Faculty and staff at the City University of New York, in the midst of drawn-out negotiations with management, decided it was time to ratchet up the pressure this spring. Armed with research, PowerPoint presentations and the fervor of conviction, members of the Professional Staff Congress/AFT put on "Teach CUNY," a daylong, systemwide event to encourage people not only to reflect on the university's heritage and mission but to become active in shaping its future.

Each of the 18 campuses in the CUNY system participated in some way, says Nancy Romer, a psychology professor at Brooklyn College and a senior college officer for the PSC. With Mike Fabricant, a PSC vice president, Romer coordinated the overall event. There were two strands to the day--a public presentation and the incorporation of reflections about CUNY into the classroom curriculum. The public events featured expert panels, theatrical performances, open hearings and so on.

Participation levels ranged from 50 people showing up at the public event at Medgar Evers College to 300 each in the audiences at John Jay, Hostos and Kingsborough Community College, to 500-person audiences at Brooklyn, Queens and Hunter colleges. People were shocked, says Romer, to learn of the decline in state and city support for CUNY over the years. There has been a 48.6 percent decline in the number of full-time faculty since 1974 although enrollments have remained the same. Add to this the decline in financial support--the system is operating with less than two-thirds the money per student, in constant dollars, that it had 15 years ago.

"You go along and go along, trying not to look too closely," says Romer. "When you see the stats, it's hard to ignore that we are being destroyed."

"There is a real feeling of urgency that we have gone long enough with this campaign of actively disinvesting in CUNY," says Barbara Bowen, PSC president. "And we've gone too long without movement on the contract. All that we are fighting for is in the service of revitalizing the university and giving us the conditions that support excellence. This is in the interests of the students."

Faculty were especially careful to abide by the American Association of University Professors guidelines on academic freedom, says Bowen. But in many classes, it wasn't that difficult to weave CUNY into the content.

One historian teaching about education being a liberating force in the 19th century, linked it to the empowerment that occurs now for CUNY students. An economist spoke of the effect of higher education on the economic base of city and state and how it improves individuals' and families' lives. In her psychology class, Romer discussed psychological responses to deprivation and how poor and working class people are disempowered by the withholding of education.

"Our hope was to build strong support for a continuing fight to rebuild CUNY," says Bowen.

In spite of a decade of research, hearings, testimony, letters, phone calls and other support, Congress voted in early March to overturn a hard-won rule that protects workers from repetitive-stress injuries, which hit 600,000 workers every year.

The AFL-CIO, with backing from the AFT and the rest of its affiliates, is insisting that the Bush administration "hand back" the ergonomics standard.

As AFT On Campus goes to press, the AFL-CIO will be presenting a formal petition for a new ergonomics standard--signed by AFL-CIO affiliates--to the U.S. Secretary of Labor. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) will then hold a hearing on ergonomics protections; the AFT and other AFL-CIO affiliates plan to make sure that injured workers are heard. With musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), including repetitive-stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, being the number one reason for worker injury, the effort to gain ergonomic protections in the workplace will continue, says AFT health and safety specialist Darryl Alexander, who is liaison to the AFL-CIO on this issue.

AFT president Sandra Feldman charges that opponents "focus on short-term compliance costs rather than the immediate and long-term health benefits to working men and women across the country." Many teachers, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, nurses, office employees and other workers suffer from chronic painful injuries from certain repetitive tasks, says the AFT.

The probability of a second strike was averted at Elgin Community College in Illinois this spring when the college board of trustees agreed to binding arbitration to resolve a dispute over what was agreed to at the bargaining table.

The Elgin Community College Faculty Association/AFT, had already conducted one four-day strike--the first in its history--at the beginning of February (see News & Trends, April). The strike led to a tentative agreement on a four-year contract, initialed by management and ratified Feb. 12 by the union of 116 full-time and 86 part-time faculty. The following weekend, management changed its mind and decided not to make available funds to pay for the average 5.25 percent raises it had agreed to. As in the past, the raises were to come from funds freed up by retirements.

The union posted a photograph of the signed tentative agreement on its Web site (www.eccfa-aft.org). Soon after it held another vote reauthorizing the negotiating team to hold a strike. On March 14, the negotiating team and the board came to an agreement on arbitration. The two parties will pick the arbitrator and agree to accept his or her findings of fact.

"We’re confident we’ll win because we have the documentation," says Gary Christianson, ECCFA spokesperson.