Post Janus v. AFSCME: PSC-CUNY Union Loses Thousands of Agency Fee Payers
by P.D. Lesko
A recent report challenging the membership numbers of the Professional Staff Congress in the City University of New York (PSC-CUNY) union revealed that several thousand of the union’s members, primarily agency fee payers, have stopped paying dues thanks to the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court Janus ruling. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Janus v. AFSCME that nonunion workers cannot be forced to pay fees to public sector unions. In July 2019, a CUNY faculty member accused PSC-CUNY long-time President Barbara Bowen of inflating union rolls by more than 20 percent.
A poll commissioned by TeacherFreedom.org in 2019, revealed that over half of teachers, including adjunct faculty, are often unaware that the Janus decision permits them to opt out of paying agency fee payments to unions.
According to PSC-CUNY’s most recent filing with the U.S. Department of Labor, PSC-CUNY represents 12,785 full-time faculty members, 10,252 part-time faculty members and 2,646 agency fee payers, among its 25,916 total members. The union’s website states, “The Professional Staff Congress is the union that represents 30,000 faculty and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the CUNY Research Foundation.” Again, according to the union’s filings with the U.S. Department of Labor, between 2010 and 2018, annual revenue increased from $14.9 million to $21.5 million, the bulk of which came from union dues. Total membership in the union increased from 18,269 in 2010 to 25,916 in 2018.
The PSC-CUNY agency fee payers, as well as the other adjuncts who have chosen to opt out of paying the union for its representation, have voiced concerns about their negotiated pay and benefits for over a decade. Most recently, the members of the CUNY Adjunct Project have advocated for the union to negotiate pay parity (which should not be confused with pay equity). In response, the union’s leadership has thrown its support behind a push to increase per course pay for its 10,252 adjunct members to $7,000 per course. According to the union’s 2018 LM-2 filing, the highest pay for full-time PSC-CUNY full-time faculty members is $188,322 and the lowest pay for adjunct members is $28.28 per hour. Part-time faculty pay 1 percent of their total pay in the form of dues to the union.
In 2008, AdjunctNation published a piece titled, “Red Fish, Blue Fish, New Caucus CUNY-PSC, Old Caucus CUNY-PSC.” The gist of that 2008 piece was this: “The union at CUNY represents 8,000 part-timers, about 5,000 of whom are ‘active’ in any given semester. The union represents just over 8,000 full-time faculty, and 3,798 agency fee payers. Agency fee payers pay dues, but may not vote on certain union matters. Interestingly, in the CUNY-PSC, the membership category that has grown the fastest since 2004 is that ‘agency fee’ category. In four years, more than 1,000 CUNY faculty members have become agency fee payers. Well, as is wont to happen in unified locals, the New Caucus leaders negotiated a new contract for the union’s members that, yes, called for ‘Across-the-board salary increases.'”
That contract awarded the full-time faculty members of the union $14,000 raises, on average, and the 8,000 part-timers got $500 raises.
In 2011, AdjunctNation published a piece titled, “Still Talking About CUNY.” Once again, the adjuncts at CUNY were unhappy with their union contract. That piece reported that, “The union leadership over at CUNY is currently making an attempt to put down a revolt by adjunct members who are vehemently opposed to the proposed contract. In my opinion, that the PSC-CUNY part-time faculty members have been so vocal in pointing out the gross inequities negotiated on behalf of the full-time and part-time union members in the proposed contract represents a heartening change in business as usual at PSC-CUNY.”
In a May 2019 piece, a POLITICO review of 10 large public-employee unions indicates they lost a combined 309,612 fee payers in 2018. But paradoxically, all but one reported more money at the end of 2018. And collectively, the 10 unions reported a gain of 132,312 members.
“In talking to folks, my perception is that there has been good news, that membership has not been falling off dramatically,” said Sharon Block, a former Obama Labor Department official who now runs the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.
POLITICO reported that, “Before Janus, 22 states and the District of Columbia allowed unions to collect agency fees from nonmembers. In those states, the percentage of public employees represented by a union — union members and nonmembers — dropped 1.1 percentage points, to 52.8 percent in 2018, down from 53.9 percent in 2017. The percentage of public employees in those states who were union members dropped 1 percentage point, to 49.7 percent in 2018, down from 50.7 percent in 2017. In total, public unions in those states lost union coverage for 115,625 employees.”
