On Friday we held our 8th bargaining session with the administration. We’ve now been bargaining with the administration for about 4 months. We’ve presented all of our major non-economic proposals. (Remember, you can find all proposals and counter proposals on our bargaining tracker.) Last week we shared the good, the bad and the ugly, this week we’ll build on that theme:
True Grit: Congratulations to SWAN, the union of NYU RAs who won their election last fall, as they held their first bargaining session with the administration on Friday! They’ve fought hard for their union, and we fight in solidarity with them!
All hat and no cattle: We are concerned that the administration is stalling. On Friday, they brought only one counterproposal: Discipline and Discharge. While they’ve made some movement towards us, two major issues stand out: first, they have refused to agree to a confidentiality provision, and in negotiations their lawyer specifically reserved the right to speak to the media about individual disciplinary matters that involve us, the faculty; second, they continue to refuse to commit to the basic due process right that those facing discipline be provided the evidence and reasoning behind the accusation up front.
You may be aware that over the summer the administration attempted to implement a new procedure to handle grievances in this interim before we have a union contract. They sought to make substantial changes to the current grievance procedure, which is outlined in the faculty handbook – a policy that is key to shared governance and academic freedom. We, along with the Contract Faculty Senators Council, have been steadfast in our conviction that the contract faculty, not the administration, determines who is on grievance committees, and that the administration’s attempt to impose this policy unilaterally violates our Election and Neutrality Agreement. We are dismayed that the administration has opted to reject the wishes of these senators and elected faculty members. Furthermore, after conducting our own due diligence with our legal advisors, we know that there are no legitimate legal obstacles that would prevent contract faculty members from serving on grievance and disciplinary committees. Meanwhile, one contract faculty member has been waiting for EIGHT months to have their grievance addressed. Peer review of grievances is a key element of academic freedom, so if you have not already, please sign our Academic Freedom petition and share it with your colleagues.
The Magnificent 7: In addition to reaffirming our position on 1) Interim Grievance Procedures, we presented our full counterproposal on 2) Grievance & Arbitration, including our proposal for handling of grievances resulting from denial of reappointment or promotion. Our proposal preserves peer review of academic questions, follows the NYU faculty handbook, and adds some of the standards from Contract Faculty Senators Council’s “25 Principles” which were unanimously approved by the CFSC in September of 2023. We offered a counterproposal on 3) Recognition as a package with our proposal on 4) Bargaining Unit Integrity and Return Rights . Both proposals are intended to ensure that the administration can’t force people out of the union or shift work from those of us with union or tenure protections to other, unprotected faculty categories. We presented a counter on 5) Bargaining Unit Information, which addresses how the administration will share important information the union needs to service and enforce the contract, and reintroduced our proposal for 6) Union Rights and Access, removing items which we assessed to be economic proposals in line with the administration’s concerns.
Finally, one small victory for common sense (7). The administration has finally agreed to adopt our simple system for numbering sections, instead of the inconsistent mix of numbers, letters and Roman numbers they were using. Let’s hope the administration’s negotiators will start showing similar sense on more meaningful matters.
High Noon: While it’s not quite high noon in bargaining terms, it is time to act! The detention by ICE of a student protester at Columbia this weekend showed the importance of our demands on academic freedom. We need you to take action to support your union. Here are three things you can do right now:
- Sign our academic freedom petition, if you haven’t already.
- Attend a bargaining session.
- Call on your colleagues to do the same and to get involved.
In Solidarity,
Contract Faculty United – UAW Bargaining Committee
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)
Thomas Hill (Center for Global Affairs, SPS)
Robin Harvey (Teaching and Learning, Steinhardt)
Richard Dorritie (Rory Meyers College of Nursing)