Why I’m Voting Against the “Historic” PSC-CUNY Contract for Adjuncts

by Kent Oswald

Perhaps I could be more positive about the “historic contract,” if I accepted what I am paid for, instead of wishing to be compensated for what I do? Two years after the previous contract expired, the union covering about 30,000 City University of New York professors and other staff members and the school’s administration found common ground for the past two and next three. According to PSC-CUNY President Barbara Bowen, the contract offers “pathbreaking salary increases” for adjuncts; New York governor Andrew Cuomo describes my upcoming two percent, inflation neutral, annual raise on the current $74.44 I receive for the hours I am in a classroom in the context of: “A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” (https://thechiefleader.com/news/news_of_the_week/breakthrough-psc-deal-nearly-doubles-adjunct-per-class-payments/article_c40fc1e4-f68a-11e9-a674-57179a5db3da.html)

Maybe I am not doing a fair day’s work. Maybe I don’t deserve a fair day’s pay. The contract I will vote to reject offers “fair” compensation for me to take attendance, stand in front of a class, get grades in on time, and not upset the students in a way that causes problems for the administration. There is an annual evaluation by another faculty member and student evaluations each semester, but positive feedback about my teaching has no impact as far as I can see, and my impression is that negative reports on teaching are only used to support a decision on not rehiring that has already been made. All non-classroom work is on me and I need to accept all lumps that may cause me.

The contract I will vote against is likely to pass because of a consensus of indifference to changing the conversation around what is “teaching,” and fear of an unknown worse case. No doubt naively, I vote “NO,” hoping to join with others and influence the next contract and general discussion.  I will vote against this “pathbreaking” and “fair” and what was referred to as “historic” contact hoping that there will be an educational transformation, when  enough people stop making excuses for the current contract and educational system with its acknowledged weaknesses and start to care enough about making changes that will significantly improve the situation.

While the contract covers the entire membership (i.e., full-time and part-time faculty, professional staff, graduate CUNY employees and those working in the CUNY Research Foundation) news headlines featured a ten percent salary increase and 71 percent raise for the lowest paid adjunct. Unless adjuncts are quoted — noting the ten percent increase is over five years, and only in the last four months of the contract does the hyped 71 percent raise kick in for a relatively few — the consensus as reported is of a great Union win, and thanks to Janus the non-members who also reap these gains. Currently, the first step of the adjunct salary levels — reflecting expertise gained, as we move up every three years through the five steps, pays $3,222 for a three-credit course. (I am on the second step.) (https://www.psc-cuny.org/contract/teaching-and-non-teaching-adjunct-rate-schedule_Union information. By way of comparison, this “great Union win” offers to pay us about $2,000 less than adjuncts at both Rutgers and University of Connecticut and $3,000 less than those teaching at Penn State. (https://www.psc-cuny.org/contract/bargaining-update-2-salary-demands  http://www.uconnaaup.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/11/Tentative-Agreement-Article-19-Salary-and-Benefits-6-22-17.pdf )

Spring of 2020 will bring a rise of the base pay for a three-credit course to about $3,351 if the contract is approved in the next few weeks, as seems likely. There will be back pay, but not for work prior to October 2018: that first two percent raise will not touch an adjunct bank account. The current contract compensates us for one office hour (to use at our discretion), if we teach two or more classes equalling at least six credit hours. The new contract compensates us for an office hour (with some of that potentially assigned by the school) for every class worth three or more credits.

An adjunct teaching only one class gets an additional 33 percent per course. Two classes nets a 17 percent bump; a three course teaching load earns a 22 percent premium; and by teaching four classes (the cap) per semester, an adjunct pulls down an extra 25 percent per course. All good numbers. All statistically significant. All still non-competitive based on our starting point.

Beginning the contract’s fifth and final year, in August of 2022, the lowest paid adjunct will receive $5,500 per course. Every adjunct, lecturer and above, will also receive $5,500, unless these instructors are in the minority who make more, in which case they get the two percent raise. Bargained away are pay for office hours and pay steps. (The current contract added about one percent annual salary increase and three percent bump per step.) The new contract expires November 2022. (https://www.psc-cuny.org/contract/adjunct-salary-increases-2017-2022)

Union officials have hit the hustings to tout the benefits, and assure adjuncts we’ll surely have better luck next time, but for now “there just isn’t the money.” Our gains seem to come from our allies, not our employer. University messaging suggests our raise comes from a tuition increase for students, and appearances from contract terms suggest it is also funded by dropping a year of everyone’s back pay from the agreement. In a private discussion with an adjunct group I heard from a member of the negotiating team an acknowledgment of “weaknesses” about the contract, but that, “If we vote it down then we will go back to the table, but understand that we start from scratch, we will not build from this….”

