Spencer Means
The New School University Center in Manhattan.
At midnight on November 30, the results of The New School’s part-time faculty union vote on the university’s “last, best, and final” contract offer were tallied: a stunning 95 percent of part-time faculty members voted it down. An overwhelming number of members of the union, ACT-UAW Local 7902, rejected the contract because the university did not adequately address the union’s core demands on compensation, job security, and access to health care.
“We’re asking to be humanized,” says Molly Ragan, a staff organizer for the union and a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design, one of the New School’s six divisions. “We’re asking to be seen for the work that we do, and the support and compassion we have for our students.”
Nearly 1,700 part-time faculty members at The New School, who make up 87 percent of the university’s educators, have been on strike since November 16—three days after their union’s contract expired. Since then, the university has effectively shuttered, as students, full-time faculty, and other staff on campus have walked out in solidarity with the strike. Students have been thrust into the awkward position of having to choose between an obligation to their professors and their obligation to attend class.
At the picket line outside of the school’s University Center on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Isabelle Bouvier, a sophomore at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, gestured to the empty glass building and remarked that “we’ve gotten emails telling us to keep going to class and continue on as normal, which is funny because nothing’s happening in there. There are no classes to go to.” Consequently, the university has ignited the ire of parents, some of whom have threatened a tuition strike and a class action lawsuit against the university.
In public statements, the university has emphasized its respect for part-time faculty members and their desire to reach a fair and fiscally responsible agreement. But this front-facing message is inconsistent with its conduct towards the union. The university’s offers and bargaining tactics have demonstrated a disregard for the contributions these instructors make inside the classroom and beyond.
Just five days after the strike began (only three of which were business days), the university presented the union with its “last, best, and final” offer.
Just five days after the strike began (only three of which were business days), the university presented the union with its “last, best, and final” offer. This is a surprising move to see in a higher education labor negotiation; the use of “final offers” are typically attempts to demoralize unions and pressure the rank-and-file into accepting an inferior contract. In its bargaining blog, the union rightly points out that this type of behavior is more befitting of a large anti-union corporation like Amazon, Starbucks, or John Deere than a purportedly progressive institution.
The John Deere comparison is particularly apt. Last November, the company used the same tactics during its own United Auto Workers strike. Ragan questioned how this approach would “end well for the university,” and thought its “aggressive” move was emblematic of the corporatization that has not only infected The New School but also spread throughout American higher education.
The university’s final offer includes a 7 percent raise in the first year of the five-year contract, with 2.5 percent raises annually in the following four years. Ragan noted that the first-year raise “isn’t necessarily anything to balk at, especially given what the university historically gives to unions on this campus.” Although the university has been publicly flaunting the contract’s 17 percent pay raise, Ragan called it a “Trojan horse.”
She pointed out that part-time faculty members already struggle to afford healthcare premiums with their current wages, and that the proposed increase in healthcare costs would nullify any impact the raises might have. Dianca London Potts, a part-time faculty member who teaches in the literary studies department at Lang and serves on the union’s bargaining committee, was even more emphatic. “If you think about inflation, the fact that we haven’t had a raise since 2018, and the fact that it’s much more expensive to live in New York than it used to be, it’s not really that much of a bump,” Potts remarked.
The union’s bargaining committee told the university that it could not recommend the final offer to its members due to language in the contract that it found objectionable. This includes terms that would give the university full discretion to increase healthcare premiums, strip the union of its ability to pursue a grievance or arbitration against changes in the healthcare plan, keep job security precarious, and most importantly, continue the practice of only paying part-time faculty for contact hours—strictly the time spent inside the classroom.
Part-time faculty at The New School are currently not paid for any out-of-classroom work, including syllabus preparation, grading, and communicating with students. The final offer did not address this, which is why many union members rejected the contract, as compensation for their unpaid labor has been among the union’s core demands since negotiations began in June. At nearby New York University and the City University of New York, adjunct faculty recently won the right to be paid for labor outside the classroom.
Rather than continue bargaining, the university declared an impasse. Declaring an impasse allows the university to exploit a loophole within the National Labor Relations Act that gives them the power to suspend negotiations and impose the terms of the final offer unilaterally. In doing so, the university indicated that it would prefer an escalation that would force the rank-and-file to remain on strike rather than ending the strike with a collective agreement.
Multiple union members told The Progressive that the university indicated that it was done negotiating before heading into the Thanksgiving break. On November 28, perhaps anticipating that its final offer would be rejected, the university released a statement claiming that it did not walk away and would be willing to continue bargaining with the help of a mediator upon the union’s request. But not all students have been convinced. Chris Adams, a junior at Lang, says he felt “disheartened” to see “the university take such union-busting avenues while completely misleading students.”
Kartik Gupta, a sophomore at Lang and Student Senate’s Vice Chairperson for Advocacy, worries about the university’s future: “It is very hard to recover from the reputation that they have ruined for themselves as this progressive social justice institution. The only way is to do right by the faculty and to do it sooner than later.”
After the union rejected the university’s “final offer,” the university agreed to the union’s request to return to the table and resume negotiations with the help of a mediator. The first mediation session on December 1 ended with no movement. Meanwhile, union members show no signs of abandoning the picket line and will continue withholding their labor until they get a fair deal.
Many part-time faculty members said they would rather be in the classroom with their students than be picketing with them outside in the cold, but they’re hopeful that the university will present them with a good faith offer before the end of the semester. “We will get to the other side of this,” Potts says. “We’re closer than we’ve ever been. I want a contract that’s fair, whenever that happens.”
But other part-time faculty members noted that they didn’t feel like the university was bargaining in good faith. The university’s choice to use a final offer to intimidate the union and the threat of invoking an impasse procedure so close to the end of the semester are evidence of its hardline approach. The New School brands itself as “The University That Reimagines the Future.” With these corporate tactics, it may very well be reimagining an ominous future for working conditions in higher education.