Dear colleague,
PLEASE HELP US HEAD OFF DISASTER AT NYU!
In 1999-2000 teaching assistants at NYU conducted a union drive, won an election, and affiliated with the United Auto Workers, in a local that also includes other educational professionals in New York City, including employees at the Museum of Modern Art and the New-York Historical Society. The NYU administration fought hard against the union but was ultimately forced to recognize and negotiate with it by the National Labor Relations Board, which ruled that teaching assistants at private universities were (like those at public universities, who are covered by state rather than federal labor law) workers and therefore had the right to unionize. There followed a three-year contract that brought the teaching assistants a voice in their working lives, health benefits and a stipend increase. During this time the university ran quite smoothly.
In the summer of 2005, after new Bush appointees to the NLRB produced a majority which reversed the board’s previous ruling, the NYU administration decided not to recognize the union or negotiate a new contract with it. Under the circumstances, the union (known as the Graduate Students Organizing Committee, GSOC) had little alternative but to strike.
The strike began on November 9, and several hundred professors have been teaching off-campus so as not to cross a picket line. NYU President John Sexton has adamantly refused to deal with the union and has ignored even a compromise proposal by a former dean; he seems to be willing to go to any length to break the strike. At one point, for example, several administrators secretly added their names to course email lists in order to be able to determine which faculty and teaching assistants were supporting the strike; this resulted in widespread faculty outrage about the violation of the right to privacy and the faculty-student relationship, forcing the deans to back down and apologize.
But now President Sexton has taken an even more draconian step: he has threatened that any TAs who do not return to work by December 5th will be deprived of their stipend for the spring semester and barred from teaching; and those who strike in the spring semester will lose two semesters of funding.
Such an action would be unprecedented. Graduate student employees have struck at many other universities, but nowhere have such draconian reprisals been threatened. Nor could such action be taken against workers protected by federal or state labor law: while employers may withhold wages during a strike, it is illegal to penalize workers in the way that NYU now threatens to do. If NYU is allowed to get away with this it will cause grave damage to the hard-won standing and reputation of this one university, but it will also set a very dangerous precedent for colleges and universities across the country.
Hundreds of NYU faculty have formed a group, Faculty Democracy, to protest President Sexton’s policies and to fight for a larger and more effective faculty role in university governance. Had there been anything like serious consultation with faculty at NYU, it is hard to imagine that the administration would have made the disastrous decisions it has made, decisions that may lead to the effective expulsion of some of our best graduate students and that put NYU’s future at grave risk.
We ask faculty, scholars and intellectuals throughout the country to urge President Sexton to rescind his threats and agree to negotiate with the union. Please email him immediately at john.sexton@nyu.edu
And please send a copy of your message to the original sender of this letter.
Thank you,
Linda Gordon, History
Andrew Ross, American Studies
Alan Sokal, Physics
Mary-Louise Pratt, Spanish
(writing for Faculty Democracy, numbering approximately 250 NYU faculty)
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