By Steve Wishnia

Better pay and job security, especially for adjunct and lower-paid full-time staff, are among the main priorities for the Professional Staff Congress as it prepares to negotiate a new contract with the City University of New York.

“Salary is what our members are most concerned about — not surprisingly,” PSC President James Davis told Work-Bites: They want raises that will exceed rising prices or at least keep up with them. Other priorities include health, safety, and “salary equity” for the 11,000 adjuncts and lower-paid full-time workers such as lab technicians.

The union, which represents about 30,000 faculty and staff at CUNY, launched its campaign with a rally of about 500 people outside the university system’s Manhattan headquarters Feb. 27, the day before its current contract expired. The administration has said it will negotiate but hasn’t set a date yet, Davis said. It generally doesn’t start talks until the previous contract has expired, he added: The current contract is retroactive to 2017, but it wasn’t agreed on until 2019.

In 2019, the PSC won a 71% raise in what adjuncts make for a three-credit course, in part by getting them one hour’s pay for every three hours they spend in the classroom teaching. This year, it’s trying to get them parity with what faculty at the same level — primarily lecturers — make for teaching, which includes time they spend preparing for classes. They do “an enormous amount of work outside the classroom,” Davis says.

That contract had a “stability provision” in which some adjuncts can get a three-year contract to teach two courses a semester, instead of having to reapply every year or every semester. But the qualifying criteria are “pretty stringent,” Davis says, so the PSC wants to expand the number of people eligible.

The union also wants to make it easier for adjuncts to get health insurance. Currently, they have to have worked for two consecutive semesters before they can apply for it, and they have to teach at least six hours per week or do 15 hours of non-teaching work to keep it. Other priorities include smaller classes, finding ways to recruit more racially diverse staff, and penalties for late paychecks, which is a particular problem for adjuncts hired at the last minute before a semester starts.

The PSC has been one of the city unions most outspoken against the city’s plans to switch retirees from traditional Medicare to a private Medicare Advantage plan, which has been backed by the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC]. The city expects to reach a deal on a plan with the Aetna insurance company soon, Davis said, but “it’s still not clear what the implications will be.” In any case, the PSC believes that “the option for premium-free Senior Care should remain.”

The finances of members’ health coverage are complicated, the union says, because CUNY receives funding from both the city and the state, with the proportions different for four-year and community colleges.

These demands will require money. While Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget would increase funding for the state and city university systems, it would also raise tuition by 3%. Meanwhile, Mayor Eric Adams has demanded what the PSC calls “disruptive cuts.” Last month, CUNY ordered its 25 colleges to freeze hiring and slash their budgets for the coming year by at least 5%.

Davis hopes that Gov. Hochul will fund any pay raises the union wins — unlike her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo. That was “enormously destructive,” he says, as “CUNY had to cannibalize its own budget” to pay for them. In the past five years, it has lost about 750 full-time faculty members through attrition and retirement, about 10% of the total in 2017, and student-support staff such as academic and financial-aid advisers were depleted.

When the PSC surveyed members about their priorities for the contract, “maintain and improve the quality of education at CUNY” got the highest response, with 96% checking it, Davis says.