The Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the union representing 30,000 faculty and staff at the City University of New York, sued CUNY on Monday, alleging that it violated the terms of its federal bailout by laying off hundreds of adjunct faculty members, and demanding that they be rehired.
CUNY received a $251 million allocation of funds from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, intended to provide direct aid to students and to serve “institutional needs” disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. That money comes with a contractual stipulation that CUNY and other colleges and universities “shall to the greatest extent practicable, continue to pay its employees and contractors during the period of any disruptions or closures related to the coronavirus.”
But PSC says that in spite of this, around 2,800 adjuncts have been laid off from their positions and will not return to teach in the fall, a substantially larger number than normal.
The lawsuit's demands include an injunction for CUNY to rehire its laid-off employees and to stop future layoffs, as well as offer back-pay and benefits for laid-off employees.
"Instead of doing everything CUNY could to keep people on payroll, and to use additional funding that came in with the specific requirement to keep people on payroll, CUNY went right to layoffs,” said Barbara Bowen, President of PSC, in an interview with Gothamist. “And there is no justification for those.”
The 2,800 number is an estimate, rather than a hard figure, Bowen said, based on information gleaned from discussions with CUNY leadership and with membership, as well as from publicly disclosed information on layoffs released by individual colleges. She said that the only formal information received from CUNY is that 422 adjuncts will lose their health insurance.
These numbers are significantly higher than the usual number of people who are not reappointed and/or lose health insurance, Bowen said.
Over 400 adjuncts have already been informed by John Jay College of Criminal Justice that they will not be reappointed in the fall, and the College of Staten Island reportedly plans to cut 35 percent of its adjunct workforce, PSC members say. Brooklyn College adjuncts marched to President Michelle Anderson’s house on Thursday to call for 52 laid-off adjuncts at BC to be reinstated. CUNY employs about 12,000 adjunct faculty and 2,000 adjunct professional staff in total.
Such a substantial reduction in the academic workforce would likely result in—beyond hundreds of job losses—far fewer course offerings and more crowded classrooms.
“This will hurt students,” Bowen said. “If CUNY lets go of 3,000 valuable adjunct instructors, that means thousands of courses for students will not be taught. That means students will lose out on their eligibility to get courses they need in order to graduate.”
PSC noted that $118 million of the allocation is intended to provide direct aid to students, and that CUNY has already begun disbursing that pot of money. However, the remaining $132 million, earmarked for “institutional needs,” is “unaccounted for,” she says. Bowen said that keeping all 2,800 laid off adjuncts on payroll would cost about $30 million.
“New York State's senators and representatives in Washington fought very hard for the CARES Act in part because they knew how important it is to keep employees on payroll,” Bowen said. “And that's why there's a provision in the CARES Act requiring people stay on payroll.”
Sixty-nine state and city elected officials signed a letter in June to CUNY brass attempting to stop the layoffs, describing layoffs and austerity measures as unconscionable for a system that overwhelmingly serves low-income families, especially in communities of color hardest hit by COVID-19.
“Reduced course offerings, fewer faculty and over-sized classes will leave CUNY under-prepared to support the students whose need for support is greatest,” the letter says. “A strong and fully staffed CUNY is a unique and essential resource for New York’s recovery and an essential part of addressing systemic racism.”
“The damage done to CUNY by pre-emptive and disproportionate budget cuts will not be easily undone,” the letter continued.
Frank Sobrino, a spokesperson for CUNY, said the university and PSC agreed to two extensions of the deadline to let adjuncts know if they would be able to return the following semester, but that PSC had rejected a third request. He said that financial difficulties and enrollment uncertainties have left colleges in a precarious situation, and that absent more federal funding, “our fiscal outlook is dim and uncertain.”
“Colleges are informing a large number of adjunct professors that their reappointment for the Fall 2020 semester cannot be guaranteed,” Sobrino said. “If the federal government acts as it should, and the fiscal outlook improves, many could be re-hired to teach in the fall.”
A spokesperson for PSC said that the third deadline extension was offered on June 29, just one day before the existing June 30 deadline, and that letters informing adjuncts they wouldn’t be reappointed had already been sent out.
Steven Taylor, a 65-year-old adjunct in the English department at Bronx Community College for the past 10 years who was recently laid off, said that he received the letter informing him he wouldn’t be reappointed just days after he finished his responsibilities for the past semester—and that the decision had been made weeks in advance.
“I was in a strange situation like many others of not knowing what was going to happen, but I taught until June 23, I turned my grades in on the 24th,” Taylor told Gothamist. “On the 25th, a letter went out, I received it on the 27th, and it said that my termination of my position dated back to the end of the spring semester which was May 20. I was actually terminated a month before I actually stopped teaching.”
CUNY declined to comment on the lawsuit specifically, saying that the university doesn’t discuss pending litigation.
The perennial concern over adequate funding for CUNY has taken on a new life since the start of the pandemic: while state funding, the system’s primary source of revenue, was largely flat in the state budget passed in April, Governor Andrew Cuomo is now able to use emergency powers to alter already-passed state spending mid-year, creating financial uncertainty for the system.
“They're sitting on $132 million from the CARES Act that I assume is supposed to cover paychecks, and they're not doing it,” Taylor said. “They don't have a budget deficit, they don't have a budget. They're laying off all these people in anticipation of a deficit.”
Cuomo has often been criticized for his belt-tightening approach towards CUNY, implementing a plan to allow colleges to raise tuition each year in 2011, and in 2016 attempting to cut state funding for CUNY by nearly $500 million.
Tuition at CUNY, which stood at $4,830 in 2011 when the “rational tuition plan” passed, allowing for annual cost increases, stands at $6,930 per year today.
PSC’s recently ratified contract increased minimum adjunct pay from $3,200 to $5,500, a longtime demand of the union, but the pay remains low enough that many adjuncts have to teach multiple courses per semester at different colleges.
Adjuncts often speak of an unacknowledged, unpaid workload beyond official classroom duties: serving as a mentor to their students. At a Zoom rally to support Thursday’s Brooklyn College action, BC psychology department adjunct Courtney Ray spoke of sometimes being the only Black female professor many of her students had had in their time at school, saying that it’s important for students to see themselves in their professors. She said that she continues to mentor several students over the summer, without pay.
Ray said while she was not laid off, her courseload was cut from three classes to one next semester, resulting in the loss of her health insurance.
“If our faculty and staff are going above and beyond to help our student body,” Ray said, “then the least CUNY can do is to make sure that they are investing in us and doing what they can to make sure that we’re taken care of.”
