Persistence pays.

After three years of protesting and negotiating and even considering a strike, faculty and staff of the Professional Staff Congress/AFT reached a contract settlement this spring with the City University of New York. Members ratified the agreement on June 2 with a vote of 5,902 to 886. That vote of 87 percent to 13 percent, said PSC president Barbara Bowen, was "an exceptional expression of support," culminating a very tough bargaining process.

Management agreed to a multimillion-dollar increase in the union's welfare fund, as well as salary increases, enhanced terms for sabbatical and professional development, and the addition of 100 new full-time lecturer positions.

The contract was settled despite "fierce economic constraints," said Bowen. "This is a principled, imaginative agreement that maximizes the available funds for CUNY faculty and staff." A total of 20,000 full-time and part-time faculty, adjuncts and professional staff are covered by the five-year contract. Many of them pressured the administration through everything from faxes and phone calls to a candlelight vigil outside the president's office and monthly protests at every board of trustees meeting for a year.

The result of this unrelenting pressure: Total salary increases average 9.5 percent over the life of the contract, which extends from Nov. 1, 2002, to Sept. 19, 2007. Because the state held CUNY to the same increases as the State University of New York, the PSC made sure the economic package was enhanced in other ways: an increase of about 20 percent per year in the employer's contribution to the welfare fund; an increase to 80 percent for sabbatical pay; a professional development fund for adjuncts that provides grants of up to $3,000; increased minimum salaries for College Language Immersion Program faculty; and paid sick leave for adjuncts, as well as increased access to services like e-mail, voice mail, directories and the library. Other changes include 100 new, full-time lecturer lines, which puts CUNY in front of the battle to secure more full-time positions rather than allow part-time positions to grow and undermine job security on college campuses.

This last measure recognizes the value of CUNY's experienced adjuncts by making them the only applicants eligible for the new positions, in essence converting their part-time positions to full-time. "Nationally, this will make our contract one of the few in higher education that creates new full-time positions and goes against the grain of increasing contingent labor," says Bowen. She notes, however, that it is only a small step toward offering "anything like parity" to thousands of part-timers whose "underpaid labor has kept the university afloat as funds were being slashed," and she vows to continue addressing the contingent labor issue.

As important as additions to the contract are eliminations: PSC prevented management from removing department chairs from the bargaining unit and reducing job security for higher education officers. And the union refused to give up annual leave days for higher education officers and college lab technicians, arguing that management’s demand to "increase productivity" in this way had already been met through years of increased enrollment. [Virginia Myers Kelly]

July 25, 2006