For the second year in a row, enrollment is up at the City University of New York heading into fall semester. Increasing numbers of New Yorkers come to CUNY to meet their educational goals and obtain a degree from the country’s largest urban public university. This is welcome news after COVID-19 took a toll on enrollment and destabilized the university’s finances and workforce. The pivot to online learning during the pandemic challenged the 30,000 faculty and professional staff that my union (PSC) represents at our 24 colleges and professional schools, and they rose to meet that challenge. Now that workforce faces a challenge in contract negotiations. After more than a year at the bargaining table, we face an intransigent administration that still refuses to offer fair pay increases or appropriate job security.
When the pandemic hit, PSC members mastered new technologies and teaching methods, flipped labs and studios online, and provided remote advising and counseling to support students through those difficult years, all while providing for our families as the pandemic ravaged the city. Four years later, our college professors and academic professionals struggle to afford to live where they work. Average housing costs in our city increased almost 70% between 2012 and 2022. CUNY competes in a national labor market for faculty. Yet our full-time professors earn significantly less at CUNY than their peers at institutions such as Pace University, SUNY Stony Brook, and Rutgers. And part-time adjunct faculty teach the same courses as their full-time colleagues, but don’t receive the pay parity that they deserve.
College faculty and academic professionals should not have to work multiple jobs or wonder if they will have a paycheck or health insurance next year. But most of CUNY’s underpaid adjuncts work on one-semester appointments. Two contracts ago, management agreed to the union’s push for a measure of job security for adjunct faculty: three-year appointments that guaranteed two courses per semester (or equivalent work) for long-serving adjuncts. Those who qualified had a dependable source of income and enough work to qualify for health insurance.
CUNY management threatened to eliminate this pilot program. We are willing to negotiate areas of legitimate concern for management, but PSC members demand more job security–not less!
Like the low-income communities that we serve, CUNY workers were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. For a time, CUNY suffered more COVID-related faculty and staff deaths than any other university in the country. CUNY’s recent history of increased greenhouse gas emissions must be reversed, mold and other air quality issues must be remedied, and the labor contract must be updated to include monitoring and disclosure of progress on clean, contaminant-free airflow in our classrooms and workplaces.
We also know that our students are best served when the faculty and staff experience a healthy work-life balance, including the provisions that our counterparts at other state and city agencies have achieved for remote work and flexible scheduling, paid parental leave, and clear paths to promotion.
Our student body is among the hardest-striving, most diverse, and least wealthy in the country, and we are committed to helping them fulfill their goals and aspirations. The administration must support the people who teach these students and work with them on a daily basis. CUNY changes lives because of us. We provide our students with an outstanding education through our academic programs, advising, and mentorship. We contribute valuable research to private industries and the public sector. We create an educated workforce that overwhelmingly stays in New York City and State after graduation. We join our students as the face of the university when it comes to promoting and publicizing our great colleges in subway ads and social media campaigns. We are demanding fairness in wages and benefits and safety and respect on the job.
James Davis is the President of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) representing 30,000 faculty and staff members at CUNY.
