[cs_edworkers] Report on COCAL XI & CUNY activists' activity there
- From: S_ AN <s_an@xxxxxxx>
- To: CSEW-new <cs_edworkers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 17:38:38 -0400
Forwarded message below.
From: s_an@xxxxxxx
To: ccudiscussion@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Reformatted report on COCAL XI & CUNY activists' activity there
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 17:36:26 -0400
I am resending this reformatted in the hopes that the huge unwanted spaces
between paragraphs will not appear this time...Report on COCAL XI conference
–Sándor John, 8 August 2014
Dear CUNY contingents:
The
purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the activity of CCU members
and other CUNY activists at the sixth international conference of the
Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL XI), which was held August 4-6 at
the John Jay campus. The report is far from
exhaustive. CUNY activists were involved in many aspects and parts of the
conference, only some of which are reflected below. Thus I hope others will
write up their own reports, comments or corrections and observations. If you
are not on the CCU-Discussion list and would like to be, please write me
off-line
at s_an@xxxxxxx. A range of observations,
opinions and proposals were also voiced by those who attended a post-COCAL
gathering that was organized by Sean, Jenn and Luke of the Adjunct Project this
past Wednesday.
* *
*
Punch lines. The conference was attended by
approximately 200 activists from Canada, Mexico and the United States, as well
as a representative from Argentina who heads a federation of South American
university teachers’ unions. Many people from CUNY were present and played a
big role at the conference, despite the hefty price of registration ($100 for
those who succeeded in getting a subsidy from the union to pay the remainder of
the full $250 fee). Speaking as a first-time
participant, COCAL struck me an important opportunity to meet, discuss with and
learn
from contingent activists from the rest of North America; to see how
contradictions between the union bureaucracy and adjunct needs play out in this
context; and to make advances in the fight for our demands. From the
specific
vantage point of the CCU’s work, I would identify three particular aspects of
what happened at the COCAL conference: $5K (now $7K) campaign. We had
decided to seek support from COCAL XI for the
united-front campaign that the CCU and Adjunct Project have been waging for
“$5K” to be included as a demand in current contract negotiations and
implemented at CUNY. At COCAL we also had a chance to personally meet and
worked with Peter Brown of SUNY New Paltz, who started the national 5K
campaign. We succeeded in this effort to gain support, which – like most
things worth winning – required struggle. (More details later in this report.)
In fact, the resolution
we presented was not only approved overwhelmingly by the final plenary,
but changed there to demand a minimum starting salary of $7K per course,
which is the standard set by the Modern Language Association. This change
entailed some last-minute edits to the “Whereas” sections on the plenary floor,
which Holly is in the process of incorporating, but this is the “Resolved” part
of the resolution as approved at the plenary: “RESOLVED that COCAL
XI endorses the call in the U.S. for achieving or surpassing a MINIMUM starting
salary of at least $7K per 3-credit course (or the equivalent) for all
contingent academic employees in the U.S., combined with real job security and
a seniority system; that this objective despite being modest is long overdue
and needs to be implemented now, and that we support the struggle for this to
be achieved in current contract negotiations.” It
will be crucial to bring this support to bear over the next weeks and as one
activist said, to “hit the ground running” with it as part of our campaigns
around the current union contract bargaining. Working out how to do this
concretely
is clearly a central topic for us now. The strike issue, and membership
attendance at contract
negotiations. The importance of the strike weapon was raised in the
first plenary, as reported here:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/08/05/adjunct-faculty-conference-discussion-focuses-right-strike
This brought a lively discussion with a lot
of support for the basic point that “bargaining” without the right to strike is
hardly distinguishable from begging. Many participants did not know about New
York State’s Taylor Law, which outlaws public employee strikes. In line
with CCU
discussions going back to our founding, I made some points about the need to
rip up the Taylor Law; that labor is not given any rights but has to take them;
that just being right is not enough – you need power: that laws like this are
not going to be legislated away but must be done away with through exercising
the right to strike, which at CUNY would require a large-scale upheaval
involving not just adjuncts and other faculty and workers but large numbers of
students, bringing in powerful sectors of the working class from outside the
“ivory tower.” This got a good reception, as did comments linking topics about
militarization and racial oppression to organizing for education workers and
student rights. There was some further discussion on this, including concrete
experiences from Canada and Mexico, in workshops and later parts of the
conference. The point on opening
contract negotiations to the union membership also came out of early plenary
discussions. Some people asked if such a thing had ever been done – and several
examples were mentioned from the floor. (This involves not only some of the
best-known
victories in labor history, like Minneapolis 1934, but a number of recent
campus union contract negotiations.) This was interesting;
many participants were quite enthusiastic, while some voices (reflected the
concerns of entrenched union leaderships) objected that “you have to trust your
bargaining team.” Yeah, right, said a number of CUNY activists – while one
speaker (from Quebec, if I remember correctly) said, actually, the point should
be the opposite: trusting the union membership. CCU activists have long
advocated opening PSC negotiations to the members – and during the 2008
contract fight we waged an intense struggle for a union contract discussion
bulletin to be established; it will be important to revive this call for the
present negotiations. Examples, information and discussion on other highly
relevant
topics.
