Last week, you were visible with buttons and posters, you engaged your students, you turned out to picket Bobst, and you joined in with the rest of the New York City labor movement at the Triangle Fire Memorial. Most of all, you talked to your colleagues about why you want a union.

From Tandon to Wagner, from CAS to SPS, from Gallatin to Rory Meyers, from Courant to ISAW — and every school, institute, and department between — we told the NYU administration that we need a union and that we demand a fair, neutral, and expeditious process by which contract faculty across NYU can exercise our democratic right to collective bargaining.

We spoke strongly and loudly with our buttons, our handbills, our feet, and our voices. And we were joined by our students, our tenured and tenure-track colleagues, our unionized colleagues in ACT, GSOC, and UCATS, and brothers and sisters from unions across the city.

And the administration heard us.

On Friday, the administration’s outside lawyer Sandi Dubin wrote to us with what she called a “proposed framework.” In it, she offered a first draft of what the administration thinks our union should look like. This is a meaningful step forward in our campaign. While the administration’s proposal still leaves open a number of important questions, we are encouraged by their willingness to meet — and it’s only the broad support of faculty across campus that has forced them to engage with us.

To be clear: the administration and its lawyers have not yet agreed to a fair, neutral, and expeditious process by which all NYU contract faculty can exercise their democratic choice to form a union. We cannot let up the pressure now. We must continue pushing them to do the right thing.

But the good news is that our solidarity across departments and schools, across the university, and across academia is unstoppable. We are winning.

Now is the time to get more involved in our union. Talk to your students about why a union is so important to our job security and their freedom to learn. Talk to your colleagues about why you’re excited to collectively bargain for an enforceable contract. Want to do more? Click here to get more involved, and one of us on the Organizing Committee will get in touch.