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THE PATRIOT RETURNS |
Vol. 41, No.1 August 05, 2008
Another ContractDiction from the Censored Membership: a Disgusted Full-Timer Calls for a “NO” Vote
Despite the ham-handed efforts of Steve “Shut ‘em Up” London and Peter Hogness---the PSC's Censor-in-Chief---to deny members access to the union's e-mailing lists or the pages of The Clarion, critics of the proposed contract have found other ways to voice their opposition. The “First” Vice-President's pitiful pitches for this wretched deal have been challenged at campus chapter meetings, while adjunct and full-time dissidents have been able to make their case to a national audience through the uncensored pages of Inside Higher Education. [Eds. note: rumor has it that the latter publication is to be denounced at a future meeting of the Delegate Assembly, and its URLs banned from all computers at 61 Broadway.] Here at The Patriot Returns, we are all too familiar with the New Caucasians' idiosyncratic construal of freedom of expression, and their from-the-top-down style of “union democracy.” Thus we'll continue to make our virtual pages open to any members---or agency fee payers, for that matter---who would like to express opinions at variance with those of the Dear Leadership. Opinions expressed here are those of the author. In keeping with our open forum policy, we share with our readers the following letter from a CUNY colleague.
********************************************************* “A Guild and not a Union” Sometimes a little history is useful to bring things back into perspective. When universities first came into being, the term "universitas" referred to a corporation, or guild, of masters and scholars. The guild emerged out of the need to regulate the profession, the curriculum, students' fees, but, most of all, the guild was created in order to keep out the charlatans, the unscrupulous, the ignorant, the poorly trained, the corrupt, the lazy and the inept. Unlike a modern labor union (which derives it strength from numbers), a guild was a selective, elitist institution whose purpose was not just to look after the economic interests of its members but also to maintain standards of excellence that would insure the prestige of the profession. The path to membership was long and arduous, but there were rewards for those who became masters of their craft. It is sad to see how far we have wandered from that original model. Many universities have become bureaucratic monsters, and I cannot think of a more bureaucratically monstrous institution than CUNY. Sadly, our university professors and students have become marginal to an operation whose only purpose seems to be the advancement of lazy bureaucrats, ambitious demagogues and vacuous pedagogues. The politicians gave up on CUNY long time ago... probably because most of our students are politically disengaged and don't vote, their parents are probably not even citizens and the voting white middle-class doesn't give a s**t about an institution that has been characterized as a school for undeserving, freeloading, underperforming minorities. And as for the philanthropic upper classes... they consider Columbia and NYU more deserving recipients of their generosity and support; I guess the family name looks better inscribed on a building overlooking Washington Square than on a cheaply constructed computer lab in Queens or the Bronx. And so, we stand alone...actually, worse than alone because we also have to fight the enemy within, those who have stabbed us in the back three times. That enemy is the leadership of our union, those whom we entrusted with looking after our financial interests and safeguarding the prestige of our profession. Trying to categorize the kind of leadership we have, I remembered something that Field Marshal Erich von Manstein said about army officers. There are basically four types: the stupid and lazy (who are harmless), the intelligent and hardworking (who make good staff officers); the intelligent and lazy (the best strategists) and the stupid and hard-working (a danger to everyone, a disaster waiting to happen). If we apply the same categories to union leaders, Bowen and her comrades belong to the last type (the stupid and hardworking) because it must take and incredible amount of stupidity and hard work to f**k up as badly as they have. They were offered an 11.5% raise, and they managed to lower the offer to 10.5%. But the 10.5% is not completely accurate since the queen B decided to defer 3 months out of our already pathetic raise in order to finance the parental leave benefit (and contrary to what some people initially said, the parental leave is "parental" and not a "family" leave; it applies solely to fathers and mothers with newly born or newly adopted children). Listen, if you want to breed, I have no objection to it, but do not ask me subsidize your "bonding" time with little Zoe or little Skyler. And what is more upsetting about this benefit is that it is unnecessary. Under the current contract, most women who get pregnant can generally take one semester off with full pay taken out of their cumulative disability days. In fact, you can produce a baby every five years and take a 6-month leave each time without any economic loss (if you feel the need to reproduce at a faster pace, buy a puppy; think of it as methadone for irrepressible motherly instincts). So this means that the union's decision to spend our money on this benefit was ideologically motivated. Bowen made a political point... with our money. The addition of a step to the top of each level will benefit some people, but the monetary value of this benefit has been exaggerated