As the Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New York grind toward a contract resolution, the cracks are starting to show in the hard left leadership of the union president, Barbara Bowen, who, in the midst of what ought to be a serious negotiation and a challenge from a rival faction of the 20,000-member union, spent time and money e-mailing around an attack on this newspaper for a report in which we are able to detect no errors.

It’s easy to see, with a glance at the stewardship of the union in the last few years, why so many union members are clamoring to oust Ms. Bowen & Co. The last PSC contract expired in October 2002 – three and a half years ago – and it seems to have taken the threat of electoral defeat for Ms. Bowen to move toward a deal with university management. CUNY professors have watched their “welfare fund” – a health-benefits account – dwindle to less than $2 million from $15 million when Ms. Bowen’s New Caucus took power in 2000.

Ms. Bowen has blamed CUNY management for the lack of a contract and explained the vanishing welfare fund by saying city and state contributions have failed to keep up with rising costs. The leaders of the opposing CUNY Alliance have other ideas, which make more sense to us. They say the New Caucus has focused too heavily on “global politics” and not enough on “bread and butter” union issues.

Under Ms. Bowen, the union has passed a resolution opposing the liberation of Iraq and later joined the group U.S. Labor Against the War. After persistent criticism from some union members, Ms. Bowen has only recently, and in the midst of her election battle, sought to distance herself from an anti-Israel group, New York City Labor Against the War, which she had named a “Friend of CUNY” in 2004.That group opposed the war in Afghanistan and was it self a co-founder of Labor for Palestine, which has a central platform of divestment from Israel.

The CUNY Alliance contends that Ms. Bowen’s radical bargaining tactics alienated university management and left the union in a vastly weakened negotiating position. The facts seem to bear this argument out. In September, Ms. Bowen threatened to lead the union on what would have been an illegal strike. And three months later, she backed up her extreme rhetoric by appearing with the soon-to-be-jailed Roger Toussaint during his illegal walkout on New York City transit riders.

After four years and the threat of a strike, with what is Ms. Bowen left? A contract that one CUNY Alliance candidate, Howard Ross, says, “stinks to high heaven.” The 8.48% salary increase (9.5%, according to Ms. Bowen, including an $800 boost to base pay) over four years and ten months is less than the transit workers received – and rejected – after their strike. In her e-mail this week, Ms. Bowen tore into The New York Sun for reporting that the union had lowered its salary demands. Yet as recently as the March issue of Clarion, the union newspaper, Ms. Bowen refers to “salary increases of at least 10%” as one of three union goals. What’s next, for Ms. Bowen to attack her own union’s organ as inaccurate?

Ms. Bowen’s desperation is understandable; she is struggling to close a contract and save her job at the same time. All the more refreshing to see that CUNY professors and staff members have a chance this month to choose a new course. This all might seem like small beans but for the fact that CUNY is not the only university that is being roiled by a labor strike between faculty and administration – or between students and faculty. New Yorkers understand the principles that CUNY’s president, Matthew Goldstein, and his colleagues are seeking to uphold on the public’s behalf.