Education activists in the Northeast of the U.S. need to be a lot better
informed about the lessons of struggles in Canada (both Quebec and the
English-speaking provinces), Mexico, California, the U.S. South and elsewhere.
For that matter, CUNY and SUNY activists are nowhere near as closely connected
as should be the case.
One point we stressed
was the need to put together and distribute the basics of the higher ed labor
systems in the different countries, areas and institutions all three countries.
For example, to explain our $5K (now $7K) demand, it was essential to
succinctly break down what we make, what our conditions are, and what the cost
of living is here. For people from here to understand what is involved in
Quebec, Mexico City, the Bay Area or Missouri, the same is needed. Despite
limitations
(ranging from expense to the absence of translation at some workshops to the
broader issue of the influence of the union bureaucracies), COCAL provided some
very important opportunities to find out some key things about gains, losses
and lessons from elsewhere in the hemisphere. This is all the more important in
an all too often insular and underinformed society such as the one we live in.
Since this is a pretty
broad “punch line,” I will indicate a few points here, again with the hope that
others will add their own observations. -
At Concordia University in Montreal, sessional lecturers (adjuncts) have won a
very important seniority system, pay for non-teaching work (committees,
etc.) and other gains. these were described by Concordia University Part-Time
Faculty Association (CUPTFA) treasurer June Riley, who also talked about the
type of strike action they carried out and their demand that the administration
reveal real cost figures for their demands (similar to the CCU’s call to “open
the books”). –
The Community College of San Francisco was repeatedly referred to as “the gold
standard for adjuncts,” who reportedly receive 86% of “full-time” faculty pay
and have made many other important gains. However, reactionary accreditors and
others are trying to shut CCSF down. (Here is one of many resources on this:
http://cocal-updates.tumblr.com/post/55372902529/ccsf-special-edition
) In South Orange County, CA, the community college union is calling for full
equality for adjuncts. Speakers affiliated to the California Federation of
Teachers stated that “across-the-board raises are no longer acceptable” and
that if percentage raises are negotiated, “adjuncts get a higher percentage
raise than ‘full-timers’.” - Holly noted that there
were no less than 17 participants at the conference from Mexico. Historic
struggles for education rights in Mexico have ranged from the ten-month
occupation of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, Latin
America’s
largest university, where even as a foreign student I got my MA for free)
fifteen years ago, to the
heroic strikes and barricades in Oaxaca, to last year’s militant teachers strike
against standardized tests. (I’ve circulated material on these to some
interested
CCU members; write me if you’d like to get them too.) At COCAL XI, UNAM
profesoras de asignatura (adjuncts) María Teresa Lechuga described their
research aimed
at getting a basic picture of the “contingent majority,” an estimated 76% of
academic employees in Mexico. (This dissertation topic was vetoed outright by
their initial dissertation advisor, who deemed it irrelevant.) Meanwhile UNAM
has opened up a number of new full-time jobs, but only to people under 38 years
old, thereby openly excluding large numbers of adjuncts. Arturo Ramos of UNAM
and the University of Chapingo stressed the need to combat the
“depoliticization of academics” and the sway of “individualism and pragmatism”
as key obstacles to effective struggle against the two-tier system. There was
also a speaker on the fight by the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME)
against privatization of the power system and mass firings. – Chargé(e)s de
cours (adjuncts) from Quebec, and sessional lecturers
from British Columbia and Ontario also made important contributions to
discussions.
