On September 8th, President Garrell announced the opening of a food pantry at the Graduate Center for September 12th. We at The Adjunct Project are outraged by the inaccessibility of the pantry’s hours (open 3 hours only 3 days a week, and “by appointment” Monday-Thursday), the use of surveillance tactics (requirements to present an ID and “provide some basic information”), and the policing of the amount of food that community members are able to access (only 5 items per week, and the vague mention of “additional items available for those with families”). These restrictions are abhorrent and need to change immediately.

This lackluster “resource” falls far short of the needs of our community experiencing food insecurity, particularly given the low wages (if any, for unfunded students) for graduate workers. The GC administration has had over 7 months to work together with community members and organizers who very successfully raised funds and ran the People’s Pantry, however, they chose to not only ignore this hardworking group that actively provided resources and a sense of community for folks, but the administration also failed to seek their input/advice and have actively prevented their work from reaching students in need.

We call on the administration to expand the availability of the GC Pantry to all hours that the building is open, stigma-free access that does not require one to identify oneself, and no limits on the amount of items someone is able to access. Anything short of this is insulting and violent.

We need a CUNY for the People.

Living Wages Now.

Job Announcement

Adjunct Project: Co-organizer for Advocacy and Education

Applications due November 1, 2020

The Doctoral and Graduate Students’ Council (DGSC) seeks candidates for the open positions of Co-organizer for Advocacy and Education at the CUNY Adjunct Project. 

The Adjunct Project is an affiliate organization of the DGSC. Its three co-coordinators work with each other, the DGSC, and labor organizing efforts on and off campus to advocate for, share information with, and collaboratively build the power of CUNY adjuncts and Graduate Center student workers. The organization has as its mandate to raise consciousness on the state of academic labor as a whole. 

The new coordinator will serve alongside two other coordinators from September 2020 to June 30, 2021, with the possibility of reappointment, and be paid an annual stipend of approximately $4,787.60 to be paid in monthly payments throughout the year. Applicants must be matriculated Graduate Center students with experience as CUNY adjuncts or adjunct-equivalent roles. 

The successful applicant will work together with the other coordinators of the Adjunct Project, who are collectively responsible for: 

• organizing with CUNY adjuncts and student workers around working conditions and overlapping struggles; 
• planning workshops, discussions, and other programming aligned with the Adjunct Project’s mission; 
• liaising with other groups on CUNY campuses, including but not limited to the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), adjunct groups, and undergraduate groups; 
• stimulating awareness, discussion, and collective action around adjunct and student worker issues among the broader Graduate Center community as well as across the CUNY campuses; 
• identifying changes in national, state, and local labor relations relevant to graduate student adjuncts; 
• updating website and social media content and producing other publicity and materials regarding issues, information, and events; 
• maintaining the Adjunct Project’s operations, including tracing finances and responding to emails; 
• ensuring that all activities of the Adjunct Project are consistent with the DGSC Constitution and Bylaws; and 
• hiring consultants, contingent on need and funding. 

The official job description for the Co-organizer for Advocacy and Education can be found here, under number 4.

We specifically seek applications from individuals with the ability to contribute to the continuing commitment of both the Adjunct Project and the DGSC to equity and inclusion, social and cultural diversity, and the transformative power of our differences. We are particularly interested in applicants with digital organizing and advocacy experience (twitter, facebook, website, graphics development, as a primary facet of this position will include digital event management (political education, webinars, panels, actions, etc.). The search committee invites applicants to identify their strengths and experiences in these areas and describe how they would further this goal at the Adjunct Project. 

Candidates must forward CVs and cover letters indicating the position they are interested in to Sharanya Dutta, DGSC Co-Chair for Student Affairs at (ccsa@cunydsc.org) by November 1, 2020.

While COVID-19 social distancing measures are still in effect, this position will be remote. We do have an office on campus, but we urge everyone on staff to not go to the GC office, and to work from home for the time being. If you are not in New York City due to COVID-19, you may still apply. However, our intentions are to be back in- person, when it is fully safe to do so.

To Interim Graduate Center President James Muyskens, Interim Graduate Center Provost Julia Wrigley, CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez, and the CUNY Board of Trustees:

We are in the midst of a global pandemic, and we have uninsured students at the Graduate Center because CUNY has been unwilling to answer the call from the Full and Fair Funding group, the CUNY Adjunct Project, the Doctoral Student Council, and over 450 community members* who have demanded structural change to secure equity in funding and health insurance for all doctoral students.

