Information for the NYU Community

CFU-UAW (full-time contract faculty) may go on strike — that is, stop working in order to win a contract. A supermajority of CFU members have voted to authorize an unfair labor practice strike, with a deadline of Monday, March 23rd, for the NYU administration to start bargaining in good faith and agree to a fair contract. 

When workers strike, that means they stop all work. In the case of contract faculty, that means no teaching, no advising, no meeting or emailing with students, no writing recommendation letters.

A strike, if it happens, will be disruptive. It has to be disruptive to work, and the more disruptive it is, the more effective it will be, and more quickly we hope we can reach a fair contract. 

You can learn more about CFU’s contract negotiations and strike authorization vote here.

Depending on where we work and what we teach, the NYU administration calls contract faculty Lecturers, Language Lecturers, Teachers, Instructors, Clinical Professors, Arts Professors, Industry Professors, Music Professors, Research Professors, Professors of Practice, or Librarians of Practice. We make up half of NYU’s full-time faculty. 

Like tenured professors, we are full-time employees with a wide range of teaching, research, and administrative roles. However, most of us teach more than our tenured colleagues. We don’t have the security of tenure. And we earn, on average, 36% less than our tenured peers. Every few years, we have to reapply for our jobs, with no guarantee we’ll get to keep them. 

In February 2024, contract faculty across NYU voted overwhelmingly to form our union, Contract Faculty United – UAW, the largest union of private-university full-time non-tenure track faculty in the country. Two years later, we are still fighting for a first contract that will give us improved job security, compensation, and benefits that will support our work with students and their lives — and we’re fighting to protect academic freedom and the integrity of an NYU education.

Our strike is over the administration’s continuing unfair labor practices. The phrase “unfair labor practice,” or ULP for short, comes from labor law, which sets out the rules for how employers and unions interact and requires both sides to act fairly to respect the rights of workers. The NYU administration has repeatedly broken the law by refusing to negotiate over important benefits such as housing; by unilaterally changing the terms and conditions of our employment; and by attempting to prevent non-union coworkers from exercising their right to honor our picket lines.

CFU members are fighting for the future of NYU. We’re opposing the misuse of AI to teach or design classes, and we’re demanding intellectual property rights and protections against discrimination and harassment. We are fighting to safeguard the academic freedom that American universities uphold: decisions about what to teach, whom to teach, how to teach, and who should teach must be made on the basis of faculty expertise, not the whims of administrators, politicians, or donors. 

Sadly, the NYU administration has not yet agreed to fair terms on these crucial topics. 

• Fair compensation. Contract faculty salaries lag far behind our tenured colleagues. Contract faculty need a fairer compensation structure that addresses salary compression, corrects inequities, and ensures that our pay reflects the cost of living in New York City. 
• Job security and academic freedom. Defending academic freedom has never been more important. Contract faculty need a fair reappointment and promotion process, including presumptively renewable appointments for long-serving faculty, and a guarantee of our full participation in the shared governance of our schools, programs, and departments. 
• Protecting NYU’s scholarly and creative mission. Contract faculty’s research, our creativity, and our pedagogy is the foundation of NYU’s international reputation. Contract faculty need better support for research and professional development and the continued right to conduct research as principal investigators. 
• Support for our careers and their families. NYU’s contract faculty are overworked and struggling to meet new demands at home. We need fair workload policies and improved benefits to support ourselves across our careers and into retirement, our children and aging relatives. Contract faculty deserve to be able to afford to raise families in the city where we teach.

You can learn more about CFU’s contract demands here.

No. Contract faculty are half the full-time faculty at NYU. We teach a lot, but we don’t teach every class. Classes taught by tenured faculty, adjunct faculty, visiting faculty, grad TAs, postdocs, and others will continue to meet as usual.

Contract faculty won’t get an extended break, either. Striking workers don’t stay home, they participate in “pickets” and other actions at their workplace to encourage their bosses to settle. If we strike, we’ll still be coming in to campus — we just won’t be working in our offices, classrooms, labs, studios, or any of the other places you’d usually find us.

The NYU administration has said that it is looking to hire temporary replacements, colloquially known as “scabs,” for striking contract faculty, so it’s possible that some of your struck contract faculty classes will have substitute instructors (more on that below).

The most common contract faculty titles are Clinical Professor, Arts Professor, Industry Professor, Music Professor, Research Professor, Professor of Practice, Librarian of Practice, Lecturer, Language Lecturer, Instructor, and Teacher. 

However, NYU is complicated, and there are lots of different kinds of faculty working here. Find your professor’s bio on the NYU website, and use this chart to help you figure out what faculty group your professor belongs to.

If contract faculty strike, we will stop all work and participate in different actions on campus, like marching in “picket lines” outside NYU buildings. 

Striking workers picket to let the community know that they have a serious dispute with their employer, and in our case that our bosses are breaking the law by refusing to bargain fairly. They ask supporters not to cross the picket line, which helps send a clear message to the boss: if things are so bad that a majority of workers have collectively decided to strike, business can’t proceed as usual. Respecting a picket line is one of the central duties of democratic citizenship.

