Includes 12-Percent Raise

City, State Hold Up Proposed PSC Deal

By HOWARD MEGDAL

BARBARA BOWEN: 'Secret' deal stalled.

A frustrated Professional Staff Congress President Barbara Bowen went public late last month about a tentative contract with the City University of New York granting her members 12-percent pay raises, implying that state and city officials have dragged their heels since November on signing off.

Other perks of the proposed deal include increased sabbatical pay, a reduction of the teaching load at New York City Technical College to 24 hours, paid sick leave for non-teaching adjuncts, annual leave for faculty counselors, increased starting pay for CUNY Language Immersion Program professors, and 100 new full-time lines, with a hiring pool made up solely of CUNY adjuncts.

City, State Delaying

"The city and state have been reviewing the settlement prior to giving it their approval," Ms. Bowen said in a Jan. 27 statement to PSC members. "On Jan. 13, 2006 - two months after the union and management came to an agreement - CUNY Vice Chancellor Brenda Malone wrote in a letter to me: 'the city and state expressed concerns about some items and requested additional information about others.' We do not yet have a formal report on those 'concerns,' but as members, you have waited long enough."

Neither Ms. Malone nor a CUNY spokesman returned calls seeking comment.

The PSC has now gone more than 39 months without a contract, while demanding at least a 10-percent raise, stabilization of the union's welfare fund, a restoration of dental benefits, and improvements in working conditions.

"It's a measure of the hostile political climate we face that those relatively modest goals are absurdly difficult to achieve," said Ms. Bowen in her letter to members.

The PSC leader acknowledged that the labor realities created by contracts signed last summer "changed the context for public-employee bargaining in New York."

"The police union received an arbitration award that offset higher salaries for current workers with deep salary cuts for new employees, and the UFT settled a contract with the city that included higher salaries as well as 'productivity increases' and 'reforms' sought by the city. In this context, the PSC negotiating team agreed to consider some proposals management introduced late in the bargaining - as long as they would lead to substantial salary increases and other real advances in working conditions."

The agreed-to concessions were a change in the service time needed to be granted tenure from five years to seven and an increase in full-time faculty office hours from three to four hours a week. Ms. Bowen decided to go public with the framework of the deal in order to gauge the level of membership support for the proposed package.

"I want to emphasize, however, that none of these elements is final," she said. "I share them with you because I feel you are entitled to know why this contract has taken so long and what is under discussion."

She hinted that she also went public out of concern that the city and state will not sign off on the pact.

"We have had several indications that the framework will not be approved," Ms. Bowen said. "The union negotiating team remains prepared to listen to the presentation by CUNY, the City and the State, but we cannot accept major changes on such issues as office hours and time to tenure if the settlement as a whole does not represent a significant advance."