Healthcare is a human right, and the Graduate Center has the responsibility to provide it to all students.

One third of current and incoming doctoral students at the CUNY Graduate Center – as much as 50% in some departments – receive only five-year tuition waivers or else no funding at all. Within this two-tiered system, students without Graduate Assistantships do not qualify for the New York State Health Insurance Program. Many students are forced to take on extremely precarious low-paying adjunct jobs to qualify for health insurance, and sit with the anxiety each semester that they will lose both their job and their ability to seek medical care. 

The present global health situation, increasing in urgency with a case of COVID-19 already reported within the CUNY system, shows the importance of structurally guaranteed, universal access to health insurance. 

The contract ratified in December of last year by the PSC has set up infrastructure for expanded access to NYSHIP. However, four months later, there have been no implemented changes in student’s access to health insurance at the Graduate Center. It is now that we must see a firm and rapid commitment from CUNY to secure non-contingent access to healthcare for all doctoral students. 

We call on CUNY leadership to move quickly to eliminate the two-tiered funding structure and to provide the human right of healthcare to all students at the Graduate Center. 

Signed,

The Full and Fair Funding group

The CUNY Adjunct Project

*Number of signatures on our Spring 2019 open letter demanding universal graduate assistant positions and access to health insurance. To sign the letter and for more information on the Full and Fair Funding campaign, visit http://cunyadjunctproject.org/funding

On November 13th, Amazon announced that New York state and city politicians have pledged up to $3 billion in tax incentives to fund its new headquarters in Long Island City. That same day, CUNY Board of Trustees Chair William Thompson Jr. declared that CUNY would be “a lead partner in Amazon’s exciting headquarters expansion” and promised to “commit our considerable college assets to ensure that Amazon has a strong pipeline for talent, ideas and innovation.” Interim Chancellor Vita C. Rabinowitz expressed her wish for CUNY to “provide skilled graduates” to Amazon.

Meanwhile, the almost 12,000 adjuncts who teach the majority of CUNY’s classes receive an average of $3,500 per course, over 30% of doctoral students are underfunded, and tuition continues to increase. The same exceptional student body that CUNY offers up to Amazon must contend with limited (and often unpaid) support from overworked and underpaid adjunct faculty. We struggle each semester to piece together work and funding to stay enrolled. And all the while, our campus infrastructure is crumbling as per-student investment plunges.

Amazon has both astronomical wealth and a long and disturbing record of labor abuses. Local Queens tenant and worker organizations have made it clear that the arrival of Amazon’s headquarters would be disastrous for residents, including CUNY students and their families.

Although CUNY administrators have voiced support for undocumented students and the sanctuary campus movement in the wake of Trump’s assault on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Amazon provides critical infrastructure for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). New York’s corporate welfare – and CUNY administrators’ effusive support for it – is a shameful endorsement of a company that profits off of deportations and the separation of children from their parents.

The Adjunct Project, which organizes with CUNY adjunct faculty and graduate student workers, condemns CUNY’s support for the Amazon headquarters deal. We call on CUNY administrators, city government, and state legislators to withdraw our “considerable college assets” from subsidizing an anti-worker, pro-ICE, $1 trillion corporation, and to reinvest in CUNY’s students and employees. We demand: a just union contract, including a minimum rate of $7,000 per course for adjunct faculty; full and fair funding for all doctoral students; and a tuition-free CUNY.

Since the fall, the Adjunct Project has been working in coalition with CUNY Struggle and the adjunct committee of the Graduate Center’s Professional Staff Congress chapter to amplify and organize around the need to achieve adjunct parity in the next contract. To that end, the three groups collectively authored and released the following statement at the beginning of this semester.

Non-Negotiable: Adjunct Parity in the Next PSC-CUNY Contract

A Joint Statement by the PSC GC Adjunct Committee, the Adjunct Project, and CUNY Struggle

January 30, 2017

Adjunct parity can mean either a complete end to the multi-tier system of faculty labor (such as in the case of Vancouver Community College, where all faculty do the same work, have the same working conditions, and are on the same salary schedule, pro-rated for those working less than full time) or a pro-rata salary schedule for “part-time” faculty so that their wages are in proportion to that of full-time lecturers (as in the case of the California State University). Although many of us would like to see the “Vancouver model” in place at the City University of New York, where adjuncts make roughly 29% to 38% of full-time salaries, have little to no job security, and are largely sidelined from service and research, we recognize that the U.S. labor context and the much-larger scale of CUNY complicate the achievement of that goal.

