Tag Archives: contract

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Padraig O’Donoghue: Reflections on Labor

Padraig
Padraig O’Donoghue & Newborn Daughter, Haviva

By Padraig O’Donogue

I am a passionate member of the PSC and will be part of the (hopefully) packed house at Cooper Union on November 19th when we continue our path to a new contract. I’ve had quite a few really positive experiences with the union that have stuck with me and make me want to fight for the contract that we deserve.

My first interaction with the PSC-CUNY was 14 years ago as a student at Hunter College when the PSC was a significant part of the NYC anti-Iraq war movement. The Union sponsored buses to go down to DC for large national marches calling on the government to reverse its momentum toward war, asking lawmakers to redirect public funds to education: “Books not bombs.”  Remembering the mass protests on the Mall, I can only echo the prophetic intention behind that chant. Now, as a PSC member, and six years into our fight for a new contract, I see that just a small fraction of those funds squandered in war would grant us the contract we deserve.  Continue reading Padraig O’Donoghue: Reflections on Labor →

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Faculty, Staff Arrests at PSC Protest

Yesterday’s PSC protest at the offices of CUNY central administration led to the arrest of several dozen CUNY faculty members. Hundreds of CUNY staff and faculty members participated in the protest, held on behalf of the approximately 25,000 faculty and professional staff members who have been working without a contract, and without raises, since 2010. From the New York Times coverage of the action:

On Wednesday, before the protest, the university made an offer for a six-year contract, beginning in 2010, which would include salary increases totaling 6 percent. The university described the contract in a news release as reflective of its “current fiscal condition and its ability to fund a new contract.”

But Dr. [Barbara] Bowen [president of the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY] said the increases would not keep up with inflation and therefore represented a salary cut. “We feel that education at CUNY is endangered,” said Dr. Bowen, a professor of English at Queens College and CUNY’s Graduate Center. She said that salaries at CUNY were not competitive with other public universities in the region.

“CUNY’s secret has always been that it has attracted the first rank of faculty and staff,” she said.

“What has happened in this contract period and now with Chancellor Milliken’s failed offer is that that will not be possible anymore,” she added. “We think it’s depriving our students of what they need. We think it’s an attack on our students.”

For the full article, visit the New York Times.

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Students Fight Back in Philadelphia

By Steve Brier

In the latest ominous sign of the ramping up of the neoliberal agenda to undermine public funding for public institutions, the state-appointed Philadelphia School Reform Commission (PSRC), which has managerial control over the city’s public school system and its 130,000 students, on October 6th unilaterally cancelled the longstanding contract it had with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT), as reported earlier on the Murphy Institute blog.

This public school crisis was the result of decades of systematic underfunding of public institutions by the state of Pennsylvania, which is now firmly in the political hands of Republicans — especially the reactionary Governor Tom Corbett, who cut close to $1 billion from the state’s education budget over the past few years.

While the city’s teachers are understandably dispirited by the cancellation of their contract, the schools’ students and parents are helping them fight back. One parent criticized the PSRC for trying to have teachers underwrite their own health care costs, concluding that this was tantamount to “robbing the children.”

Students have refused to remain idle in the face of this struggle, using social media like Twitter and Facebook to organize a walkout and a series of mass demonstrations in support of their teachers. Continue reading Students Fight Back in Philadelphia →