It’s strike season! In May, 11,000  Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers went out on strike, demanding that production studios begin sharing some of the massive profits they’ve accumulated — UPDATE: we’d already cued up this email when we got the good news that the WGA and AMPTP have reached a tentative agreement, which the members now need to review — and in July, they were joined by 65,000 performers with SAG-AFTRA. Last week, over 18,000 our UAW siblings walked out, and many more may yet stand up to join them. Many of us are already union members, whether as journalists, actors, writers, musicians, nurses, or in other roles; still more were members of academic unions in grad school or at previous jobs. We know well the value of collective bargaining, and we stand with our siblings fighting for fair contracts.

RSVP: Weds. 9/27 – Turn Out for WGA and SAG-AFTRA!

Big 3 autoworkers are just getting started, and they want to share some of their infectious energy with the writers and actors who have been out for months. This Wednesday, September 27, CFU will join UAW siblings from across New York City in a solidarity picket with WGA and SAG-AFTRA — two unions with a strong presence at NYU, and significant overlap with our own membership in the Tisch School of the Arts.

We hope we won’t need to organize another informational picket to persuade the NYU administration to agree to a fair election process, but practice never hurts!

In our August meeting with NYU administration and its high-priced outside lawyers, we pushed back on their proposal to exclude contract faculty holding program or department service titles from our union. Earlier this month, the administration’s lawyers shared a new proposal that represents significant movement. We are still seeking clarification on a few important questions, and look forward to sharing more complete information at our upcoming Planning Assembly.

RSVP: Fri. 9/29, 12:00 pm – CFU Planning Assembly

There are still several issues to resolve — most notably the proposed blanket exclusion of our colleagues in the Rory Meyers College of Nursing — but we are making steady progress, because we’ve brought more and more contract faculty across NYU into these discussions.

In Solidarity,

Organizing Committee
Contract Faculty United-UAW