by Bowen's team of professional liars; they count the amount that a member would have gotten as a result of existing steps as part of what was negotiated in this contract. So aside from getting e-mail "privileges" for retirees who probably still use mechanical typewriters, what did queen BB and her royal council of eunuchs get us? Parity between Community Colleges and Senior Colleges workload? We certainly are measured by the same standard when we come up for tenure and promotion. Did the union address the creeping increase in the bureaucratic duties that faculty members have to perform? Did they ever mention the disparity in salary between faculty hired 10 years ago and the more recent hires? Did they restore the health of the Welfare Fund? Did they get us salary parity with SUNY schools? As usual they claim that this is the best contract we could have gotten given the conditions that the State faces, and after Governor Patterson's announcement this week, they are going to say that if we do not accept this contract, the next offer is going to be worse. Yes, no matter how bad things are, they can still get worse. But they have been saying the same thing for almost a decade, during good times and bad times. After getting sodomized twice in 8 years, you start thinking: F**k, not again; I may take my chances this time! This is not the first piece of s**t that they put before us for ratification. Every other city union has had to deal with the same circumstances, and they have managed to get better deals for their members. Let's get real: things will only get worse in this country within the next few years, whether we elect for president a senile, decrepit war hero or the great half-white false hope. The political leadership of the state and the city has no vision (no pun intended) for the future, and even if they did, they don't really care about CUNY; the leadership of the university is lazy, unimaginative, arrogant, selfish, onanistic, stupid and ethically confused (I bet Feldmarschal Manstein never imagined that winning combination). So the only hope for some degree of change that we have is to force our union to fight, and to fight intelligently (which can be done even under adverse circumstances). This can only be accomplished when we overthrow the idiots of the New Caucus who have become like maggots who devour our profession from within. At a future time we should put forward ideas about medium and long-term action plan, but for now we need to concentrate on one issue only: cost of living increases in salary for EVERYONE. In the last couple of weeks, an inside source has forwarded me a series of e-mail exchanges among some of the most radical members of the union, and let me tell you: they are scary. These delusional fanatics are also unhappy with the contract negotiated by Bowen, but their reason (and use the term loosely) is that they don't think that the Bowen agenda is "progressive" enough. These nuts (both part-timers and full-timers) want adjunct salary parity with full-timers, adjunct job security, greater funding of faculty development programs, full access to grant money and the ability for adjuncts to make a "New York living wage" while being part-timers. They are trying to organize in order to pressure the leadership into a pact that will degrade even more our ability to negotiate and the prestige of our profession. I understand that many adjuncts "make a living" as adjuncts, but that is not the way it was meant to be. An adjunct job should be a stepping stone, a temporary help, an on the job training, a preparation for a full-time position, an apprenticeship, a supplement to a full-time salary, braces for little Tiffany, a new boiler for the house, a boob job for the mistress, perhaps the down payment for a new car or just additional money to make ends meet. But not in this profession or any other is part-time work supposed to provide fully with what you need to make a living (especially in NYC!). In fact, many CUNY full-timers moonlight as adjuncts at non-CUNY schools, but they are not making unreasonable demands to their part-time employers. Can you imagine a corporation spending money on training for part-time employers who work full-time at another company? Can you imagine any corporation providing full benefits to part-time employees who are also full-time self-employed? As I have written before, I have a lot of professional respect for adjuncts (I once was one working at four or five different places simultaneously), but I truly believe that we have reached the point where a divorce is the best option for both full and part-timers. Our interests are in conflict, and to continue labor negotiations as a unit seems suicidal. The notion that there is strength in numbers does not necessarily work for our situation. Separate unions can put more pressure on management. Instead of management putting pressure in the middle in order to divide us, with two separate unions we could pull management from two different sides (imagine the picturesque old Mongol practice of "quartering"... well, in this case "halving"). So as we get our ballots in the mail in the middle of the summer when many members are not even around (very sneaky BB!), we have to decide if we want to continue the cycle of abuse at the hands of politicians, CUNY overseers and union officials. We need to decide if we want continue the cycle of humiliation and degradation of our profession. We have to decide if we want to be a labor union or a Guild of Masters and Scholars. VOTE NO ON THE CONTRACT Sincerely, *********************************************************
Sharad Karkhanis, Ph.D.
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