VP Vote Contested at NYU
AFTER A CONTENTIOUS election last March, the president of the NYU/New School University adjuncts union resigned this fall, creating a new dispute over the vice president’s claim to the vacant position.
Joel Schlemowitz, the former first vice president of Local 7902, accepted the presidency after Ward Regan, a former adjunct professor at NYU, stepped down after being offered a master teacher position in NYU’s General Studies Program, a full-time non-tenured position that made him ineligible to participate in the adjunct union.
Some union members are upset that Joel Schlemowitz is an adjunct at New School University which does not have a negotiated contract with the adjuncts union.
As a result, New School adjuncts, including Schlemowitz, are not considered “members in good standing” according to UAW Constitution bylaws, although New School and NYU voted to amalgamate their union in October 2004.
“Our local union is to be presided over by a person who not only does not work at New York University, but he does not pay dues or fees to the Local, either,” says Kathleen Hull, an adjunct associate professor of humanities at NYU, in an appeals letter to United Auto Workers Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn.
“According to the constitution, the eligibility requirements for presidency of any local union are more stringent than that.”
While New School adjuncts are not technically considered members of the union, they were allowed to vote in the election last March. Upon hearing the results of the election, Daniel Meltzer, an NYU adjunct and Regan’s opponent in that election, filed a complaint arguing that New School voters were not technically members and should not have been able to vote.
The local voted to uphold the election and reject Meltzer’s protest on the grounds that the local’s election committee had interpreted the voting rules to allow New School adjuncts to vote.
“The validity of New School’s membership has been discussed at the presidential level of the UAW, and the issue has been adjudicated,” Regan said.
He added that prior to completing contract negotiations with UAW in 2002, NYU adjuncts were granted the same status of “members in good standing,” and were exonerated of paying dues.
Meltzer has echoed Hull’s questioning of the new president’s legitimacy and said he believes that he would be more qualified for the position than Schlemowitz. Meltzer has called for a new election without candidates from New School. The UAW Constitution, however, does not support his action, UAW spokesman Mathew Jackson says.
“The constitution says that if there’s a vacancy in the term, the vice president [is offered the position],” Jackson says. “To accommodate some of the concerns, we asked the NYU vice president, and he was not able to because of concerns.”
Walter Alvarez, an NYU adjunct professor from the Ehrenkranz School of Social Work, was the second vice president at the time, but was offered the presidency before Schlemowitz because he is from NYU, Jackson says.
Schlemowitz refused to comment on the matter of his presidency because he did not believe it was necessary in his job to do so, he said.
“What I will say is, that … our union is here to support the rights of academic workers, and that is our priority,” he says.
The issue of Regan’s resignation has also been under scrutiny.
Around the time of his campaign for union president, Regan had applied for a full-time teaching position at NYU, an action that he did not reveal until after he won.
While Meltzer said he thinks Regan manipulated the situation to his advantage, Regan said Meltzer has misconstrued the facts.
“At the time the election was run, I had no inkling I was going to get the job,” Regan said. He had applied for a full-time position in GSP multiple times in the past, without any success, he says.
Despite the dispute, the local has a list of priorities that remain to be resolved.
“We see NYU’s craven attack against the right of TAs to collectively bargain,” Schlemowitz says. “We are also seeing New School as yet unwilling to accept the notion of fair and decent treatment of part-time faculty in our contract negotiations.”