Nevertheless, as we—a group of graduate students at the Graduate Center working as both graduate assistants and adjuncts—have discussed adjunct parity over the last few months, we have come to agreement on the following bottom-line, non-negotiable demands for the upcoming round of bargaining vis-à-vis the expiration of the current PSC-CUNY contract in November 2017:

1. A pro-rata salary schedule for all part-time faculty in proportion to the full-time lecturer salary schedules, with a minimum salary of $7,000 per three-credit course;
2. Genuine job security in the form of a seniority system based on date of original appointment and the number of credits taught over time;
3. Representation of part-time faculty and graduate employees on the bargaining committee in proportion to their numbers in the overall bargaining unit.

Although the first two demands would not end the multi-tier system of faculty labor at CUNY, they would produce substantial movement toward parity between the salary and job security of part-time and full-time faculty. The last demand, meanwhile, would produce parity in the bargaining committee, which we hope would help the overall bargaining committee hold fast to the first two demands.

In solidarity,

Graduate Center Graduate Assistants and Adjuncts of:

the PSC GC Adjunct Committee

the Adjunct Project

CUNY Struggle

If you’d like to get involved in this effort, contact us!

Today the Adjunct Project hosts our first formal event of the academic year, the kick-off to our “Toward a Just Contract in 2017” series we’ll be presenting through the current CUNY-PSC contract’s expiration in November 2017.

For this event, we’re focusing on some of the many issues that were largely, or totally, omitted from the last round of bargaining that resulted in the contract just ratified this past August—and the issues that need to be discussed, amplified, and centered in the next round of contract bargaining between the PSC and CUNY.

On Thursday, June 16th, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) announced it had reached a tentative contract with CUNY management, and the following evening it released a summary of the contract’s details. By Wednesday, June 22nd, the “memorandum of agreement” providing the contract’s full details started to circulate, although as of this writing that memorandum hadn’t been officially distributed to the PSC’s membership at large. And on Thursday, June 23rd, the PSC’s Delegate Assembly voted to endorse the tentative contract by 111-11. It will now be sent to the union membership for ratification, in which all of us—higher education officers (HEOs), tenured and full-time faculty, CUNY Language Immersion Program (CLIP) and CUNY Start instructors, graduate employees, and adjuncts, the group of workers the Adjunct Project was created by the Doctoral Students’ Council to serve 22 years ago—will be able to vote for or against it.

As the coordinators of the Adjunct Project, we recognize that many members of the bargaining unit are grateful just to have a tentative contract after six years without one, and we’re ourselves grateful for the work of so many people not just to reach this point but to amplify adjunct and graduate-employee concerns throughout this process. We recognize that there may be aspects of this tentative contract that are agreeable to some or many, and that the contract overall may be perceived, as one common reaction has it, as “better than nothing.” We also understand that, in the midst of austerity, the fight back from the threatened $485-million funding cut by the state—a fabricated crisis—and from management’s initial 6% economic offer are not just immediate victories but  important steps in the continuing struggle against austerity as an ongoing political economic project. Indeed, we look forward to participating in this struggle with even greater resolve going forward.

Nevertheless, and mindful of both the Adjunct Project’s and the Doctoral Students’ Council’s endorsements of striking as the only means to achieve a genuinely fair contract, we are advocating a “NO” vote on the tentative contract because it fails adjuncts, who teach approximately two-thirds of CUNY courses, by maintaining our unsustainably low wages and insecure employment status while increasing the disparity between our pay and employment status and that of full-time faculty. Moreover, the tentative contract fails all workers in the bargaining unit by its overall concessions to the state and management. We offer the following specifics:

