MEETING AT HUNTER ESTABLISHES THE
“ADJUNCT/WORKER/STUDENT
COMMITTEE IN FAVOR OF A STRIKE AT CUNY”
On December 9, a meeting of CUNY adjuncts and students voted
to establish the Adjunct/Worker/Student
Committee in Favor of a Strike at CUNY. The meeting was titled “Adjunct Poverty:
How CUNY Runs On It; What It Means for Students; What the Union Contract
Struggle Is and Where It’s Going.” It was organized by CUNY Contingents Unite at
Hunter College in cooperation with the Internationalist Club.
Participants at the meeting stressed that poverty pay and no job security
for
adjuncts are part of the growing inequality at the City University of New York,
whose administration and Board of Trustees oppose the most basic interests of us
all. With the union contract fight heating up, while students face rising
tuition and growing attacks on their right to education, there is an urgent
need for those who work and study at CUNY to unite in struggle.
Themes of the discussion included why adjuncts in particular should vote
“yes” on the
strike authorization vote announced by the Professional Staff Congress, and how
this is connected to the fight for the union to really take on CUNY’s infamous
two-tier labor system. Speakers emphasized the importance not only of voting
for the union’s strike authorization, but that a strike actually be prepared.
This poses the need for a massive upheaval of students together with those on
the bottom of the labor system, as well as bringing in the power of key sectors
beyond the university for effective resistance against New York State’s
anti-worker Taylor Law, which Democrats and Republicans from Albany to City
Hall wield as a weapon against labor's right to strike. On
the basis of the discussion, the meeting voted to establish the
Adjunct/Worker/Student Committee in Favor of a Strike at CUNY. Neither a
substitute for the union nor bound by existing structures, it is a means for
adjuncts
to work with students, other contingent employees and campus workers in pursuit
of these objectives.
The meeting passed the following resolution:
Whereas,
Five years have gone without a new union contract, the situation of CUNY’s
“contingent
majority” is increasingly intolerable, and a head-on fight against the two-tier
labor system is long overdue; and
Whereas,
The PSC members among us today stress how crucial it is – especially for
adjuncts – to vote “yes” on the strike authorization vote the union has
announced it will call; and
Whereas,
Students have innumerable reasons to fight the growing inequality, tuition, and
increasing obstacles to getting an education at CUNY; and
Whereas,
An effective fight against CUNY management must bring together all sectors at
the bottom of the labor system, large numbers of students, together with
“full-time”
faculty as well as our sisters and brothers in DC 37, UNITE HERE and other
unions at CUNY and key sectors of labor and the oppressed throughout the city;
therefore
Be
it resolved, that we establish the ADJUNCT/WORKER/STUDENT
COMMITTEE IN FAVOR OF A STRIKE AT CUNY.
* *
* * *
If you would like to be part of this
committee, or to get more information, write cunycontingents@xxxxxxxxx, or call
Sándor at (917) 520-5368.