In a March 2019 interview with Jacobin Magazine, union President Bowen proclaimed, “The PSC bargaining team has told management across the table that we will not accept a contract that does not address our demand to raise adjunct pay to $7,000 a course. Nor will we accept a contract that funds additional adjunct pay by cutting the already low pay of full-time faculty and staff.” (https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/cuny-psc-taylor-law-contract-strike)

With a memo of agreement signed, Bowen spoke to New York City’s paper of record on union issues, The Chief-Leader, and offered, “Even though it doesn’t reach $7,000, it does break the system poverty pay. I feel strongly that a contract that gets a 71-percent increase in minimum pay is not a contract one should turn down.” (https://thechiefleader.com/news/news_of_the_week/breakthrough-psc-deal-nearly-doubles-adjunct-per-class-payments/article_c40fc1e4-f68a-11e9-a674-57179a5db3da.html)

Union officials seem surprised many of us are disgruntled. Turns out, Plan A was not particularly strong: campaign, negotiate, approve. Turns out, to the extent we have a Plan B, it is to try Plan A again. There is no plan for what to do to change the conversation or address the adjunct situation in three years … well, no effective plan. The same things I hear today about how next time will be different are echoes of what was said with every previous contract. This was supposed to be our contract, with our issues front and center. It seems only fair that three years from now it will be some other unit’s time to get their pay and prestige bumped up.

Maybe it is time for new union leadership; the current slate has been in for nearly 20 years. Or, maybe we need more officials with outside negotiating experience, rather than leaving our fate to well-meaning and overworked academics. The Union’s public campaign during the last two years about how the City and State are not adequately funding an “economic engine” propelling their citizens up the socio-economic ladder (https://www.chronicle.com/article/Colleges-With-the-Highest/244094?key=3pdsAWeyasnTA5KS7puipDev3BuQu1sAXG5Cl6VQfzsrBFnwQz60n9QCxADGzdFNai0zMzJtY1ptblB0QnR4WXRaSXZlNDUybjhEZW1KSjJkYmdNNkZKWXZ0QQ) did not resonate.

Few students and almost nobody I speak with off campus seemed aware we’d been two years without a contract. The political appointees who are our trustees have inspired minimal public interest (and little political pressure). We need to bring to bear political pressure regarding the crumbling infrastructure on our 25 campuses, and how many of the 275,000 students deal with real economic peril alongside their studies — nearly half reported food insecurity (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/nyregion/hunger-college-food-insecurity.html).

Negotiations are hard and I understand that declaring you want something is not the same as receiving it. I have experience with moving assets around to try and keep the larger collection of debits under control. I will even cop to facing my responsibility for taking a low-paying job knowing that the system has no conscience about my situation nor motivation to change it. I didn’t put in the hundreds of hours union negotiators did getting even this far, and it makes perfect sense they don’t want to have to start over. It is also clear that the contract is likely to pass no matter what I do. For all the courses we teach — and despite my social media echo chamber — adjuncts are not a potent force. Many don’t belong to the union and the administration treats us as disposable, revolving door curriculum hole pluggers, not generators of either revenue or prestige (i.e., the potential for revenue).

Let me admit that my hourly classroom pay is pretty high. It is not attorney high, but it is more or less household plumber high, probably even tatoo artist or underwater welder high.  Unfortunately, most of the work of an adjunct professor does not take place on the billable stage. I stand before students at the beginning of each semester and tell them I spend two to three hours on work for every one I am in class and expect them to do the same: this is our job. I doubt they would believe me if I told them the real ratio of hours in and out of class. There is time spent between semesters preparing that isn’t measured. During the semester , when I am “on the clock,” time goes into working on new lectures, adapting lesson plans, reviewing previously assigned readings and searching through new materials.

I spend hours commenting on and correcting assignments. I write student recommendations and notes for them to social service or funding agencies. I offer general counseling in person and online. I respond to emails from students about class and school matters, as well as the department about administrative matters. I complete online courses the administration says are required of all employees, and try to stay up to date with what is going on in the world and my academic disciplines so I can bring that to class as I strategize to get students to connect to learning in ways that will not so much teach them what I want to know, but help them learn what they want to know.

There is also no compensation for the non-pedagogical tasks of scrambling to research resources as an amateur social worker. A couple examples that stay with me: I searched for resources for a student who started my course twice and dropped it both times because being homeless and taking care of younger siblings is not a secure educational foundation. I gave extra time to the student(s) needing help making up work missed while out of the country dealing with an immigration issue with details I asked not be shared lest it become a legal issue for either or both of us. Like my CUNY colleagues and adjuncts around the country, I have more examples of students needing non-academic world help for which we aren’t reimbursed.

Self-awareness takeaway: there is nothing different about my circumstance from most adjuncts, except for this “historic contract.”