(1) In providing across-the-board wage increases, the tentative contract further increases the pay disparity between full-time and part-time faculty. In order to decrease this pay gap—and achieve the “movement toward adjunct salary parity” the PSC called for as its third contract demand—adjuncts need to receive “equity pay” in the form of substantial raises over and above across-the-board wage increases. Under the terms of the tentative contract, the across-the-board pay increase of 10.41% (with compounding) will provide an adjunct lecturer at the bottom of the pay scale with $300+ more per course by the end of the contract ($3,222 [rounded], compared to the present $2,918 for a 15-week course). This keeps adjunct pay at an unfathomably low rate in spite of the fact that the Adjunct Project—and the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor, the Doctoral Students’ Council, and the Modern Language Association—call for a minimum of $7,000 per course, while the PSC’s First Fridays adjunct group endorsed a $5,000 minimum (a minimum the PSC itself has endorsed via its support for the National Mobilization for Equity). By comparison, a full professor at the lowest rung of the pay scale will receive an additional $7,000+ per year by the end of the contract ($68,803 currently, versus $75,975 under the proposed contract). 

(2) The signing bonuses reinforce this pay disparity. Full-time faculty and staff will receive a $1000 signing bonus, to be pro-rated for part-timers. However, adjuncts who are paid for just 45 hours of work per three-credit course while actually working many multiples of that amount will receive only a minimal signing bonus—and most of us won’t qualify for the designated adjunct bonus given the high bar set for obtaining it. Meanwhile, graduate employees will only receive $750 or $500 depending on what appointment they have (graduate assistant A, B, or C, or graduate assistant D, respectively).

(3) Instead of equity pay for adjuncts, the PSC conceded to management’s demand for what might be termed “elite pay,” or the up-to-15% raises that “select faculty and staff” will be able to receive under this contract beyond the upper limit of the pay schedule. This concession not only considerably widens the pay disparity at the top end: it also shows that additional money can be found for targeted wage increases.

(4) Although the three-year appointments for adjuncts are being hailed as a breakthrough by some, the details prove otherwise. First, the three-year appointments are only a pilot program, fully contingent upon management’s approval to continue them beyond the initial five-year trial period. Second, management reserves the right to appoint adjuncts to the three-year terms on the basis of the “fiscal and programmatic needs of the department and/or the college” (provision #4 in the relevant section of the memorandum of agreement), which means even under the pilot program, adjuncts will be appointed at management’s discretion, just as we are now. Third, the appointments will not apply to the majority of adjuncts, who won’t meet the requirement of teaching six credits a semester in the same department for 10 continuous semesters. Further, since most of us will not qualify for the appointments, the appointments create yet another tier of employment status within the faculty ranks. Finally, the three-year appointments, which will require a “tenure-lite” review triannually, are a far cry from the “Certificate of Continuous Employment” the PSC listed as its 22nd demand, in which adjuncts, after teaching a minimum of 12 contact hours for one department in five of the previous seven years, would undergo a single review and then could only be terminated for just cause. Instead, a seniority system, for which the First Fridays group and others lobbied, would be the best job protection short of tenure.

(5) The 9/6 rule will remain, which limits adjuncts to teaching nine credits at one campus and six credits at another. Many of us lobbied for either an outright end to this policy—a PSC rule that ostensibly limits our exploitation—or its significant relaxation, so that we could have more control over our teaching schedules (say, by centralizing our teaching at one campus, thus increasing and solidifying our presence there while cutting down or eliminating travel time between campuses). Again, as adjuncts and graduate student workers, we should and must be paid more, but until we achieve parity, we should be able to work more and have more choice about where we work.

(6) The 10.41% across the board wage increase is less than the rate of inflation (12%) since the last wage increase went into effect in 2009, and is considerably less than the cost-of-living increase in the New York City area over that same period (above 20%, according to various estimates).

(7) Ultimately, incrementalism will not end either the two-tier system of faculty labor at CUNY nor the austerity program of New York State and CUNY management. Indeed, austerity can only be defeated by following through on the strike authorization and taking other bold, imaginative, committed, collective action.

Thus we’re left with no option but to vote “NO” on this contract, an obligation we share with fellow adjuncts, graduate student workers, and all those who recognize that our union is only as strong as the most exploited among us. Voting “NO” also makes it clear to our bargaining team and to CUNY management that “better than nothing” isn’t good enough—not after six years without a raise, and not at a moment when we’re more organized and ready to fight than ever. Finally, voting “NO” means not giving up on the strike that we campaigned for and authorized with a 92% majority, and which remains the most powerful tool at our disposal to secure a contract worthy of our labor. We’ve waited too long and fought too hard to accept this contract. By refusing to accept it—by refusing to wait for another endless round of negotiations on the next contract—we also refuse to accept the worsening status quo. We know in our working hearts, minds, and bodies what we need to do, and we look forward to a vigorous discussion about it after we say “NO!”

