CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

A participatory project to collect and preserve the histories of the City University of New York

We found 54 items that match your search.

Proposal for Wrap-A-Round Adjunct Health Insurance

Written in 1982, this memo discussed the possibility of implementing a "wraparound" medical health insurance plan for adjunct faculty. It argued that this option would be superior because it offered free choice of physician and 365 days of hospital [...]

Letter: Economic Disparity

In this letter addressed to President Irwin Polishook of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), Jonathan Lang, Chair of the Doctoral Students’ Council (DSC), outlined the differences in salaries between adjunct and full-time faculty and expressed [...]

The Graduate Students' Union 1983-84: A position paper

Written by the Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) in 1983-84, this position paper stated the intentions of the recently formed organization. The aims enumerated were to advance the interests of CUNY graduate students as employees (or prospective [...]

Association of Part-time Faculty: A letter to the PSC

In addition to a reference to an earlier meeting, this March 15, 1983 letter from Nancy Erber of the Association of Part-Time Faculty and addressed to Mr. Arnold Cantor (PSC Executive Director) and Ms. Susan Prager (PSC Vice President), assured the [...]

Form Letter Reviewing Provisions of 1983 Contract Agreement

Written by Susan Prager, the PSC's Vice President for Part-Time Personnel, this April 1983 letter was distributed to adjunct professors. The letter, intended to inform adjuncts of the terms of the new CUNY agreement which extended retroactively from [...]

Form Letter for those Expressing Interest in Medical Plan

Distributed in late May 1983, this letter was sent to those who had previously expressed an interest in the Professional Staff Congress's (PSC) "Wraparound Major Medical Plan." It included quarterly employee payment costs under the plan.

RE: Unemployment Compensation

This June 17, 1983, memo, sent to all adjunct members of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), informed part-time faculty that they had a right to appeal all state unemployment compensation denials since 1978 based on a procedural violation. [...]

Part-time Personnel: A Newsletter (1)

This 1983 Professional Staff Congress (PSC) Part-time Personnel newsletter communicated the 1982-84 contractual agreement between the PSC and CUNY. It advised all adjuncts to understand the contractual language, as that knowledge would allow them to [...]

The Refuse: On Representation or Decertification

This issue of The Refuse (December 1983-January  1984), a Doctoral Students’ Council newletter, addressed the issue of retrenchment at CUNY, pointing to several articles that had mischaracterized CUNY’s relationship to labor precarity and [...]

Part-time Personnel: A Newsletter (2)

This October 22, 1984 Professional Staff Congress (PSC) Part-time Personnel newsletter reviewed the 1982-84 contractual agreements between the PSC and CUNY. Workloads were described as "the most significant change" and allowed adjunct faculty to [...]

Part-time Personnel: A Newsletter (3)

This 1985 Professional Staff Congress (PSC) Part-time Personnel newsletter described the benefits achieved in the PSC-CUNY 1984-1987 contract. Most notably adjuncts who taught six or more hours per semester and at least one course in the same [...]

PTU Newsletter (vol. 1., no. 1)

The debut newsletter in 1986 of PTU View, was published by a group devoted to fighting for the rights of part-time staff at CUNY. Included were listed contacts at various CUNY campuses; announcements of several Spring meetings; and a detailed [...]

Introduction to, and invitation to join, the PTU View

Dissatisfied with their lack of "representation" by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the Graduate Students' Union and Doctoral Students' Council founded the CUNY Part-Time Instructional and Research Staff Union in 1986. This letter outlined [...]

Health Care Benefit Description and Application

This January 21, 1986 document, sent to adjunct PSC  members, is the first official correspondence from CUNY's Office of the Vice Chancellor for Faculty and Staff Relations which described the details of the fully paid, adjunct health care [...]

GSU Denied Room for Meeting

This document, filed in 1986, included both the original memo from the Graduate Center's Associate Provost for Academic Affairs, Geoffrey Marshall, and the Graduate Student Union’s (GSU) response. In the initial memo, the permission to use a room [...]

Notice of Appearance: PERB and the Part-Time and Instructional Research Staff Union

This December 2, 1986 Notice of Hearing, addressed to (but not confirmed by) the City University of New York and the Professional Staff Congress, announced that a hearing would be conducted on February 26, 1987 at the NYS Public Employment Relations [...]

PTU View

The August 1986 PTU View newsletter called for adjunct faculty to sign a "union authorization" card. In addition to listing how the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) had failed to represent the interests of contingent faculty, the PTU’s demands [...]

Adjunct Benefits: Questions and Answers

This September 18, 1986 memo from the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Faculty and Staff Relations at CUNY to the Labor Designees and Personnel Officers on the campuses listed a series of revised questions regarding the implementation of adjunct [...]

A Vote for Choice

This October 17, 1986 letter, written by Jeffrey Gerson, the president of the Part-time Instructional and Research Staff Union (PTU), was a call for adjunct faculty to sign an enclosed card in support of putting the PTU on the ballot to run against [...]

