NEW YORK CITY, NOVEMBER 19– At a recent Delegate Assembly of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), delegates were voting on whether to recommend the recent contract offer to the members. Not surprisingly, the contract presented before us was trash and drew the ire of a spirited group of 7K or Strike (7kos) members. The meeting was another attack and distraction brought to you by the sell-out union. Capitalism is only about profit for the bosses and misery for workers, no matter how much the liberal misleadership of the union and their politicians try to mask this.
The ongoing struggle around the contract has presented PL’ers in the fight with the perfect opportunity to raise our communist politics, and build student-worker solidarity in a time of rising fascism and racist attacks. Progressive Labor Party members, also part of the 7kos, participated in the forceful agitation against the union leadership to denounce their hypocrisy for force-feeding workers a contract that would only ensure the continuation of poverty wages.
On a positive note, through this struggle we’ve been able to expose the crisis of capitalism, and make CHALLENGE a regular staple on campus. Our goal is to continue to put forth the understanding that capitalism can never provide quality education or meet workers’ needs, and to win workers to fight for communism.
Agitate
 The union misleaders have been touting this contract as one of “equity” and “parity,” hailing it as a “historic breakthrough.”But the barrage of racist attacks on the working class by the CUNY administration, their CEO’s and fake progressive leaders Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio show no signs of slowing. Many campuses are crumbling and students must contend with broken elevators, broken sinks and toilets, missing lights, classrooms that are unfit for learning, etc.
All throughout CUNY campuses students must endure wretchedly racist learning environments even as tuitions climb. This goes hand in hand with the racist teaching conditions that educators are battling against. Recently, in secret bargaining sessions with CUNY, the union misleadership agreed to a contract that contains one racist attack after another. It offers measly two percent annual raises, which is below inflation, especially in New York where housing costs skyrocket every year. It locks part-time faculty, the most exploited and disproportionately Black and Latin constituency in the union, into poverty wages until the contract expires in 2022.
It abolishes yearly contractual raises for part-timers, but tellingly, not for full-time instructors, and increases workloads for part-time instructors. All this is stacked up mainly against Black and Latin faculty and students.
What’s more, the racist nature of these attacks is clear as day when we hear that there is no money for better college campuses, but plenty of money (billions), for the four new jails the Mayor wants to build in our backyards (NY Times, 9/4).
Build a base
As we battle the three-front battle against the bosses racist attacks, the sell-out union leaders, and their liberal politicians, PL’ers on campus have been using it as an opportunity to connect the contract fight with the racist attacks against students at CUNY. On a number of campuses, we’ve been involved in campaigns to highlight the deteriorating physical conditions, and trying to link the working conditions of professors and the learning conditions of students. Some student leaders have attended a number of union meetings and spoke up about our need to unite.
The whole experience has been a learning process, and our students have been leading it, as the majority of them are also workers and bring with them this understanding to campus struggles. At the same time, we’ve been leading a wide-scale organizing effort to reach as many members as possible to convince them to vote against the contract. In these conversations, we point out that, unlike the union leadership, which is content to lobby in Albany or at the CUNY Board of Trustees, 7K or Strike has a very clear plan to move us to a more militant option: a strike.
We plan to take the lessons from teachers around the country, especially Chicago, who have built years-long campaigns to win support from parents and students. It is in these conversations that PL members are able to bring forward communist ideas most directly.
Class struggle is in session
With the contract up for a vote later this month PL’ers will continue to try to expand the limits of what’s possible as well. We will continue to work in student organizations, set up strike committees with students and faculty, and continue to agitate for fighting .
Finally we will continue to raise workers consciousness around the understanding that we must continue to fight for better learning and teaching conditions wherever we are.
Ultimately the crisis of capitalism, and subpar learning conditions can only be solved when workers fight for a communist society: where education will be used for the transformation of society, and for the benefit of all.