Protests Low Salaries, Stalled Talks
PSC Bolts CUNY Meeting

By MICHELLE FRIEDMAN

Professional Staff Congress members walked out of an April 28 City University of New York Board of Trustees meeting to dramatize their push for a new contract with higher wages for university faculty. The most recent PSC-CUNY contract expired last Sept. 19.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow TAKING IT TO THE BOARD: With Professional Staff Congress President Barbara Bowen exhorting them, union activists make their case to City University of New York board members that they need raises that go beyond merely keeping up with inflation.

Cite Salary Erosion

As the CUNY board addressed its most recent budget, PSC members rose in protest and vacated the room, then were asked to leave the premises.

The PSC called salary erosion the most critical issue of this contract negotiation. In an informational document released on April 24, the PSC detailed the contrast between CUNY professors' salaries and those for colleagues at comparable universities, and asked CUNY to narrow the gap. At Yeshiva University, the top-paying university in the New York area, the salary of a full-time professor in the fall of 2006 was $150,000, nearly 60 percent higher than in CUNY at $94,400. Similarly, that same year an Assistant Professor at Yeshiva earned $83,000, while those in the same position at CUNY were paid $63,200.

Among other public universities, Rutgers paid professors $123,800 in 2006, and the University of Connecticut paid professors $122,200.

"CUNY salaries now lag at least 20 percent behind salaries at comparable public universities, and more than 40 percent behind the real-dollar value in the 1970s," said PSC President Barbara Bowen in an open letter to the CUNY Board of Trustees distribution April 28. The PSC claims years of below-inflation contracts have failed to keep up with the cost of living in New York.

'Need Hike Above Inflation'

"We need a contract that provides for a real salary increase - above the level of inflation - and that allows the university to begin making progress toward nationally competitive salary levels," elaborated Ms. Bowen in her letter.

The PSC also addressed the ripple effects of low Professor salaries, the most troubling being staff retention and recruitment. "At precisely the moment CUNY must replenish the ranks of full-time faculty and hire a new generation to replace those nearing retirement, our salaries have become - as one department chair put it - a joke," Ms. Bowen stated in a March 17 letter to CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. "In conversations with faculty and staff across the university I hear again and again that CUNY cannot compete with peer institutions. In one department four tenure-track lines were unfilled because no one could be found to take them. In another, the chair struggles to get people to serve on a search committee because no one believes the searches will result in a hire. In yet another, half of the full-time faculty are actively and openly seeking other jobs."

Millions for Ads, Not Staff?

The PSC also accused CUNY of being hypocritical for spending millions of dollars on a campaign to recruit more students while failing to properly pay the faculty. "CUNY's expensive advertising campaign urging students to 'study with the best' may have succeeded in cramming more students into our classrooms, but it cannot disguise the lack of competitive salaries and working conditions," Ms. Bowen said in her March letter.

Many newly hired, adjunct, or part-time employees are having a hard time making ends meet, claims the PSC, while some are living without benefits.

"We need more pay to live in New York. It is a simple matter," said Baruch College Professor of Political Science Harry Cason. "We need more pay to feel committed to the university, because right now we don't feel like the university is committed to us."

CUNY Director of Communications Michael Arena in a May 2 statement said that CUNY has been working assiduously with the city and the state to establish economic parameters for contract negotiations with faculty, staff and the PSC.

"The university continues to work with the PSC to narrow the non-economic issues in bargaining, so that the parties can be positioned to effectuate a quick resolution once the economic parameters are set," he said. "The university shares with CUNY faculty and staff a recognition of the need for a fair and equitable contract that recognizes the essential contributions that they make to the university every day. The university is hopeful that the PSC likewise recognizes the precarious economic position of the city and state and that it will continue to work with the university to pare the issues at the bargaining table."