With love and solidarity,

The Adjunct Project coordinators

[Image: “Striking clothing workers parade” via Digital Collections, UIC Library via CC BY-NC-Nd 2.0.]

The Adjunct Project endorses the Resolution Endorsing the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions, scheduled to be voted on at the April 15 plenary meeting of the Doctoral Students’ Council (DSC) at the Graduate Center, CUNY. This resolution responds to a call from Palestinian academic workers in the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and the General Union of Palestinian Teachers, among other Palestinian labor and civil-society organizations. If passed, it would require the DSC to adhere to the boycott of Israeli academic institutions and support the work of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) groups and other solidarity efforts.

Palestinian workers face some of the world’s highest unemployment rates and are increasingly forced to take exploitative, unregulated, non-unionized jobs. Answering the call to boycott is a refusal to cooperate with institutions complicit in Palestinian workers’ exploitation and occupation.  

In New York City and across North America, groups supporting Palestinians have come under attack. Students, faculty, and other workers associated with CUNY SJP chapters currently face unsupported charges of anti-Semitism that infringe on their freedom of speech, their academic freedom, and their working conditions. The Adjunct Project joins the SJPs in vehemently opposing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of bigotry and racism. We advocate an end to Israeli state apartheid policies as a specifically anti-racist and anti-colonial project.

We further condemn local and state politicians who attempt to justify a regime of austerity through the suppression of solidarity organizing on campuses. In March, the New York State Senate voted for a $485-million reduction in state funding for CUNY in part as retribution for Palestinian solidarity organizing on campuses. This planned defunding failed in last-minute budget negotiations, but the CUNY system still faces a massive shortfall: in addition to millions of dollars in cuts to individual colleges, no funds were allocated for contract negotiations with the 25,000 workers represented by the Professional Staff Congress who have gone six years without a pay increase.

The passage of this academic-boycott resolution is important for resisting both the austerity politics that target public employees like CUNY workers and, in particular, the effects of such politics on working-class people-of-color students, faculty, and staff, who must contend with forms of structural racism, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism similar to those faced by Palestinians.

We join the graduate student worker union UAW 2865 at the University of California in endorsing academic boycott and the many other academic groups that have done so as well, including the Association for Asian American Studies, the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, the African Literature Association, the American Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, and the National Women’s Studies Association, and we support the GSOC for BDS caucus of the union of graduate student workers at New York University in their referendum on BDS, including academic boycott.

The boycott resolution before the DSC is an important step in supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. We encourage representatives of the DSC to vote for the resolution, and all members of the CUNY community to raise awareness, through resources like those provided by Labor for Palestine, and to support or get involved with efforts on their campuses, including CUNY for Palestine and SJP chapters.

With love and solidarity,

The Adjunct Project coordinators

[Image: “Palestine: The Separation Wall” by MissyKel via CC BY-NC-Nd 2.0.]

Since the beginning of this academic year, there has been talk of a strike as the only way to ensure a decent contract with CUNY management, which the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) has been steadily bargaining with since June 2014 (after an initial bargaining session in January 2011). Six years have passed since the last contract expired, and management, having made a measly contract offer that would essentially amount to a pay cut for faculty and staff, has declared an impasse.

The possibility of a strike first became tangible when the PSC announced in October that it would hold a strike-authorization vote that, if successful, would allow the PSC’s Executive Council to call a strike. Subsequently, the PSC has been asking its members to publicly declare their intention to vote yes on that strike-authorization vote when it occurs; in response, a range of additional organizing has also ensued.

Now, despite management’s notice of impasse, preparations for a strike-authorization vote continue; indeed, if management has essentially given up on bargaining, as the notice of impasse indicates, holding a strike seems all the more crucial.

In this context, having deliberated among ourselves as Adjunct Project coordinators, and having consulted with numerous other parties over the last several months, the Adjunct Project has decided to endorse a strike because we believe that it is, indeed, the only way to ensure a decent contract. Further, we believe that a strike is essential to ensuring that adjunct needs and student needs are sufficiently met in the contract.

To this end, we are endorsing four related initiatives in support of both a strike and the centering of adjunct and student needs: