See below.
________________________________
From: Sándor John <s_an@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 3:40 PM
To: CCU-Freelist <cunycontingents@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Emergency: 3,000 Layoffs at CUNY - The Union Must Prepare & Organize
an All-Out Strike
- PLEASE SHARE WIDELY -
New issue of the CUNY Contingents Unite newsletter. See attached PDF. (The
newsletter will also be posted at cunycontingents.wordpress.com soon.)
Emergency: 3,000 Layoffs at CUNY
THE UNION MUST PREPARE AND ORGANIZE AN ALL-OUT STRIKE FOR THE START OF SCHOOL
No cuts, no layoffs!
No tuition hikes!
The mass layoffs of almost 3,000 adjuncts (so far) at the City University of
New York, the loss of health insurance for hundreds, the cuts in hours and the
threat of even more drastic cuts – all this represents a genuine emergency for
all of us who work and study at CUNY. This head-on assault must be answered,
now. That means bringing out the power needed to defend our jobs, our rights
and our lives – and public education itself – against the devastation being
wreaked by the CUNY tops and the ruling class.
Our union, the Professional Staff Congress, is quite rightly
suing management for its gross violation of the terms under which CUNY received
CARES Act funds. Yet we cannot rely on the “justice” system – and certainly not
on the Democratic politicians that run the state and city.
Nobody will do it for us. CUNY faculty, staff and students must
mobilize, now, in our own defense. We in the PSC must actively unite with our
sisters and brothers in DC37 (among them College Assistants, cafeteria workers
and others hit with layoffs) and other unions. And as CUNY Contingents Unite
(CCU) has emphasized, to be effective – particularly when up against New York
State’s anti-strike Taylor Law – faculty, staff and students must do this
together with workers and the oppressed throughout New York.
This basic point is clearer than ever today, amidst mass
upheaval against police brutality and racist oppression. And now ICE says
international students will be thrown out if their classes are all online! As
part of the struggle, we must raise hell, far and wide, against what CUNY’s
brutal slashing of its teaching force will do to its students, almost 77% of
whom are African American, Asian and Latino. This is an assault on the
hard-earned rights, sacrifices and hopes of the whole multiracial working class
that makes this city run – and can bring it to a halt.
Mobilizing together to stop this attack, we must link this to
the fight not just against tuition hikes but to end tuition, as well as
evictions (including from university housing) and the presence of cops of all
kinds on campus; and for widescale recruitment and advancement of black,
Latino, Asian and immigrant grad students, faculty and staff at CUNY.
What needs to be done in the face of the mass layoffs
emergency? Neither toothless “moral suasion” nor flash-in-the-pan gimmicks
will do it. The union as a whole and all of us, its members, must prepare and
organize an all-out strike to STOP and REVERSE the layoffs and cuts. We must do
this together with large numbers of students at this, the largest urban public
university in the U.S. And this strike should be launched at the start of
school this Fall.
Management began pre-emptive layoffs as the school year wound
down, calculating that we would be unable to react. But we must use the summer
to escalate organized, well-planned disruptive actions that use collective
power and call major attention to the emergency at CUNY, building for a strike
at the beginning of the school year.
Mass layoffs began with 450 adjuncts axed at John Jay – and
have now hit a fifth of CUNY’s adjunct workforce. Even before Gov. Cuomo
announces cuts of his own aimed at CUNY, against which he has long displayed an
especially venomous antagonism, the CUNY tops have carried out this assault.
While pleading poverty, the university pays its chancellor $675,000 a year,
plus a $7,500 monthly housing stipend; college presidents rake in hundreds of
thousands. Meanwhile, at least five CUNY campuses ordered students to move out
of dorms, with almost no notice, in early April.
In May, management agreed to give the union “detailed college
budget information.” Weeks later, they have reportedly provided no such
information. We must demand that CUNY, and each of its campuses, open the books
to committees of workers, faculty and students, so we can inspect them to see
for ourselves where the money is going.
Facing the emergency of mass layoffs and cuts, the PSC
leadership now says it’s “time to talk seriously about whether the union needs
to consider disruptive job action during the fall semester in order to save
lives, save jobs and save CUNY.” But that’s too late. The threat is indeed
beyond serious, and we indeed need to be serious, not just talking about job
action but preparing and organizing to shut down CUNY with an all-out strike
when school starts this Fall. A CUNY-wide strike preparation committee, elected
by and responsible to the union membership, should be set up now.
* For in-depth discussion on what it means to build for a strike, see the CCU
site: cunycontingents.wordpress.com
cunycontingents@xxxxxxxxx
Attachment:
July 2020 Advance.pdf
Description: July 2020 Advance.pdf
