Thank you. Through your organizing, through your bravery, and through your work over the past nine years, we have all won the strong contract we needed and deserved. It has been an honor to serve as your elected bargaining committee, but we know that the eleven of us did not win this contract: we all did, not least by staying strong and striking for 39 hours.
Because we are no longer bargaining, this is our last email to you as your bargaining committee.
Almost two years ago, you elected us to represent you at the bargaining table, and ending on Monday CFU members across the university voted overwhelmingly to ratify the contract we negotiated. Our contract is now in force.
But our contract, important as it is, is not the union. Contract Faculty United – UAW is its members. Unions are not services we buy; they are something we build and maintain, every day, with our coworkers. Having won our contract, and the raises and protections that it contains, we will now need to enforce it. Some of our enforcement will be through the grievance and arbitration process we won; more of it will be through continued organizing. That work starts now, for all of us.
Please join us and CFU members from across the university at a Zoom town hall to discuss next steps for our union, on Friday, April 17, at 2:00 pm. Register here to get the Zoom link. We’ll be joined by siblings from UAW Local 7902, and we’ll begin talking about how to structure our union moving forward under the UAW Constitution. We’ll also discuss additional ways to get involved and continue building a powerful faculty union, including how to participate in Union Management Committees (UMC) for those interested, and important goals and next steps as we prepare to sign up as members.
We hope you’ll come and be ready to participate in our next chapter. We also hope you’ll join us for an informal celebration of our contract win afterwards at the Scratcher, 209 East 5th Street, starting at 4:00 pm.
Thank you for your trust, thank you for standing (and sitting!) beside us for 17 months, and thank you for the energy you will bring for the next four years to enforce our new contract.
In solidarity.
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)
