I very much appreciate Megan Behrent’s earlier post on this topic, which lays out thoroughly many of the disappointing issues with the proposed contract. I encourage anyone interested in gaining perspective on this vote to read her message.
I won’t bother to reiterate all of the same points. Suffice it to say that I agree with her main points that, despite the hard work and skill of our bargaining team, this proposed contract makes mediocre gains that do not make us financially whole in light of recent high inflation, and it eliminates or offers disappointingly watered-down versions of some key demands. It also leaves adjuncts in the lurch in several important ways.
I do want to offer two points to supplement Megan’s words. First, I would like to address the pressure many of us have apparently felt to accept this contract in light of the incoming presidential administration. I do not take lightly the destabilizing effect that a second Trump term will have on the country in general and on public education specifically, and I understand the impulse to “lock down” our working conditions before chaos potentially ensues. However, one piece of advice I have heard from multiple parties skilled in social justice work and political resistance is this: Do not comply in advance. I consider this extremely wise counsel, and I take it seriously. There are forces coming into power who are openly hostile to public education, to intellectual freedom, and to organized labor. To accept a contract with which many of us are unhappy, and which would materially harm a large bloc of our membership, because we are worried that we might not do better later, is to do the work of those forces for them. To accept less because we fear those forces is to hand them what they want without a fight. We need to advocate even more firmly for our value to be respected and compensated in the face of opposition.
I would also like to expand on the discussion of one key aspect of the proposed contract: the change in adjunct pay from an hourly rate to a per-course fee. This is a huge step backward for adjuncts, one that significantly weakens our future bargaining power and that opens us up to a variety of potential abuses. It puts us at the mercy of department chairs and administration to define what tasks and responsibilities fall under the umbrella of course-related duties. Currently, adjuncts are paid for their time in the classroom and their office hours. Since it is physically impossible to teach a course at a basic level of competence working only those hours, all adjuncts are the victims of wage theft: we are required to do work for which we are definitively not getting paid. When we are paid at an hourly rate, that exploitation is explicit. CUNY’s practices are illegal, and our mistreatment is apparent.
Under the new system, that exploitation and wage theft still exist, but they are rendered invisible. Even though we are still not being paid for the hours worked, we cannot prove that fact. Even when our hours worked per course, when pro-rated, put us below minimum wage, we cannot protest, since our fee covers any and all “course-related” tasks.
As of 2023, wage theft is larceny in New York State. The punishments for wage theft are now more severe, and prosecutors have more leverage to pursue employers who transgress these laws. It’s unsurprising that the administration pushed very hard at the eleventh hour for a change to the adjunct pay structure. What is much more surprising is that our bargaining team apparently accepted the change without any qualms, and in fact seems to consider it a victory.
If the union had advocated for adjuncts to be paid for just two hours per week, per course for grading and prep time (still much less than most of us spend teaching our classes) we would all be paid immediately for a three- credit course what we can now roughly expect to get per course in 2027. As Megan pointed out, even this would barely put us on par with adjuncts in similar colleges.
This contract does nothing to alleviate the penury and exploitation of adjuncts; in fact it opens us up to further exploitation and weakens our demands. I would ask any adjunct, and anyone wishing to stand in solidarity with your beleaguered colleagues, to vote NO.