Reasons Adjuncts Should Stay in the PSC

This October 21, 1986 letter, written on PSC letterhead and signed by Professional Staff Congress (PSC) Vice President Howard L. Jones, was sent to adjunct faculty. The letter stated that the "terms and conditions" of employment of adjuncts within [...]

Three more Years of Do-Nothing Representation

This November 14, 1986 newsletter, written by members of The Part-Time Instructional and Research Staff Union (PTU) and addressed to CUNY part-timers, outlined the PTU's arguments for, and the PSC's arguments against, the certification of a new [...]

Why Adjunct Faculty Should Join the PSC

This newsletter, written in 1987 by the Adjunct Faculty Association (AFA), formed shortly after the failure of the Part-time Instructional and Research Staff Union (PTU) to achieve the right to form a separate union, called for adjuncts to join the [...]

Legal Objection to PTU Petition

This letter, sent in 1987 from the law offices of Guazzo, Perelson, Rushfield, and Guazzo, to the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), indicated the Professionals Staff Congress's (PSC) objections to the Part-Time Instructional [...]

"Equal pay for Equal Work"

This 1994 flyer, produced by the Adjunct Faculty Association (AFA) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was an appeal to the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) to stop supporting a two-tiered salaru system. The document detailed inequities in [...]

The Trouble with Adjuncts: The Transients' Mentality

"The Trouble with Adjuncts: The Transients' Mentality", published in The Advocate in 1994 and written by Daniel Mozes, analyzed why adjuncts had traditionally been ineffective in advocating for their own rights. In addition to having lamented the [...]

Adjunct Medical Plan

This memo, produced in 1994 by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), compared the cost of individual and family healthcare plans from HIP and Blue Cross. Specific details about each plan were also provided.

Part-time Personnel - 1994

This 1994 Professional Staff Congress (PSC) part-timers newsletter communicated improvements in  adjunct working conditions that had been won in the recently ratified contract, which included expansion of health insurance eligibility and the [...]

"Student Struggles"

Written by Eric Marshall and published in 1996 in The Advocate, this article explained the function of  the CUNY Adjunct Project (CAP) as an aggregator of data about adjunct work at CUNY. Critical of the Professional Staff Congress's (PSC) role [...]

Memo: Recent negotiations on behalf of Adjuncts

This 1996 memo by the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) staff,enumerated the rights and privileges that adjuncts had gained in the most recent collective bargaining agreement and legislative efforts.

A letter from the CUNY Adjuncts Unite!

In a concerted effort to unite across campuses, CUNY Adjuncts Unite! (CAU) organizers wrote a letter to the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) leadership in June 1997 about their concerns, which included poor outreach and a lack of information about [...]

Adjunct Office Hours

In an October 14, 1998 memo sent to Professional Staff Congress (PSC) chapter chairs, President Irwin Polishook referenced past negotiations in which the PSC had endorsed payment for an adjunct office hour but failed to secure a contractual right to [...]

Fact Finding "Brief"

This excerpt from a Fact Finding "Brief" focused on CUNY's exploitative use of adjunct faculty following the advent in 1970 of open enrollment. Following a clarification of the types of part-time positions, the brief criticized low adjunct pay, [...]

Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty Caucus Contract Demands

Compiled by the "Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty Caucus", this twenty-item list included a number of contract demands specific to CUNY's large adjunct teaching population. The “Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Caucus” was a group formed in 1973. [...]

Adjuncts Reject PSC Contract

Tom Lynch's 1973 article, “Adjuncts Reject PSC Contract,” published in The Meridian, The Student Voice of Lehman College, argued that the raise was inadequate in so far as it was lower than the cost of living and was less than what full-time [...]

Response to the Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Caucus

This letter, dated May 14th, 1973, was addressed to David Allen and signed by David Newton of Chancellor Kibbee’s office. In the letter, Newton responded to a request to a meeting by asking for identification and affiliation, explaining that the [...]

Vote for Unity: United Federation of College Teachers/Legislative Conference Merger Talks

This 1971 memo, written by the United Federation of College Teachers (UFCT), described the merger talks between the UFCT and the Legislative Conference (LC) and the obstacles to consolidation into what would become the Professional Staff Congress. [...]

Clarion: Professional Staff Congress (PSC) demands

This 1972 PSC/Clarion article included some of the Professional Staff Congress's (PSC) demands for adjuncts. It called for adjunct tenure to be obtained after the tenth semester, preferential hiring rights for full-time positions, salary increases, [...]

Letter from the "Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Caucus"

Posted on the walls of John Jay College in 1973, this letter from the Executive Committee of the "Adjunct and Part-time Faculty Caucus" called for broader support from the CUNY community for the dignity and rights of adjunct faculty. In addition to [...]

Part-Time Instructional Staff: A Resolution for a Decent Contract

This  September 7th, 1973 resolution was written by William Leicht, the VP of the Committee for Part-Time Instructional Staff of the PSC. It stated that a contract that "fails to benefit the weak as well as the strong, violates the basic [...]

PSC Adjunct Report (V. 1, N. 2)

This 1974 Professional Staff Congress (PSC) Committee for Part-Time Personnel Newsletter included articles on adjunct faculty being threatened at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), maximum workload quotas, the election of convention [...]


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