The conference was also an opportunity for the CCU to reconnect with members of
the FNEEQ teachers union whose adjunct affiliate at the Université
de Montréal went on strike in 2010 and faced a harsh anti-strike decree
(see e.g. http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2010/03/udem_lecturers_to_vote_on_strike/
). (We got a union solidarity statement for that strike and took it up to
Quebec at the time.) I’d
like to note that colleagues from Quebec, Mexico and California were highly
supportive of our struggle at CUNY, including on the 5K (now 7K) resolution.
(In contrast, a leading representative of the New Faculty Majority spoke
against our demand.) –
An impassioned appeal for support to “those of us in reactionary
‘right-to-work’ states” in the U.S. South was made by a speaker from Missouri.
An adjunct activist from North Carolina also appealed for more attention and
support to those facing such challenges in the South. Both got a very warm
response. –
At Rutgers, adjuncts won pay for supervising students’ independent study, after
bringing students in to the negotiations to the support this demand. At the New
School, « part-time » faculty are about 85% of the teaching force,
while at NYU the figure is about 40%. At the New School, the UAW Local 7902
reportedly got job security for those in their 11th semester of teaching. At
NYU, the union won 98% of the vote in a recent unionization election, and took
a strike authorization vote. –
We were able to have a number of pretty frank discussions about issues,
challenges and problems we face as a contingent majority at CUNY in a union
dominated by highly-paid full-timers where the leadership (which played a
prominent role at the conference) over and over displays a huge gap between
what it says and what it does regarding the two-tier system.
Some further details: There were three plenary
sessions as well as meetings of five “interests groups” on various issues (see
below). CCU member Holly Clarke and PSC vice president for “part-time”
personnel Marcia Newfield were both heavily involved in organizing the
conference, and have participated in COCAL for a long time. Jennifer Chancellor
and Luke Elliott of the Adjunct Project were also involved in the local
organizing work. CCUers who attended the conference included Holly, Pat Belcon,
Meg Feeley, Emelyn Tapaoan and myself. CUNY adjunct activists in attendance
also included Michael Batson, Susan Di Raimo, Shirley Frank, Tony Gronowicz,
David
Hatchett, Michael Seitz, Vincent Tirelli, Stan Wine and others. PSC President
Barbara Bowen and Treasurer Mike Fabricant participated in some of the plenary
sessions, and Avi Bornstein of the John Jay PSC chapter was present throughout
the event. At the beginning of the
conference we got a number of signatures on a COCAL-specific version of our
“5K” petition, which had gained close to 800 signatures at the beginning of the
summer. Holly and I, as well as Michael Seitz, Mike Batson and others, attended
the three sessions of the “Bargaining for Equity interest group” (workshop),
where among other topics the “5K” campaign was raised. I proposed that we put
forward a resolution in support of this struggle. (See Appendix for original and
first revised versions of this resolution.) There were many comments
in support of this resolution, as well as a number of questions, such as how to
reflect the fact that some adjuncts are not paid by the course; concerns that
the demand could be misinterpreted as setting a maximum instead of a minimum;
comments about the fact that in Canada and some parts of the higher ed system
in the U.S. (such as some California institutions), pay is significantly
higher. We made efforts to incorporate these concerns into the resolution.
A few voices were raised
in opposition to the resolution, focusing on a) the fact that the PSC
leadership has not officially included this demand in the union’s “bargaining
agenda” and b) the idea that it is not good to state a specific figure. We
responded that a) what we are struggling for is the union not just to “endorse”
the demand in the abstract as a nice idea to happen in the sweet bye and bye,
but to actually win it now; and b), in line with this, general phrases about
“equity” (dictionary definition: “fairness or justice in the way people are
treated”) commit union leaders to nothing in particular, whereas we need
concrete
and specific demands for real, significant improvements in the context of our
effort to dismantle the two-tier system entirely. The most strident objection
came from a United University Professions member at SUNY who is a leader of the
New Faculty Majority group. She flatly opposed the call, counterposing “pro
rata pay” to the demand for a significant dollar amount minimum. (Note: further
clarification of exact meanings of “pro rata” in this context are needed; in
any case, the demand for a set dollar-amount minimum is clearly appropriate in
our situation.) Sparks flew when one of the conference
coordinators announced that as far as she understood the rules, “no resolutions
could be submitted” by conference participants they came from groups external
to the conference. One attendee from the Northeast loudly pointed out that this
made no sense, and various people noted that at the plenary that morning a
coordinator had specifically asked that “all those planning to present
