By Daniel Afanasyev
More than 30 members of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY), including those from Brooklyn College, were arrested Monday, Oct. 21 after blocking an entrance to a CUNY Board of Trustees meeting held at John Jay College as part of a protest for a new union contract.
PSC, which is made up of 30,000 CUNY faculty and staff, has been engaged in two-year-long negotiations with CUNY over a new contract including higher pay after their original contract expired in Feb. of 2023, according to their website.
“CUNY offered unacceptable raises seven months ago, a year after their top executives received 27 percent and 30 percent bumps in pay […] They haven’t shown faculty, staff, and students the respect of a fair economic offer and haven’t put another dollar on the bargaining table since March,” PSC president and BC English professor James Davis said in a statement on Instagram.
PSC members, who have not seen a raise in salary since Nov. 2022, are also pushing for increased job security, pay parity, and health benefits for adjunct faculty, among other priorities.
“In the final years of our last contract, when inflation and the cost of living in NYC increased substantially, the value of our contract decreased against inflation, making it harder and harder for many CUNY employees, especially the lowest paid titles, such as teaching adjuncts who teach the majority of classes at CUNY, to be able to live in NYC,” Joseph Entin, a BC English professor and co-chair of the PSC-CUNY BC chapter, told The Vanguard.
In comparison to CUNY’s previous proposal of a 12.25% raise in salary over four and a half years, the union is proposing an 18% raise over four years. This proposal, according to the union, is needed to bring CUNY adjuncts up to the same salary level as other New York schools such as Rutgers and Stony Brook, and adjust for the rising cost of living in the city.
“I love CUNY and CUNY students, and this is what keeps so many of us working at CUNY despite the decades of underfunding and austerity, despite the leaking ceilings and crumbling buildings. But the lowest paid CUNY employees like adjunct instructors need a huge boost—they make far too little—and we all need more from CUNY management,” Entin said.
CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez, at a press conference at Brooklyn Tech High School on Tuesday, Oct. 22, expressed his hope that an agreement could be reached and a suitable contract could be offered to the union, according to the New York Daily News.
“We want to get the contract done as much as they want to. It’s the only contract that we haven’t done; we’ve been able to do with all our other unions in the system. So look forward to seeing them at the bargaining table and hopefully getting this done,” Rodríguez said.
After taking part in the Board of Trustees meeting and speaking on the working conditions they experienced at their respective colleges, all of the PSC members marched out of the auditorium and onto the street, with some members proceeding to block the entrance to the building.
“When we were inside, we told the Board of Trustees and the chancellery that we are prepared to blockade them in this building until they make us a new economic offer,” Davis told members outside of John Jay College, according to The Chief Leader. “We’re going to sit here and we’re going to chant until they come out and make us the economic offer that you deserve, that this city deserves, that all of our students deserve.”
Among the more than 30 union members arrested for disorderly conduct were six BC faculty, all part of PSC’s BC chapter. The professors arrested are as follows: Entin, Mobina Hashmi, co-chair of the PSC-CUNY BC chapter and assistant professor of Television Ration and Emerging Media (TREM), Maddy Fox, PSC-CUNY BC chapter EC member and associate professor of Children and Youth Studies and Sociology, Derek Ludovici, PSC-CUNY BC chapter EC member and adjunct lecturer of Anthropology, Naomi Schiller, PSC-CUNY BC chapter EC member and associate professor of Anthropology, and Ana Djordjevic, PSC-CUNY BC chapter EC member and adjunct lecturer of Health and Nutrition Sciences (HNSC).
“I was willing to get arrested because the working people of New York City deserve a thriving public university where students, staff, and faculty can learn and work in dignity,” Djordjevic told The Vanguard.
To the professors who were arrested, it is of the utmost importance to fight for better pay, not just so that their working conditions improve, but the students’ learning conditions improve as well.
“Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions. When faculty and staff are underpaid and can’t make ends meet, everyone suffers,” Schiller told The Vanguard. “Adequate pay and job security for faculty and staff are essential so that we can focus on the work we love—helping students learn and thrive.”