Frequently Asked Questions

We are the union for full-time continuing contract faculty at NYU. Our objective is to establish recognition of our union and collective bargaining with the NYU administration. To get more involved in our effort, contact our Organizing Committee: cfu.uaw@gmail.com.

Forming a union with collective bargaining rights is the only way we have the power to negotiate on equal footing with the NYU administration and secure agreements in a legally-binding contract. Forming a union and joining with tens of thousands of other UAW academic workers will help us have a stronger voice on key policy decisions made outside the University that affect us as academic workers, such as federal funding for higher education and federal rules affecting visa and immigrant issues.  

By joining with unionized academic workers nationwide we hope to make changes that will create more positive work environments for future academic workers and improve career pathways for academic workers in the US and beyond.

Collective bargaining is a process that equalizes the power relationship between employees and their employer. With collective bargaining, we elect representatives to negotiate with the NYU administration to put the terms of our employment into a legally-binding agreement that we vote to ratify before it goes into effect. Without collective bargaining, the NYU administration retains the unilateral ability to make changes without our consent, and we have few avenues to pursue necessary improvements.

The first step is building strong support and securing recognition. A majority of NYU contract faculty have signed up to support our union, and we are continuing outreach to ensure that everyone has a chance to be heard and get involved. Strong majority support gives us more power to get our union recognized and begin the collective bargaining process. 

Under collective bargaining in the UAW, faculty fill out bargaining surveys to articulate priorities for a contract. We also elect representatives, fellow contract faculty, to a bargaining committee. Guided by the feedback in the bargaining surveys, the elected committee develops bargaining goals that we vote to approve, before sitting down with the administration and negotiating contract proposals. Once a tentative agreement is reached, faculty must vote to accept or reject the contract before it goes into effect.

Thousands of academic workers right here at NYU have successfully bargained union contracts with the NYU administration, including graduate workers and adjunct faculty, both represented by UAW local unions. 

Contract Faculty United – United Auto Workers (CFU-UAW) seeks to include full-time continuing contract faculty who work at NYU. If you have a question about you are eligible or want to sign up, please contact cfu.uaw@gmail.com.

Once we have bargained, and ratified, our first agreement with the administration, one of our union’s primary functions will be to enforce our new rights. In the meantime, while we are in the process of negotiating our contract, contract faculty still have a right to union representation at meetings that may result in any form of disciplinary action. We are also continuing to organize around key issues, and topics, in order to improve our experience at NYU. 

If you are experiencing a problem at work, or potentially facing any form of discipline, you can use this confidential form on our website to contact a member of our Organizing Committee. A colleague will be in touch shortly. 

Please contact us even if you are unsure what avenues might exist to seek recourse for your situation, so a fellow contract faculty member can help discuss options, and rights. Additionally, if at all possible, contact us before you schedule your meeting. That way we can more easily coordinate having a union representative join you. Your information will not be shared beyond our organizing committee without your consent. 

All contract faculty deserves a safe, equitable and accessible workplace – we hope the steps we take here will help make NYU a better workplace.

As AAUP notes: “The presence of institutions of faculty governance does not preclude the need for or usefulness of collective bargaining.” Contract faculty are active participants in shared governance throughout the university. Our elected representatives do excellent and important work, and reliably advocate for policies that would improve our working lives. While the C-FSC is a university-sponsored and supported committee that provides important opportunities for contract faculty to participate in advocacy efforts, it is not an alternative to a union.

While the C-FSC can make recommendations to the University on behalf of contract faculty, it cannot engage in collective bargaining. Unions and councils like the C-FSC often work together at academic institutions where both exist.

Faculty unions and institutions of faculty governance coexist to mutual benefit at many universities. A collective bargaining agreement covers the terms and conditions of our employment. The C-FSC and school councils and assemblies work on a wide range of issues, only some of which pertain to the terms and conditions of our employment. The need for shared governance remains, and we can bargain for contract provisions that protect our participation in existing structures.

AAUP affirms that faculty unions are an effective means of protecting academic freedom and shared governance: “by providing a contractually enforceable foundation to an institution’s collegial governance structure, collective bargaining can ensure the effectiveness of that structure and can thereby contribute significantly to the well-being of the institution.” A 2013 regression analysis-based study in the public sector, where faculty unions are common, offers evidence to support the AAUP’s position, concluding: “The results presented here suggest that faculty unions have a positive effect on the level of faculty influence at public institutions. Not surprisingly, faculty at unionized institutions have more say in decisions regarding overall salary scales as well as decisions about individual faculty salaries. However, they also have more influence in many other areas, such as appointments of faculty and department chairs, tenure and promotion, teaching loads and the curriculum, and governance. Faculty influence does not appear to suffer from any negative effects of unionization.”

