We won't let CUNY union fold on contract negotiations

(re: “New union contract is great for CUNY future,” Nov. 7)

I’m voting “no” on the bad PSC-CUNY contract as we must bargain for the common good, free college and no austerity pay.

I urge all Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York union members to join me in a “no” vote. There are many reasons for sending our bargaining team back to the table:

• PSC-CUNY leaders failed to reach our primary goal of $7,000 for every adjunct. CUNY adjuncts teach 65 percent of all CUNY courses and most currently make about $3,200 a course. That is not a living wage in New York City.

The mayor and governor found $3 billion for Amazon, and $11 billion for new prisons. CUNY lobbying resulted in negligible new money.

• PSC-CUNY leaders failed to bargain for the common good, especially CUNY’s poor and working class students of color. They failed to procure free college for all CUNY students.

With most CUNY students coming from homes earning less than $30,000 a year in the country’s most expensive city, this is unconscionable. Half of CUNY students are food and housing insecure without consistent resources to eat or stable housing.

• PSC-CUNY leaders failed to deliver all faculty and staff full back pay. Instead, some back pay was used to increase adjunct salaries. This move divides faculty and staff.

• PSC-CUNY leaders gave up salary steps for adjuncts to get a small, one-time non-living wage increase. Adjuncts didn’t ask for this, and don’t want to enshrine non-living wage pay for years.

• PSC-CUNY leaders failed to deliver raises for faculty and staff that match or beat inflation. They accepted pattern bargaining and lost the fight on austerity budgets.

• PSC-CUNY leaders refused to organize for strike actions. The single most powerful tool unions have is to strike. But failing to build power for a strike, they gave up a tool likely to achieve greater gains and rally students, staff, faculty and the community together to fight.

• PSC-CUNY leaders fear the Taylor Law. The Taylor Law needs to be broken, and a strike action can do it.

• PSC-CUNY leaders want the bargaining process closed. Rank-and-file members want an open process and transparency to build greater union power involving rank-and-file members from the beginning. Anger grows when rank-and-file are ignored and dismissed until time for a vote.

• PSC-CUNY leaders punched down toward rank-and-file members creatively organizing in multiple organizations.

Instead, PSC-CUNY leaders need to invite CUNY Struggle, 7KOrStrike and Free CUNY faculty, staff and students to be center stage of the process — the most vulnerable have the most to lose, and too many full-time faculty dominate the process when it should be the reverse at the bargaining table and beyond.

• PSC-CUNY needs democratic, transparent practices to engage all members. Currently, the delegate assembly membership does not reflect the majority of faculty — adjuncts. Union meetings and communication are relentlessly controlled by the only game in town — the New Caucus.

We need a rival caucus to challenge their power and control. We need union publications that reflect all voices, not just those of the leadership who condescendingly refuse other voices in print and in union chapter/assembly meetings.

PSC-CUNY is a one-caucus union, for now, with no room for differing views. However, the RedForEd movement shows leaders who refuse to listen to rank-and-file members are stunned when rank-and-file members strike truth to power.

The Bronx deserves the best, and this isn’t it.

The author is a professor at Lehman College, in its counseling, leadership, literacy and special education department.

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