Class Struggle Education Workers Newsletter
No. 1, November-December 2008

CUNY Adjuncts, Students Launch Fight to
Stop Tuition Hike, Budget Cuts and Layoffs

To see the full Class Struggle Education Workers Newsletter in pdf format, click on the image to the right.

HUNTER COLLEGE, NYC, November 12 – The plaza outside the Hunter West Building rang with chants: “No budget cuts, no tuition hike!” “Lay off [CUNY chancellor] Goldstein, not adjuncts!” Organized by CUNY Contingents Unite (CCU), the rally protested an announced $600 tuition hike, together with $51 million in CUNY budget cuts (just for starters) which have started to bring layoffs of adjuncts and other “part-time” workers. Departments at several CUNY campuses are announcing course cancellations and the formation of jumbo class sections, pushing faculty to take on more students.

“Join us in saying: NO layoffs, NO cuts in classes, faculty or staff; NO tuition hike; and NO to CUNY’s two-tier labor system. YES to saving our jobs, YES to what our students need, YES to defending public education!” read the leaflet calling the protest, which drew over 200 students together with “contingent” and full-time faculty. The event gained wide coverage in English- and Spanish-language TV, radio, and print media.

“We have to unite faculty and students to stop this attack,” exclaimed a sophomore, who added: “the best teachers I’ve had were adjuncts.” Organizers were delighted by the participation of Hunter undergraduates, at least twenty of whom got up to give the first protest speech of their lives. Not the last, though: “This fight is only beginning,” several declared. As the capitalist financial meltdown continues, Governor David Paterson is calling the legislature back to enact more cuts. “Meanwhile, bankers got more than $700 billion, and they keep getting more,” one freshman said from the soapbox (actually a plastic milk crate).

Many of the impromptu student speakers related how difficult it already is for them to stay in school, as tuition, fees and living costs collide with parents’ job losses. One sophomore said, “They’re trying to des­troy public education and replace it with corporate slime.” Students and faculty alike expressed outrage at the new $55,000 raise for Chancellor Goldstein, which pushes his salary and perks past the half-million mark. Making over $200,000 apiece, the top 27 CUNY execs are now paid a total of over $6 million a year. The crowd chanted to cut their pay by “50, 60, 80, let’s make it 100 percent.”

In addition to the economic crisis and Wall Street bailout, several speakers linked the attack on public education to the colonial wars and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, which go together with war on basic rights “at home.” As an example of how working-class power can be mobilized, some pointed to West Coast longshore workers’ May Day port shutdown against the war. Crucial to a fight against layoffs, cuts and hikes will be bringing in powerful sectors of the city’s labor movement, including immigrant workers, and those not yet organized into unions. With budget cuts aimed squarely at the black, Latino, working-class and poor population, there is a need and potential for large-scale mobilization, which some middle-class sectors, facing impoverishment, would likely support as well. The key is militant, effective mobilization. Leaders beholden to the Democratic Party of Paterson and president-elect Obama are not about to organize this; it’s up to us to make it happen.

The next step by the CCU will be a student/faculty organizing meeting at Hunter on November 18. Student friends of the CSEW have taken the lead in gathering support for this event from innumerable Hunter campus clubs and organizations. Meanwhile, protests are being planned at LaGuardia and a number of other campuses. The Professional Staff Congress (representing 20,000 faculty and staff at CUNY) should immediately call half-day (afternoon) campus assemblies of faculty, students and staff, to prevent any layoffs or course cuts. Up to now, however, PSC leaders have said little and done less.

To win, militant, massive mobilization is required. “You have a right to an education, and it should be affordable, which means free,” adjunct activist Igor Draskovic told the crowd, which responded: “Education is a right – Fight, fight, fight!” The rally’s emcee (also a member of Class Struggle Education Workers) pointed out that the notorious Taylor Law has been used to try to stop people from even uttering the “s-word,” and asked if students knew what the “s-word” is. “Strike, strike, strike,” they erupted. Some chanted, “Student walkout, teachers strike!”

The sentiment was refreshing, especially in light of the virtual non-response so far by union leaders. A few placards asked a pertinent question: “What about ‘a day without adjuncts’?”

To prepare effective action, the basis must be set. This will require persistent, intensive and systematic organizing. If management thinks it can balance the budget on our backs, it’s got another think coming. Our task may be summed up in the motto popularized by Rosa Luxemburg’s comrade, the German revolutionary and anti-militarist organizer Karl Liebknecht:

Educate – Agitate – Organize.