Our fifteenth session on Tuesday was one of our most active since negotiations began last November. The administration’s team brought seven counterproposals and shared preliminary responses to some of our economic proposals. We brought an extensive workload proposal and questions of our own, sparking an unusually lively conversation. The decanal and provostial representatives on the administration’s team — who typically sit in silence while the lawyers talk — finally engaged. Vice Provost Kristen Day, a constant presence since our talks with the administration began in March 2023, spoke for more or less the first time in open session. When we presented our workload article, the associate deans across from us perked up and followed along with palpable interest, taking notes on their copies.
The administration presented a series of important proposals and counterproposals on Performance Evaluation, Discipline and Discharge, Promotions, and Rules, Regulations, and Policies. The latter two especially remain points of considerable disagreement. Like their Appointment and Reappointment counterproposal earlier this month, their Promotions proposal would do away with faculty committees and flatten differences across schools and disciplines — except when “at the dean’s discretion” they can depart from the standard. Meanwhile, the administration is demanding that we comply with all rules, regulations, and policies, while at the same time denying our right to participate in shared governance to provide input on those rules, regulations, and policies. Faculty governance and academic freedom protect the integrity of NYU’s education, scholarship, and art. We refuse to sacrifice our professional integrity or our dedication to NYU’s mission to be “a top quality international center of scholarship, teaching and research.”
The administration also presented a series of counters to our suite of proposals on benefits from the last session. They insisted, over and over, that they could give us only what they give our tenure track colleagues: vague promises to continue ever-more-expensive benefits, with the administration retaining the right to change them however and whenever they like. But elsewhere, they made clear that they think parity with our tenured colleagues is too good for us. They rejected our housing proposal outright. They proposed that we should be happy with shared desks. And their salary proposal would keep us earning a fraction of the tenure-track average. When we asked them what their objection was to the principle of parity, they stared at us silently, as if they’d never considered the question before, and said they’d get back to us.
In contrast, we insist that our compensation must match our huge contributions to the university. And it was those contributions that were the center of our last major proposal: Workload. Our argument was simple: we are full-time workers, and when we take on extra work we need either relief from our other duties or additional compensation. We further proposed that any additional compensation we receive — whether for extra service work or extra teaching — be paid as a percentage of our base salary. Our proposal would also fix some basic inequities, like that professors of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are currently paid the same to teach 33% more than their French, German, and Spanish-teaching colleagues, or that faculty in Tandon’s General Engineering department teach as much as a 5-5 load. We are eager for the administration’s response to this centrally important proposal.
There’s a lot more to do. The administration still owes us counters on more than a dozen proposals, some of which they’ve been sitting on since as far back as February. We proposed biweekly bargaining sessions this semester, but the administration wouldn’t commit — all we could get from them was a promise to meet us on September 12.
You know what that means: it’s all the more important that you observe our next bargaining session on Friday, September 12, whether on zoom or in person. Your bargaining committee will continue to demand a contract that brings us to parity with our tenure-track colleagues and protects shared governance and respects faculty expertise and prerogatives, but we can only win with everyone’s participation.
In solidarity,
CFU-UAW Bargaining Committee
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)