We chose to affiliate with the UAW because it currently represents over 100,000 academic workers at universities across the country, including non-tenure track faculty at Barnard, the New School, and UMass Lowell. Non-tenure track instructors and researchers at Harvard also recently announced they are organizing with UAW. More importantly, NYU adjunct faculty and graduate workers have established a strong UAW presence on our campus. We are proud to have the support of our grad and adjunct colleagues, and to be able to draw on their deep experience in collective bargaining with the NYU administration.

For decades now, UAW members have agreed to devote resources to help contingent faculty and graduate workers win difficult campaigns to establish unions – 18 years of organizing at NYU for the graduate employees to eventually win an election outside of the NLRB, a 16-year struggle at the University of California, and a five-year struggle at the University of Washington. The experience and expertise developed over these years has been indispensable in helping us develop an effective campaign at NYU.

Membership dues are important because they provide the resources necessary for effective representation.  In the UAW, we do not pay dues until we have gone through the bargaining process and voted democratically to approve our first contract.   Dues are critical for providing us with independent resources that are not controlled by the university administration: we use them to ensure we have appropriate legal, bargaining, community and staff support to represent all contract faculty. UAW membership dues are currently 1.44% of gross monthly income and can only be increased by membership action (the membership in a few local unions, for example, have voted to increase dues above 1.44% to have more resources).

No one can be required to become a member of the Union after we have a contract. In most contracts, since everyone in the bargaining unit must receive all of the benefits of the contract, non-members are generally required to pay a comparable “fair share” fee, so the cost of representation is shared equally. The inclusion of a similar provision at NYU would be something we decide as part of our bargaining agenda, would be subject to negotiation with NYU, and contingent on ratification as part of our contract.

Most academic worker unions have such a provision in the contract because it means we have more power and more resources available to enforce our rights under our contract, campaign for the best possible future contracts with the administration and help other academic workers form their own unions. Under the UAW, there is a one-time initiation fee, which ranges from $10 to $50 and is determined democratically in local union bylaws approved by members.

The value of increased wages and benefits in the first contract typically outweighs the cost of dues, often leading to overwhelming majority approval of those agreements. For example, NYU adjunct faculty won pay increases that fully accounted for dues in their most recent contract. Postdocs went from having the lowest minimum salaries for postdocs in NYC to the highest in the first year of their contract in 2020, an increase of between 14.5% to 20%, along with guaranteed annual increases and other improvements.

It takes resources to have a strong union, from the earliest stages of forming a union for the first time, to bargaining and campaigning for the first contract, to enforcing rights under an existing contract, and advocating on policy issues that matter to membership.  Dues provide those resources.  See below for more information.

Dues generally cover all of the day to day costs to have a strong union, including paying for legal representation, staffing, rent, equipment, and supplies.

Most of the day-to-day work enforcing the contract and representing our membership is provided by the Local Union.  Under the UAW Constitution, the Local Union automatically keeps 27% of dues money to support its expenses: staffing for representation, rent, equipment, supplies, etc.  The rest of the dues is allocated to the International Union’s General Fund (26%), Strike and Defense Fund (44%), and Community Action Program (CAP) (3%).  Mount Sinai postdocs would be supported by these funds as described below.  Depending on the overall financial health of the Strike and Defense Fund (if its net worth is $500M or greater), an additional allocation of dues called a “rebate” is given back to the Local and International Union.  So, in typical months, the portion of dues retained by the local union is roughly 37%.

For some great examples of UAW local union helping workers defend their rights, see this summary of successful grievance handling at the University of Washington, or these stories about unionized postdocs fighting pregnancy discrimination at the University of California, or how graduate assistants at UConn took on sexual harassment.

The portion of dues allocated to the International Union would support NYU contract faculty in the following ways:

• Technical experts to help negotiate on equal terms with NYU:
  • Health insurance experts who can take on the University’s consultants in order to pursue the best benefits for the best price
  • Researchers who can help analyze institute finances.
  • Legal advice where necessary
  • Experienced negotiators to help achieve our goals, both at the bargaining table and in terms of developing an overall campaign to win a strong contract
• Support for new organizing campaigns (for example, the resources supporting Contract Faculty United-UAW come from existing UAW members’ dues)
• Political action: 3 percent of dues go toward the UAW Community Action Program (CAP), which supports progressive community and political action, including legislative and other policy advocacy on issues that matter to UAW members. For example, the UAW advocates strongly for fair, comprehensive immigration reform and expanded federal support for research funding, among other topics. [NOTE: legally, dues money cannot be used for federal campaign contributions, such as the presidential race—that money comes from members’ voluntary contributions to the UAW Voluntary Community Action Program or V-CAP, which is separate from, and in addition to, dues.]

