12/4: On Grading, Scabs, and Upcoming Events

What About Grading?

The university’s team’s decision to cut off negotiations on November 20th resulted in a needless ten-day extension of our strike. Had the university continued to negotiate in good faith, our strike could have been over by now.

Instead of bargaining between November 21st and November 30th, the university’s team appears to have been busy preparing to hire scabs to grade our students' work, a plan that the university has since indicated was an error. (Read more about this below.)

We are striking because our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions.

How can we be effective instructors if we can’t afford to see the doctor, struggle to pay rent, lack real recourse against harassment, or have to worry about whether we will have an appointment next year?

It is critical that we continue to withhold our labor, including not grading, until a fair contract is reached.

This is our source of leverage in negotiations.

Academic workers across the country have gone on strike countless times over the last 60+ years. In several instances, professors and grad students have struck through the grading period. 

There is no precedent for students’ visa status being affected by such a strike. Nor is there a precedent for students being penalized with poor grades.

As a reminder, the University has the power to change the grade deadline. The University did so during Covid-19 and could do it again.

When PhD student-teachers at Columbia University went on strike in 2021, Columbia extended the grade deadline. The University of California just changed the grading deadline this week as a result of a strike there.

The university is trying to pull at our heartstrings and cause us to break the strike. This would work to the university’s advantage in negotiations and will work against the students, faculty, and entire New School community. Grading students while otherwise on strike is also illegal under US labor law, where partial and intermittent strikes are not permitted.

It is the bargaining committee’s hope that the university moves with urgency and offers us a fair deal that will allow us to return to our students ASAP.

If you are receiving questions from students about grades, see this template email which you can use to reply to them.

You should also encourage your students to reach out to their college’s dean to urge the university to return to the bargaining table and bring an end to our strike. Students can base their email on this template.

New School's "Unapproved" Scab Email

You may have seen a desperate University email soliciting scab graders. This email was sent to hiring managers at various institutions on December 1st in order to find “temporary progress reviewers” to grade our students’ work.

The email explicitly states that the reviewers need not be subject matter experts and goes on to articulate in detail what reviewers do not need to know in order to grade our students’ work. This is most offensive to our students. They deserve to be seen and evaluated by their professors who know them and their work.

We are NOT on strike because we want to be. 

For over two weeks, the university has had the opportunity to offer us a fair contract that would have us back in the classroom but has chosen not to. 

This is why we continue to strike.

Since a copy of the email first surfaced a few days ago, the University has made a public statement claiming the email was an “unfinished and unapproved draft that should not have been sent.” The bargaining committee suggests that the University quit with the sorry attempts at union-busting and focus on giving part-time faculty a fair deal so we can grade our own students’ work.

Upcoming Events

Mediation / Bargaining Caucus
Today (12/4) 1:45pm - 6pm | Monday 12pm onwards (on Zoom open to all PTF members)

Membership Meeting 
Today (12/4) at 8pm (on Zoom open to all PTF members)

Part-time faculty can find the Zoom links in our recent email blast,
check the PTF WhatsApp group,
or reach out to a bargaining committee member for help.

This Week’s Picket Schedule
Mon - Fri 12 pm - 3 pm ET
at the University Center
63 5th Ave, New York, NY 10003