Inside the Current Issue

People Get Ready: Historic PSC Mass Meeting Packs Cooper Union

Abby Schoneboom

It's been more than 30 years since CUNY has seen a meeting like this. On September 29 over 1,200 people packed the Cooper Union hall for this mass meeting scheduled by the PSC to "take the temperature" of its membership over the fight for a fair contract. It's been three years since PSC members have had a contract, and the city has brought one shabby proposal after another to the negotiating table. And the members are mad as hell about it - they greeted one speaker after another with thunderous clapping, punctuating speeches with spontaneous cheers and applause. And there was loud support when PSC President Barbara Bowen said "job action," the supposedly dirty words that, as public employees shackled by the punitive Taylor Law, union members are not supposed to be allowed to contemplate.

The PSC and CUNY students joined the largest antiwar protest in Washington since the war began on Sept. 24. More than 300,000 people marched to demand an end to the war and occupation, and for resources to be spent instead on people's needs.

Here's how it is, Bowen explained. The PSC has been offered a concessionary contract, one that, accounting for inflation, gives PSC members a pay cut while also eroding job security and plunging their welfare fund deeper into crisis (anyone remember dentists?). All this in a wider political context that amounts to a systematic attack on the public sphere by our billionaire mayor and his ilk, an attack that has reduced the real dollar value of CUNY public funding by 40%; that has tipped the balance so that most of the teaching at CUNY is done on the cheap by part-time workers; and that has left the welfare fund to shoulder an 18% rise in prescription drug costs.

So what is to be done? The month of October will see intense organizing across CUNY, with informational pickets planned for October 19 and 20, and a broad-based effort to speak to the entire membership, building networks of PSC "picket captains" who will each speak to 10 or 15 of their colleagues about the struggle. If November 3 comes around and there has been no significant progress at the negotiating table, the committee will decide whether to hold a referendum. If held, PSC members would vote on whether or not to go ahead with a job action (which could mean anything from a strike to a sick-out, to withholding of grading). The only other option, arbitration, is not being pursued because it is subject to heavy political influence and will likely result in minuscule gains.

It's heavy-duty stuff, especially with the Taylor Law looming over us (did you see that scary email message from the Chancellor reminding PSC members that they would be fined two days' pay for a day of striking?), but it is these high stakes that make the resounding applause in the Cooper Union so fiercely impressive. These are full-time professors, adjuncts, and HEOs who staff the computer labs and work in admissions who are getting ready to withhold their labor to send a message to political leaders who, really, have cared too little for too long about CUNY. The coming months will be a time of intense activity for the PSC membership, and the PSC campaign will be coordinated with parallel efforts by the heavyweight teacher's union, the UFT, whose leader Randy Weingarten also addressed the Cooper Union crowd, pledging solidarity in the coming months, as did the Transport Workers Union.

Want to get involved? If you are a PSC member, sign up to be a picket captain and talk to colleagues or at your campus. And even if you're not, come to the informational pickets on October 19 and 20. Or you can just get into a conversation about what's going on with some guy at the bus stop. It all helps, and the revolution will not be televised, so keep your eyes peeled for more information, talk to people, and check out http://www.psc-cuny.org for more information and action alerts.

Abby Schoneboom is a doctoral student in the Sociology program.