CUNY Faculty Union Says It Will Strike Unless Demands Are Met

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The faculty union of the City University of New York is threatening to stage a strike unless its contract demands are met.


State law prohibits public employees from striking and imposes heavy fines on violators.


With negotiations between the university and the Professional Staff Congress at a standstill for months, union officials say they are mobilizing members for a strike that could potentially shut down classes and research at the university’s 17 senior and community college campuses.


“I am writing now to ask you to take seriously the possibility that you will be asked to vote on whether the PSC should engage in a collective withholding of our labor,” the president of the union, Barbara Bowen, wrote in the September newsletter of the Professional Staff Congress.


While public employees unions in the state have at times used the threat of a strike to leverage their bargaining position, Chancellor Matthew Goldstein does not appear to be taking the matter lightly. The university’s general counsel, Frederick Schaffer, has prepared a letter to faculty members warning them about the consequences of participating in a strike, according to sources.


As with any public employees, CUNY strikers would face a payroll deduction of twice their daily rate. The union would lose its ability to collect dues and could also be fined. If CUNY obtained an injunction from a state court to stop the strike and the union refused to back down, Ms. Bowen could face arrest. “The penalties are fairly severe,” the executive director of the Public Employment Relations Board, James Edgar, said.


The union, which has about 20,000 members, plans to gauge the level of support for a strike at a membership meeting at Cooper Union on September 29. Ms. Bowen has strongly urged departmental chairmen, who are members of the union and are elected by professors within their department, to attend the meeting.


In a September 8 letter to departmental chairmen, Ms. Bowen wrote: “Your support for the meeting not only demonstrates your opposition to the concessions; it also sends a powerful signal to the other members of your department.”


Departmental heads play an important role in awarding promotions and tenure to faculty members in their department.


A CUNY trustee who is a Manhattan attorney, John Calandra, said he doubted the union would choose to stage a strike. “I am confident that this is an idle threat, because they won’t violate the law. They won’t do that to their students,” he said. A CUNY trustee who served as executive assistant to Governor Pataki, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, said a strike would be “devastating” to the union.


Warnings about a CUNY strike come as the United Federation of Teachers, the city teachers union, has said it could vote on a strike next month if it doesn’t reach a contract agreement with Mayor Bloomberg. An agreement between the city and the UFT would put greater pressure on the CUNY union to rule out a strike.


The faculty’s previous contract expired in October 2002. CUNY has offered the union a 2.5% retroactive salary increase for the 2003-04 academic year, a 2.75% increase for 2004-05, and a 2% increase effective November 1. The union is demanding a 10% accumulative increase and more money for its welfare fund, a health-benefits fund that has plummeted in value in recent years.


The union, which some say has stronger support among adjuncts than full-time professors, has come under recent criticism from some of its members for its handling of the welfare fund. Critics have said that in the previous contract the union did not negotiate enough money for the fund and overspent on adjunct health benefits.


Union officials blame the lack of money for the welfare fund on rising health-care costs and deny that the fund was overlooked in the previous contract.


The last time CUNY’s faculty union approved a strike was in July 1973. Less than a week before the strike date, the union reached a contract agreement with the university.


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