However, NYU is one of the largest employers in New York City. We can’t form a picket line around the entire campus, and we’re not the only people who work here. If we strike, we’ll picket specific locations. We are asking visitors to respect our picket line while we’re on strike by not coming to NYU’s campus — even if there is not an active, literal picket line in front of the building they’re planning to enter. So:

• If you are a prospective student doing an admissions visit, please come back when half of NYU’s full-time faculty have a fair collective bargaining agreement.
• If you are a visiting academic with an event scheduled, please cancel or postpone your event until we have a contract.
• If you are a contractor, are making a delivery, or have another kind of job that brings you to NYU’s campus, please do not cross our picket line!

For people who study, live, or work on NYU’s campus, it’s a little more complicated. For example, if contract faculty form a picket line around Paulson, we know that some people will have to cross, even if they support our strike. For example:

• People live in Paulson. Undergraduate residents, Resident Assistants, and Faculty Fellows in Residence (some of them CFU members) have to be able to come and go.
• Most unionized workers at NYU (e.g. adjunct faculty, grad workers, staff, CSOs) have “No Strike, No Lockout” provisions in their collective bargaining agreements. If these workers refuse to cross our picket lines, they risk being disciplined by the NYU administration.

We can’t ask everyone not to cross our picket lines. However, we are making one ask of all NYU employees, regardless of title or rank: in the event of a strike, please don’t scab, and please don’t do our struck work.

Hiring substitutes (“scabs”) is a common tactic that employers use to limit the disruption caused by a strike and gain leverage at the negotiating table. The NYU administration has announced plans to find scab professors to cover contract faculty classes in the event of a strike.

We also expect the administration to ask many of our faculty and staff colleagues to temporarily pick up our work, with or without extra pay: “Can you just cover this once?” / “Can you help us out for a week?” / “It’s only grading.” These temporary labor transfers may seem harmless, but they are one of the most powerful ways the NYU administration can undermine our strike.

If you are asked to do paid or unpaid work at NYU to cover the absence of striking CFU members, politely decline. Keep it simple and boring: “I’m afraid I’m not available.” No explanation or debate is required. 

The principle is simple: you should decline to do any work that would ordinarily be done by a contract faculty colleague. You should not take over our classes, you should not accept students from our classes into your classes, and you should not advise our advisees or supervise our trainees (unless advising or supervising those students is a regular part of your job responsibilities). You should not take on administrative or programming work ordinarily done by contract faculty. If you are asked to do more than you usually do during a strike, it’s probably struck work — you should decline to do it. Committees that have any members on strike should not meet, and if meetings are called we ask you to refuse to attend.

• If you’re a unionized undergraduate worker, see SWAN-UAW’s guidelines for members.
• If you’re an undergrad worker who is not a member of SWAN-UAW, see this FAQ.
• If you’re adjunct faculty, see ACT-UAW’s guidelines for members.
• If you’re a grad worker, see GSOC-UAW’s guidelines for members.
• If you’re clerical, administrative, or technical staff, see the UCATS guidelines for members.
• If you’re tenure-track or tenured faculty, see guidance from NYU AAUP for professors and chairs, and the T-FSC Resolution Regarding NYU Administration Requests for Tenure-Track Faculty to Do the Work of Striking Contract Faculty Colleagues.

Contract faculty are striking, and we are not asking anyone else to strike with us. In the case of unionized colleagues, we are specifically not asking you to break your contract’s No Strike clause. Other colleagues, including tenured and tenure-track faculty, administrators, postdocs, visiting faculty, and non-RA undergraduate workers, have no such restriction — but we are still not asking you to strike.

During past strikes at NYU, some non-striking faculty members have chosen to avoid crossing picket lines by teaching off campus or by zoom. While we are unable to organize spaces for continuing classes, we encourage you to follow your conscience.

Refusing to teach you will be one of the hardest decisions that many of us have ever had to make. We care deeply about your right to learn. You are one of the most important reasons we’re preparing to strike. Our working conditions are your learning conditions, and we are fighting to preserve the integrity of the education we offer you. 

The NYU administration has said that they are finding scab substitutes to teach struck classes, and they have told you to attend class as usual if we strike. We think it’s unlikely that last-minute replacements will be able to cover all our classes, and we doubt that scab subs can offer the same educational experience we do. Follow your conscience.

Wear CFU buttons and stickers. Visible support builds contract faculty confidence and shows the NYU administration that the community stands with us.

Sign our support pledge, and ask your parents to sign it, too — admin will be working overtime to rope parents into opposing our strike.

Students, parents, and alumni can join our Action Network email campaign to encourage the NYU administration and Board of Trustees to settle a fair contract. 

You can film a short video describing why you support us, and either post it on your own social media or send it to us for us to post. You can find instructions and tips here.

If we strike, students can support us by visiting our picket lines, marching with us, and telling the administration you stand with us.