We would decide democratically whether or not to call a strike. Under the UAW constitution, a strike can only occur after a vote in which 2/3 of members voting authorize their elected representatives on the bargaining committee to call a strike. Moreover, 98% of contracts are negotiated without a strike.

It is not uncommon for workers to decide that it is necessary to prepare for a possible strike in order to convince a university to reach a reasonable agreement during negotiations. In 2015, the NYU graduate employee union GSOC-UAW reached an agreement with NYU after a majority of graduate employees authorized the bargaining committee to call a strike if they deemed necessary. In 2022, after nearly six months of bargaining and two contract extensions, NYU adjunct faculty with ACT-UAW voted to authorize a strike, bringing the NYU administration back to the table and winning contract terms that set a new standard for part-time faculty nationwide. 

Yes. When employers take very rigid positions in bargaining, workers can choose to hold a strike vote and prepare to strike in order to achieve a fair contract. In 2005, NYU refused to bargain a fair contract after the Bush NLRB changed the law regarding graduate employees’ rights to collective bargaining. Members voted to authorize, and after the bargaining committee felt that they had exhausted all other options, GSOC went on strike. NYU was not immediately responsive, and GSOC members democratically chose to pursue continued organizing to get NYU to recognize the union outside of the NLRB; they successfully negotiated and ratified their next contract in 2015

In 2021, in response to stalled contract negotiations, 96% of voting GSOC members authorized the bargaining committee to set a strike deadline, and GSOC members went on strike for three weeks at the end of spring semester before a tentative agreement was reached. The resulting contract, ratified by 99% of GSOC voters, included a 30% increase in the rate for hourly workers, a significant expansion of health and childcare benefits, and other victories. 

A neutral grievance procedure allows a member of the union to file a grievance if any part of the contract is not being enforced. This would ensure that contract faculty grievances are heard and addressed by the university in a fair and timely manner. If the grievance is not resolved, faculty would have the ability to go into arbitration, and have a neutral third party — rather than NYU leadership — resolve the dispute. 

First, and most importantly, NYU contract faculty share many common interests. For example, health care, family benefits, pay increases, protection against discrimination and sexual harassment, time off for vacation or other reasons, tuition and fee waivers, timely payment for work performed, protection against unfair termination, international faculty rights, and having access to a fair process for resolving grievances affect all contract faculty across campus, and are typically central issues in contract negotiations regardless of who is on the bargaining committee.

Collective bargaining is also a flexible process that can accommodate the diversity that does exist across our workforce, including differences in salaries, responsibilities, benefits, pay structure and expertise. We are also no less diverse than comparable units in the public sector, where collective bargaining is standard practice. Faculty and professional staff across 29 campuses have one flexible contract that allows for the specific circumstances of departments and campuses of different types and sizes, all across the state. Diverse groups of academics have also organized with the UAW to win strong contracts that lift up all members. For instance, UAW 2865 comprises more than 19,000 academic workers across nine University of California campuses.  

After our election, contract faculty will decide on the size and composition of our bargaining committee. We will also vote democratically to approve not only the initial bargaining goals prior to negotiations but also the final contract negotiated by the committee, which encourages democratic accountability. In the Mount Sinai postdoc contract campaign, the most recent UAW academic example in NYC, a majority of all 600 postdocs voted in favor of the bargaining committee’s initial demands, which were based on extensive surveys, and voted to accept the final contract.

Collective bargaining gives us the ability to democratically determine our priorities and bargain a contract that seeks improvements for everyone covered by the contract. A union contract is not a “one size fits all” document; by participating democratically in our union we can ensure that it account for the varying ways full-time continuing contract faculty are situated and evaluated.

Once the union is established and certified, NYU cannot lawfully unilaterally alter any terms and conditions of employment, including eliminating any pay and benefits we currently enjoy. Changes to pay and benefits and other terms and conditions of employment are subject to collective bargaining, through which the NYU administration must negotiate with us. Contract faculty will democratically approve our initial bargaining goals as well as any final contract before it goes into effect.

