On Monday, we announced a strike authorization vote starting on February 9. Yesterday, President Linda Mills and Provost Gigi Dopico sent an email to all NYU employees that contained a number of mischaracterizations about our contract negotiations. As we prepare to take this next important step, we wanted to make sure there was no confusion.
You can find answers to other questions on our strike authorization vote FAQ and see why colleagues across campus urged our bargaining committee to call the vote.
What 20% raise?
Linda and Gigi claimed that the administration’s current salary proposal “include[s] a 20% increase” to current minimums. But don’t get confused: under their proposal, only nine of us — less than one percent of our bargaining unit — would receive a 20% raise. In fact, 53% of us would get only a 3% raise next year.
They also claimed to have offered “salaries that would rank among the highest nationally for unionized contract faculty.” Their proposals tell a different story. In 2025-26, they’ve proposed a salary minimum below what first-year postdocs at Mt. Sinai and Weill Cornell are earning. Next year, the administration’s proposed minimum is $5,000 less than the 2026-27 minimum for unionized full-time non-tenure track faculty at Barnard.
Over a year ago, contract faculty approved bargaining priorities in a 99% vote, including a compensation article that would address the real problems we’ve identified. Thus far, the administration has been unwilling to agree to our proposals to address salary inequity, correct compression, and pay us all fair wages that allow us to live dignified lives in the city we work in.
Mediation won’t help.
For several weeks, the administration has been commenting publicly on our campaign, calling for mediation rather than a strike authorization vote. Yesterday, Linda and Gigi wrote that “is unjustifiable to take an action so potentially disruptive to our students — and to our University — without first exhausting every means of coming to an agreement available to both sides.”
But this line of argument is also misleading. We’ve never categorically rejected mediation. What we’ve said is that we do not believe it would be useful at this stage.
That’s because mediation tends to work best when the two sides are relatively close and need help coming up with solutions to address intractable disputes over a small number of core issues. While we have brought major compromise proposals to recent sessions, the administration has not. We remain far apart on a large number of topics of high importance to our members. If the administration is not prepared to make major movement on core demands, mediation will simply mean we rehash existing positions in a different room. A mediator can’t impose terms or require the administration to improve its offers; only strong collective action can do that.
It’s about the integrity of NYU as a university, not just money.
Reading Linda and Gigi’s email, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the only important question between us and the administration is money. But that’s not true — they are still refusing to agree to a number of crucial protections, for example:
- The administration is seeking to abolish reappointment and promotion committees.
- They want to flatten differences across schools, departments, and disciplines when it comes to deciding the standards for reappointment and promotion.
- They’ve refused to agree to meaningful job security provisions that would protect our academic freedom.
- They won’t negotiate over common-sense guardrails against AI replacing instructional work.
- Their offers for professional development are paltry: a single $1,250 grant per year, and only for faculty with no other research funding.
- Their proposed sabbatical system is so inadequate that it would take 50 years for all of us to have the opportunity to take one.
- They won’t guarantee our full participation in the faculty governance of our departments, programs, institutes, schools, or institute schools.
Yesterday’s email shows why authorizing a strike is a powerful move: the administration knows how large our contribution to the university is. They know how disruptive it would be if we withdrew our labor.
While we are disappointed that the NYU administration would attempt to discourage contract faculty from voting to authorize a strike, we know why many colleagues across campus are committed to vote ‘yes’ to win a strong contract. On Monday, you’ll receive a strike authorization ballot in your email. Don’t delay; send your bargaining committee back to the table with a strong mandate to win the contract we need and deserve. Vote to authorize a strike.
In solidarity,
CFU-UAW BARGAINING COMMITTEE
Richard Dorritie (Rory Meyers College of Nursing)
Elisabeth Fay (Expository Writing Program, Arts & Science)
Robin Harvey (Teaching and Learning, Steinhardt)
Thomas Hill (Center for Global Affairs, SPS)
Peter Li (General Engineering, Tandon)
Benedetta Piantella (Technology, Culture, and Society, Tandon)
Jacob Remes (Gallatin School of Individualized Study)
Chris Chan Roberson (Undergraduate Film & TV, Tisch)
Jamie Root (French Literature, Thought and Culture, Arts & Science)
Fanny Shum (Mathematics, Courant Institute)
Heidi White (Liberal Studies)