Click here to watch EWP Clinical Associate Professor Ger O’Donoghue and Bargaining Committee member Robin Harvey describe Friday’s session.

On Friday, your elected Bargaining Committee had its fifth bargaining session with the NYU administration.  Follow our progress towards a strong first contract by email, on the bargaining blog on our website, and on the bargaining trackerYou can also RSVP to observe bargaining directly in person or by Zoom at any or all of our next three sessions! 

Friday started with a pleasant surprise: the administration’s negotiators arrived on time and brought us four counterproposals (that is, written responses to proposals we had made) and one new proposal. Sandi Dubin, the administration’s outside lawyer, shared their counterproposals on Grievance and ArbitrationDiscipline and DismissalHealth and Safetyand Academic FreedomFor Grievance and Arbitration, the administration has acquiesced to a fundamental and standard element of a union contract: that its provisions be enforceable first through an internal grievance procedure and then be appealable to an outside, neutral arbitrator. The administration also proposed that questions about reappointment and promotion be arbitrable. While we are still far from agreement on this core article, that they presented a serious counter proposal constitutes real progress. 

The administration’s other counterproposals mostly reproduced current policies. We reminded the administration’s team, and will continue to remind them, that contract faculty across NYU voted overwhelmingly — 89% — to form our union,to bargain over protections for what we like about our jobs and improvements for what we don’tThe way we will do that is to better current inadequate policies through collective bargaining.

An exchange of proposals on Anti-Discrimination policy is a case in point. The administration brought a one-pager that, while a good start, does not come close to offering contract faculty members sufficient protection against harassment, discrimination, and abusive conduct. We were prepared with our own comprehensive, five-page proposal for a Respectful Work Environment. Our proposal expands the list of protected classes, including around gender and citizenship; it protects against courts or the Federal government rolling back protections; it defines and prohibits abusive conduct that is not necessarily based on protected classes; it recognizes that student evaluations are notoriously biased, especially against faculty who are women and/or people of color, and protects us against that bias; and it guarantees specific accommodations for disability, pregnancy, and lactation. Our proposal puts NYU where it should be: at the head of the pack among universities protecting faculty against discrimination and abuse.

We also passed a proposal modeled on contractual protections won by the Writers Guild of America and the faculty and staff at CUNY (PSC-CUNY), that would protect us and our students from the administration misusing artificial intelligence.

Finally, we accepted the administration’s most recent counterproposal on SeverabilityThis article protects our contract in case the law changes and makes some element of it unenforceable. This first tentative agreement marks a major milestone in our negotiations.

The Bargaining Committee needs your help to win the strong contract we all need and deserve. Victory won’t come from the eleven of us making the perfect arguments at the bargaining table. It will come because we all stand together to fight for what we need. Click here to get involved in a Contract Action Team on a bargaining goal that’s especially important to you.  It will take all of us, working together.

In solidarity,

Thomas Hill (Center for Global Affairs, SPS)
Robin Harvey (Teaching and Learning, Steinhardt)
Richard Dorritie (Rory Meyers College of Nursing)
Peter Li (General Engineering, Tandon)
Jamie Root (French Literature, Thought and Culture, Arts & Science)
Jacob Remes (Gallatin School of Individualized Study)
Heidi White (Liberal Studies)
Fanny Shum (Mathematics, Courant Institute)
Elisabeth Fay (Expository Writing Program, Arts & Science)
Chris Chan Roberson (Undergraduate Film & TV, Tisch)
Benedetta Piantella (Technology, Culture, and Society, Tandon)