No UAW union for academic workers has negotiated a contract that requires all covered employees to make the same amount. As contract faculty, we will make our own decisions about priorities for our contract, and we will vote on whether to accept any tentative agreement. No one has expressed an interest in a contract that requires all contract faculty to be paid the same.

These concerns are frequently cited by administrators, but they have no basis in reality. Union contracts typically set salary minimums, not maximums, while also ensuring guaranteed increases for all employees. For example, our NYU adjunct colleagues’ union contract guarantees a minimum rate for the courses they teach, but NYU can and does pay some adjunct faculty substantially more. It is not uncommon for faculty unions to pursue higher increases for lower-paid members in negotiation, but those goals and others would be determined democratically by us in the run-up to bargaining. 

Currently, NYU contract faculty negotiate our individual salaries upon appointment and reappointment, based on salary minimums that vary by rank, title and school – and this system has left many contract faculty far behind our peers at unionized institutions. With collective bargaining, we could negotiate as equals with NYU administration, which would give all of us more power to negotiate improvements that help all faculty. A collective bargaining agreement would not eliminate distinctions between faculty in different schools, ranks, and titles, nor would it prevent individual faculty from negotiating salary increases in excess of contractually-mandated minimums. 

No changes to workplace practices and policies go into our union contract unless we request and democratically agree to pursue them in collective bargaining. 

Retaliation is against the law, and you have rights as an NYU employee and union supporter. Thousands of NYU employees have already organized with the UAW and bargained with the NYU administration, including adjunct faculty and grad employees. The UAW represents over 100,000 academic workers across the U.S., and has represented faculty in a variety of employment situations. International faculty and U.S. citizens have the same rights to join a union.

Over the past few decades, more than 20,000 academic workers across our region alone have successfully organized unions: NYU adjunct faculty and graduate workers; Barnard adjunct and contract faculty; Harvard grad workers; UConn student workers and postdocs; New School part-time faculty and student workers; Columbia graduate, undergraduate, and postdoctoral workers; Mt. Sinai postdocs. These UAW academic unions have productive relationships with their university administrations and have secured many workplace improvements for employees across their campuses, including protections that are especially valuable for international academic employees.

Since its establishment in the mid-1930s, the UAW has been a dynamic, democratic organization representing a diverse array of workers, including tens of thousands of “white-collar workers” like technical writers, engineers, attorneys, administrative employees, academic workers, and others. In New York City, UAW members include workers at publishing houses, museums, nonprofits, and universities. Across the U.S., over 100,000 workers at universities are UAW members, and more are organizing on their campuses every day. We ARE the United Auto Workers.

As an increasingly significant part of the UAW, academic workers have joined in the union’s longstanding commitment to social justice to prioritize issues of importance to workers at U.S. universities such as civil rights, immigration reform, access to affordable and quality education, federal funding of innovative basic science research, healthcare reform, the right to collective bargaining, and many other issues.

Yes. International workers have the same legal right to join a union as American citizens. Visa requirements that international faculty members may only accept employment associated with the university sponsoring their visa in no way compromise the right to belong to a union that represents them in the workplace. No faculty member who is part of the UAW has reported any complications arising from the dual status of being both an international faculty member and a unionized employee.

Participation in political activities such as picketing, rallies, leafleting, and demonstrations, is protected under the Constitution for those residing in the U.S. on international workers visas, just as it is for U.S. citizens.

A few years ago, corruption uncovered in the top ranks of the UAW’s former leadership tarnished the union’s celebrated history. The actions of those officials do not reflect who UAW members are, including NYU adjunct faculty in UAW Local 7902 and graduate and teaching assistants in UAW Local 2110.

We are proud that the local we are joining helped lead charges to remove former President Gary Jones from the UAW and implement ethics reforms to ensure this never happens again, including enhanced financial controls, policies for charitable contributions and recovery of misused funds, a 24 hour anonymous hotline for members to report unethical conduct of officers, and the establishment of an independent Ethics Office. 

Since news of corruption broke in 2019, rank-and-file UAW members like our adjunct and grad colleagues have successfully organized for democratic reforms and more than 20,000 academic workers across the country have made the decision to join the UAW. In 2021, UAW members voted overwhelmingly to move to a system of direct elections for leadership, and in 2022, members in our region elected reformer and academic worker Brandon Mancilla of Harvard’s HGSU-UAW to be our representative on the International Executive Board.

A growing majority of contract faculty have supported Contract Faculty United-UAW and collective bargaining for many years. Knowing that other university administrations had challenged the right of full-time, non-tenure track faculty to unionize, we sought to avoid potentially lengthy litigation by pursuing a direct agreement instead of seeking recognition through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Last spring, a majority of contract faculty signed a public letter urging the NYU administration to agree to a fair and efficient process to verify our support. After a number of meetings to work out details last spring through fall semester, we reached this agreement. 

