinary Americans. Austerity Nut is a hyper-capitalist true-believer who preaches the need for working people to “sacrifice for our suffering brothers and sisters in Wall Street.” Costas and a few other CUNY people are taking his message to the subway. See the video.
