Albany Lawmakers Have Two Days to Pass a Bill to Improve CUNY Funding
If you haven’t yet, please send the PSC’s e-letter urging legislators to support Assembly Bill 5370a/Senate Bill 281a. It would provide future funding for the PSC contract and ensure that tuition hikes go to improve education, not to cover unfunded mandatory university operating expenses. IF YOU HAVE ALREADY SENT THE PSC LETTER, NYSUT’s Member Action Center has a similar letter you can send. Every letter helps! A5370a/S281a would make it harder for the State to underfund CUNY by strengthening and making permanent the State’s “Maintenance of Effort” provisions for CUNY and SUNY. But it needs a strong grassroots push to become law. Send a letter today.
Elected Officials Call for PSC-CUNY Contract Funding
Lawmakers are speaking out in support of CUNY faculty and staff because they understand that five years without a raise hurts CUNY students. Eighteen NYC members of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus sent a letter to Governor Cuomo, Majority Leader Flanagan and Speaker Heastie last week calling for a true maintenance of effort for CUNY and $240 million to fund retroactive pay for PSC members. The Assembly’s Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force members also sent a letter to the governor and legislative leaders. Borough Presidents Eric Adams of Brooklyn and Ruben Diaz Jr. of the Bronx, each sent their own letters to Mayor de Blasio urging him to make the PSC-CUNY contract a priority in Albany. And Council Member Inez Barron has introduced a NYC Council resolution calling on the governor and the Legislature to “provide the necessary investment to reach a fair labor agreement with the University’s faculty and staff.” Its sponsors include I. Daneek Miller, Margaret S. Chin, Inez E. Dickens, Vincent J. Gentile, Corey D. Johnson, Rosie Mendez, Ruben Wills, Deborah L. Rose and Fernando Cabrera. Be sure to email or tweet your thanks to these elected officials if they represent you.
Low-Pay Stories are Coming In. Share Yours.
We’ve heard from a number of faculty and staff who are struggling because of CUNY’s inadequate salaries and some who are thinking of leaving CUNY. One assistant professor told us she just got tenure but needs a roommate to make ends meet in her Queens studio apartment. Another said rent hikes ate up all of the pay increase that came with her promotion to associate professor. And several people knew of promising recruits—especially parents of young children—lost to colleges in nearby states. What’s your low-pay story? Tell us here. Sharing can help us make our needs clear to the State lawmakers who must fund the PSC-CUNY contract and the CUNY administrators with whom we are negotiating. Your submission won’t be anonymous, but stories with personally identifying information won’t be posted or published without your permission.
Sign the #Fightfor15 Petition
PSC members were there in solidarity when workers and unionists rallied and testified at a hearing of the Wage Board convened by Governor Cuomo to decide on a pay raise for hundreds of thousands of fast-food workers across New York State. The Board exists because fast-food workers and unions throughout the state have organized and struck and campaigned relentlessly for $15 an hour and the right to form a union. Governor Cuomo has not yet called for a $15 per hour wage, the wage fast-food workers need to support themselves their families, but the Wage Board has the power to make it so. The Board members may make a decision next week; they need to hear from you right now. This petition sponsored by the #FightFor15 campaign calls on the Board to raise the wage all the way up to $15 per hour because no one who works full time should live in poverty. The petition signatures will be printed this Thursday, June 18. So sign now.