Winning this agreement took all of us. Contract faculty across the university organized, were visible, and came to public demonstrations of our broad support. Dozens of us came to each meeting with the administration’s lawyers, and still more came together for Planning Assemblies at which we carefully deliberated and democratically voted on each proposal. You can read this statement from 100 contract faculty across each part of campus who participated in reaching our agreement, and are now encouraging our colleagues to vote “YES” in our historic election. This democratic openness is a core tenet of our union, and it is why we have won this agreement. We are proud of our process and of this result. 

You can read the full election agreement on our website here. 

Seeking recognition through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) could have delayed our ability to vote on unionization. To avoid that, we fought for and won what is called a “voluntary election,” which means that we and the administration agreed on a process to verify our support without going through the NLRB. Instead, we and the administration agreed to work with the American Arbitration Association (AAA) to oversee the election. The route we have opted for is also stronger in several ways than going through the NLRB process. Should any election disputes arise, the administration has agreed to a timely enforcement process that will be much faster than what we could expect at the NLRB. The NYU administration has also committed in advance to bargain, whereas some other university administrations have refused to bargain even after faculty voted in an NLRB election to establish their union. 

We also negotiated a historic agreement over who will be in the bargaining unit. Rather than accept a narrow and legalistic definition of “employee” that has been distorted to exclude professors because of service work, we and the administration agreed that professors are workers and should have the right to unionize. Only administrators (chairs, deans, and up) and people whose work is half administrative will not be in the union, and this will only be the case while they are in their administrative positions.

Below are some highlights from our election agreement: 

• An inclusive potential bargaining unit that would be the largest full-time non-tenure track faculty union in the country: If we win, we will be showing colleagues around the country how to build their unions to improve their jobs and defend their academic freedom.
• Commitment to neutrality: The NYU administration agrees that the decision to unionize is that of the faculty alone, and it will remain neutral, tell our bosses to stay neutral, and will respect the results of our vote.
• Timely enforcement of our rights: There will be an expeditious process for enforcing our agreement if the administration violates its commitment to neutrality. 
• Commitment from the NYU administration to bargain if faculty vote to unionize: The administration must bargain in good faith immediately upon a majority vote. 

You can read the full neutrality and election agreement on our website here. 

Contract faculty are eligible to vote on unionization if they spend the majority of their work-time teaching and researching in the following NYU schools: the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, including Liberal Studies, the Institute of Fine Arts, and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World; the Tisch School of the Arts; the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; the Tandon School of Engineering; the School of Professional Studies; the Rory Meyers College of Nursing; the Gallatin School of Individualized Study; the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences; the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service; the Silver School of Social Work; the School of Global Public Health; and the Division of Libraries.

As at other unionized universities, like Rutgers University, faculty who spend half of their time performing duties in specific administrative roles are not in the potential bargaining unit during their term in that role. Likewise, administrators with underlying contract faculty appointments, like chairs, deans, provosts, and the like, including directors of non-department programs who act as chairs to contract faculty, will not be in the union during their administrative terms. Vice- and assistant chairs are included in the bargaining unit. If you have questions about voter eligibility, please email contractfacultyunited@gmail.com, and a colleague will get back to you. 

If a majority of voters vote for the union, the NYU administration has now legally committed to bargain collectively with CFU-UAW. As far as getting the NYU administration to agree to anything in particular in bargaining, that will be no different than under the NLRB process – ultimately, what we end up winning in our first contract will depend on how much power we bring to the negotiating table, which starts with having a decisive “YES” vote in the election.

After a majority of contract faculty vote “YES” on unionization, Contract Faculty United – UAW will be officially recognized as our union. Once CFU-UAW has been recognized by NYU, we will start the process of negotiating a contract with the administration: 

• We elect a bargaining committee from among contract faculty at NYU;
• The bargaining committee will develop initial bargaining goals based on surveys, and we will vote to ratify these goals;
• The committee will meet with NYU administration representatives to negotiate in pursuit of our bargaining goals;
• When our committee has negotiated a tentative agreement they feel they can recommend, contract faculty will vote whether to ratify it as our first contract;
• The bargaining committee will be aided throughout by experienced negotiators and other UAW representatives;
• After the contract is ratified, the membership will elect representatives who help run the Local Union, ensure that NYU does not violate the terms of the contract, and represent members with grievances and other workplace issues.