Full-Time Contingent Faculty at New York University Are Trying to Unionize
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Loading... - Ariadne Condos
- 10 Mar 2023
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One thousand faculty at New York University currently work full time without the protections of either tenure or a union contract. They’re trying to change that by unionizing. Jacobin talked to one of the faculty members about the union drive.
At New York University (NYU), half of full-time faculty are known as “contract faculty” — they are hired on contracts lasting for between one and eight years and are not eligible for tenure. Unlike adjunct faculty — who are hired on a per-course and per-semester basis — contract faculty at NYU are not yet unionized. They’re trying to change that: on February 22, contract faculty organizing under the banner of Contract Faculty United–UAW delivered a petition to NYU president Andrew Hamilton demanding that the university agree to a “fair and expeditious” process for recognizing the union. Jacobin’s Sara Wexler spoke to Contract Faculty United–UAW organizer Jacob Remes about the unionization effort.
JACOB REMES
Contract faculty are half of the full-time faculty at NYU. There are about a thousand tenure-track faculty, a thousand contract faculty, and about three thousand adjuncts. We are the only group that has neither the protections of tenure nor the protections of a union contract.
We are fighting for a union for all the standard reasons that workers fight for a union: because we want more control over our workplace, because we want raises that keep up with inflation and aren’t just at the whim of our bosses, because we want a say in things like benefits. But also because of a very particular academic-worker reason, which is that we’re fighting to defend academic freedom.
Without either a union contract or tenure, there can be no real academic freedom, because we have to reapply for our jobs — depending on who we are and what school we’re in, either every year, every three years, every five years, or every eight years. You can’t have true academic freedom when you’re looking over your shoulder, when you’re having to reapply for your job with no guarantee of reappointment.
The last reason I would say that we’re organizing — that I’m organizing — is that we want to be fully dues-paying members of the labor movement, of the movement that in this country is fighting for immigration reform, for reproductive justice, for affordable college, and for student loan cancellation. We want to be part of the movement that’s fighting to make the city and this country a more just and democratic place. Read More…