resolutions give us copies tomorrow morning.) At this point a long-time adjunct
activist from John Jay said “We are at a moment of crisis, and if we are not
going to vote on the resolution presented...then I’m not sure why I’m here, so
I’m leaving.” Several participants from Quebec and California were also very
upset by the purported rule. A vote was taken ion whether to vote on the
resolution in the workshop. and we lost by 13 to 16. However, we overcame this
by a combination of hallway discussions, clarifying that in fact there was no
such rule, and energetically lining up support. The
push for this resolution was an important and very successful collaborative
effort by CCU members and a range of other CUNY adjunct activists. In the
period between the end of sessions on Tuesday and the beginning of the final
session on Wednesday morning, we worked together very intensively. This
included incorporating suggestions from Pat, Stan and others into a new version
of the resolution, which I motivated (presented) at the final plenary on
Wednesday, where Emelyn, Michael Seitz, Meg, Holly, Luke, Shirley Frank and
others spoke strongly in favor, as did Peter Brown of SUNY New Paltz and quite
a few colleagues from elsewhere. One of the most
interesting episodes, as noted above, was the call from the floor –I believe
from a California adjunct – for the figure to be raised to $7K. A brother from
Quebec spoke in a similar vein. Peter Brown, Holly, Emelyn and I and others
showed vigorous assent. The plenary moderator then asked if there were any
objections – there were none. In line with this, Holly made a number of verbal
edits on the spot which need to be incorporated in the written version.
Appendix on 5K/7K resolution. This is the text of the version of
CUNY 5K resolution which I put forward in consultation with Holly in the
“interest
group” on “Bargaining for Equity” on August 5: “Whereas, the two-tier or
multi-tier system of academic labor
is producing increasing and intolerable conditions, in the context of
escalating attacks on education, student and labor rights; and
“Whereas, we seek full equality and the dismantling of the
tiered labor system and support real advances toward this goal (such as pro
rata pay); and
“Whereas, the crisis of contingent labor has brought a
national call in the U.S. for achieving or surpassing a minimum starting salary
of at least $5,000 (‘5K’) per 3-credit course (or its equivalent), with real
job security and a seniority system, which while still far from parity would be
a significant advance for large numbers of contingents; therefore be it
“RESOLVED that COCAL XI endorse the call in the U.S. for
achieving or surpassing a minimum starting salary of at least $5K per 3-credit
semester course (or its equivalent) for all contingent academic employees in
the U.S., with real job security and a seniority system; that this objective
despite being modest is long overdue, is not postponable, and must be
implemented now, and we support the struggle for this demand to be gained in
current contract negotiations such as at the largest urban public university in
the U.S., the City University of New York.”
Then, at night on August 5 and very
early the next morning, Holly Clarke, Stan Wine, Pat Belcon and Emelyn Tapaoan
discussed proposed modifications to the original motion; Holly and I then
consolidated
these into the following text, which was presented to the final plenary at
COCAL:
“Whereas, the two-tier system of academic labor,
in which there is a much-diminished population of full-time faculty and a large
and growing population of long-term and shorter-term contingent faculty, is
producing untenable economic hardship and intolerable working conditions that
reflect escalating attacks on education, labor rights and students, and
“Whereas, we seek full equality and the
dismantling of the tiered labor system and support real advances toward this
goal (such as a significant pro rata increase in pay); seniority rights and job
security, and
“Whereas, the crisis of contingent labor has
highlighted the need for parity with real job security and a seniority system,
and
“Whereas, this crisis has brought a call in the
U.S. for achieving or surpassing a MINIMUM starting salary of at least $5,000
(“5K”) per 3-credit course (or its
equivalent), with real job security and a seniority system, which while
still far from parity would be a significant advance for many contingent
faculty, and this call has been endorsed by several higher education unions in
New York State, therefore, be it
“RESOLVED that COCAL XI endorses the call in the
U.S. for achieving or surpassing a MINIMUM starting salary of at least $5K per
3-credit course (or its equivalent) for all contingent academic employees in
the U.S., combined with real job security and a seniority system; that this
objective despite being modest is long overdue and needs to be implemented now,
and that we support the struggle for this to be achieved in current contract
negotiations.”
As noted earlier in this
report, the demand for 5K was raised
to 7K in the course of discussion at that final plenary session. A few
concomitant edits to the fourth “Whereas” were made from the floor by Holly in
response to this, and she is in the process of incorporating those now.
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