Graduate School Chapter Townhall

October 28, 2012

 

Attendance: 20+ present in the room, 11 on zoom, representation across multiple titles: graduate workers, HEOs, faculty (library and instructional), post-docs

 

Issues and concerns expressed

• Science students are paid through three source, and the funding through their professors/advisors sometimes gets decreased when the teaching pay goes up
• Delayed pay, relying on good will of the advisor to get paperwork done – penalties for speaking up
• Getting stipends into the contrac
• exclusion of tuition-only fellows who are ⅓ of doctoral students – funding for all
• Bargaining for the common good
• No lines created to replace retiring GC faculty – workload problem for those who remain and impact on students
• Fulltimer faculty expressed that their priority is adjunct pay over salary steps
• MA students working as RAs outside of the union, with no protections, not professionalized, e.g. Stone Center
• More money has to be demanded for all titles, all titles have experienced a decline in pay in real $ because of inflation in the last 20 years
• NYSHP for all students

 

Breakout group 1 (pay)

• Pay raises
• Delay in payment, including for international students – caused by lack of staffing in Central
• Why should individuals faculty have power over pay? Science fellow pay should go through the GC
• GC is 2nd least well paid in NY when compared to other schools in the city; “academic sweatshop”
• Funding equity for grad workers
• $53000 as minimal compensation
• Faculty grants should be required to use NTA rates

 

Conversation about bargaining processes

• A range of concerns about the bargaining process
  • Survey as an inadequate tool for building power
  • Act on the strike readiness resolution passed last year and build power against management
  • Members attending bargaining sessions
• Direct ask of the two bargaining team members present, Lynne and Luke, for
  • sharing the time and location of sessions with the chapter
  • CUNY administration’s demands
  • Minutes from sessions

→ Lynne and Luke respond that they cannot promises this but assure members that “those topics have been brought forward”

• Follow up ask by members to be given a rationale by the bargaining team for such decisions and not to infantilize members
• Bargaining team cannot win a good contract without all of us and ur students
• Call to include BLM demands, CUNY 4Abortion demands, Free CUNY demands
• Why should we trust the process will be more democratic? Hard to motivated for contract when it hasn’t been.

 

Organizing plans

• Work with DGC and USS, including sharing lists and join events

 

Demands From the GC Town Hall on Oct, 28, 2022

 

—Full funding for all who want it

—#53k MIT number for a salary

—Total compensation in contract, including science fellows (ie—stipends, not just wages, should be part of the contract and receive raises)

—Ensure all RA positions are unionized

—CUNY must tell grant recipients to budget for NTA positions

—More accountability to prevent workload creep

—More clarity on GA language workload in contract