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Nearly 1,800 part-time faculty members who have been on strike since November 16 will return to work at the New School following the announcement on Saturday night that negotiators had reached a tentative collective-bargaining agreement.
“This is a strong, fair five-year contract that increases compensation significantly, protects health-care benefits, and ensures that part-time faculty are paid for additional work done outside the classroom to support our students,” a joint statement by the New York City university and the union says.
The leadership of the union, ACT-UAW Local 7902, will unanimously recommend that its members vote to ratify the deal, with a vote expected to take place in the next few days. “In the meantime, the union has ended the strike, and all university classes and events will resume, as scheduled, effective immediately,” according to the statement.
On Thursday the university issued a statement saying it had taken “the extraordinary step to agree to all of the union’s compensation demands, with the addition of an administrative-services fee to compensate part-time faculty for their work outside the classroom.” The New School had announced on Wednesday it would stop paying and making retirement and health-care contributions to the striking workers.
The university has not yet said publicly how it will pay for the raises. The New School’s president, Dwight A. McBride, told The Chronicle on Wednesday that meeting the union’s pay demands could push the university into financial chaos and require tuition increases. McBride wasn’t available for comment late Saturday, and it’s not clear how much the bargaining terms might have shifted in the final few days of intensive negotiations.
In a statement late Saturday, the union said the contract included “substantial raises,” with the largest going to faculty members currently being paid at the lowest rates.
The contract also would strengthen job security and offer paid family leave and a professional-development fund, the union said. And it apparently would resolve what had become the major sticking point in the negotiations late last week, by addressing concerns that some people might lose health-care coverage and others could see their rates soar.
The tentative contract, the union said, includes “expanded health-care eligibility to faculty teaching one course, no hikes to our out-of-pocket health-insurance costs, and caps to annual premium increases.”
Part-time workers make up more than 80 percent of the teaching faculty at the private liberal-arts university. As the strike dragged into its fourth week, with classes canceled and grades up in the air, a group of angry parents threatened to file a class-action lawsuit against the New School and to withhold tuition payments.
Many full-time faculty members had pledged to support their part-time colleagues by refusing to cross picket lines. The university told them last week that they’d have to start submitting weekly forms showing that they were fulfilling their teaching, research, and service responsibilities. Meanwhile, it indicated, in a post on Twitter, that it was considering hiring replacements for the striking workers if the walkout wasn’t resolved by the end of the year.
“This is an excellent contract that demonstrates the deep respect we have for all the contributions of our part-time faculty at the New School, as well as one that sets new standards for part-time faculty nationwide,” the university’s statement on Thursday said. “We want nothing more than to get back to our mission of teaching, learning, and creating.”
In the plan it outlined on Thursday, the New School said it was also providing a supplemental bonus of $2,100 for each member of the adjuncts’ union who taught during the pandemic. The university said it had also agreed to improvements in health insurance, retirement, and tuition benefits. And it said it was adding a new way for part-time faculty members to challenge disciplinary decisions stemming from internal sexual-harassment investigations.
The union contends that it’s unfair for a single person, paid by the university, to make binding decisions in such cases without instructors’ having the opportunity to appeal to a neutral arbitrator. The details of the university’s new plan weren’t spelled out in its statement.
The strike had gotten increasingly ugly last week, with reports of violent and racist threats’ being made on social media against university staff members and their families. The New School’s faculty, student, and staff senates issued a joint statement condemning the threats against “at-will employees who were just doing their jobs.” The union also condemned the threats, and the university released a statement saying it “shares the outrage and concern” and had notified law-enforcement and campus-safety officials.
Students who supported the striking workers staged a protest at the campus’s University Center after the New School said it would stop paying the strikers on Wednesday. The students had pledged to remain there until the university resumed paying the instructors and a fair contract was signed.
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