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Union leaders arrested at NYU
Labor shows solidarity at grad employee demonstration

AFT vice president William Scheuerman was one of 76 unionists, including AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, who were cuffed and led away from a sweltering noonday rally at New York University on Aug. 31. They were arrested by New York City police for blocking a college building in protest over union-busting at the private university.

Among some 1,100 supporters gathered in solidarity, the demonstrators blasted the university administration’s refusal to negotiate a second contract with the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, the UAW affiliate that has represented NYU graduate employees since 2002. Last year, in a politically motivated ruling, the National Labor Relations Board reversed itself and said that graduate employees at private universities are students and therefore do not have the right to collective bargaining.

The rally drew supporters from all over the city and from as far away as the Midwest. First among them was AFT Local 3882, the Union of Clerical, Administrative and Technical Staff at NYU. “We’ve been helping the TAs since 1996,” says UCATS president Stephen Rechner. “We were the university pariah until GSOC came along.”

UCATS played host to AFT contingents from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rutgers University/AAUP-AFT, the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. In addition to the United University Professions/AFT and New York State United Teachers, local support came from Kathy Levine, vice president of the Association of Dowling Adjuncts, and from AFT vice presidents Randi Weingarten of the United Federation of Teachers and Barbara Bowen of the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York. They say they fear NYU’s actions will embolden other university leaders to break existing campus unions and stonewall on organizing drives.

“Our contingent came up because the stakes are high. If this university succeeds in blocking a new contract, it’s bad for all university graduate assistants,” says Tina Collins, a Penn research assistant in history and political director of Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania/AFT. GET-UP’s organizing is stalled following the Bush-dominated NLRB decision.

Mike Quieto from the Teaching Assistants’ Association/AFT, University of Wisconsin, agrees. He calls NYU’s actions “part of an industrywide assault on graduate employees. Their refusal to bargain emboldens others running public and private universities.”

In blunt language, Sweeney said he was there “to express pure anger and disgust” at the NYU administration. “Union-busting is for corporate criminals who have no values, not for an educational institution,” he said.

Others corralled with the AFTers included UAW International secretary treasurer Elizabeth Bunn, UNITE-HERE president Bruce Raynor and New York state Sen. Tom Duane, who represents the NYU area. Scheuerman spoke for many when he shouted this parting comment as he was led away: “We’ll be back!”

This story was written by Michael Hirsch, a staff writer for New York Teacher, the UFT’s fortnightly publication.

Mass. faculty ratify new contract

While everybody wins when faculty are able to bargain a new contract, this year, part-time faculty at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth made the greatest leaps forward. The three-year contract ratified in June provides part-time lecturers with access to health and retirement benefits for the first time. This is especially gratifying, says UM-D Faculty Federation chief negotiator and first vice president James Griffith, for “we have been trying to negotiate the general environment of part-time faculty above slave status for about eight years.”

The contract, retroactive to Feb. 1, 2005, covers about 340 full-time faculty and librarians and 180 part-timers. In addition to the part-timer advances, it provides raises averaging 2.5 percent to 3 percent each year, a new merit system that raises standards for contract renewal, tenure and promotion, a new sabbatical leave policy and professional development research accounts for all full-time and part-time faculty and librarians. The next step is for the contract to go to Gov. Mitt Romney for approval and submission to the Legislature for funding.

With the last contract, it was this approval process that led to problems the faculty are still being compensated for. After approving the contract with 5 percent raises in each of three years, acting Gov. Jane Swift sent it to the Legislature, which voted to fund it, but then the governor turned around and vetoed the funding. The raises were frozen, but last semester, faculty finally saw the 15 percent increase reflected in their paychecks. This semester, says Griffith, they are promised a retroactive payment of the 15 percent applied to the first two years of the past agreement. In time for Christmas, he believes, faculty will get their current raises and retroactive payment.

Griffith attributes the dramatic progress on part-time benefits at the bargaining table to the hard organizing work of the part-timers. “They did a tremendous job building solidarity in their ranks and communicating their situation to the campus and general community,” he says. For example, they handed out bags with a few peanuts in them and “nutritional” information printed on the sides spelling out the embarrassing fact that they teach a third of all classes on campus. They also held bake sales to help people in their ranks pay their healthcare bills. Most recently, they held a big bake sale when the new university president was inaugurated. “The reality finally became an embarrassment to the administration,” says Griffith. Now the contract provides full benefits for those working at least half time over eight of the last nine semesters. Griffith says the union will work to shorten that qualification time in the next round of negotiations.

Professional staff at UMass-Dartmouth, unfortunately, are not beginning the year on a high note. The Faculty Federation’s Educational Services Unit, representing staff in admissions, athletics, computer services, counseling, housing and financial aid, to name a few service areas, has not been able to settle on a contract with the university despite a year of negotiations. Now the union is concerned that a settlement won’t come in time for the Legislature to fund it.