Bargaining Session 10 | September 29, 2022
Genaira Tyce, attorney at union-busting law firm Akerman LLP, has officially taken the reins as the New School’s lead negotiator. Despite this shift in representation, bargaining session #10 felt exactly the same as the last - No new counter-proposals from the school, with absolutely zero substantive contract discussion. The university is shelling out a fortune for this new outside counsel, but all we’re getting is a rerun.
Delay, delay, delay
While Penley, the initial lead negotiator for the university, appeared out of touch with the everyday experiences of part-time faculty at the New School, Tyce has even less institutional knowledge and is even further removed from part-time faculty working conditions. In addition, she was not up to speed on the way Penley led negotiations, or what agreements were made between both parties before she joined the team. Bringing an external negotiator into this stage of negotiations is clearly a delay tactic.
Other delay tactics we continued to see from the university during this session include:
Continuously asking the bargaining team to betray members’ confidence by sharing specific examples illustrating why the current contract needs to change;
Belaboring the excuse that the university needs more time to prepare their counter proposals, even though they’ve already had months to respond to many of part-time faculty’s proposals;
Spending time talking about how they want to structure negotiations rather than actually negotiating; and
Repeating conversations from previous sessions instead of bringing new items to discuss, like formal responses to the part-time faculty’s proposals.
The university wants even more time
For the fourth week in a row, the university again failed to bring any counter proposals to the table. Not only is the school not bringing counter proposals, they aren’t even engaging in substantive conversation on major part-time faculty proposals. Despite having passed our proposals on job security and compensation several weeks ago, the university has failed to ask even one question. Our bargaining team consistently asserted that part-time faculty need counter proposals and a new contract now.
The university wants to bargain on their own schedule, ignoring part-time faculty’s urgent need for a fair new contract. Instead of bringing counter proposals, Tyce brought two proposed changes to the negotiation schedule:
Tyce proposed rescheduling this week’s regularly scheduled bargaining session because:
Despite having many of the part-time faculty’s proposals for months now, the university wants more time to prepare their counter proposals. Tyce continued to mimic Penley’s previous assertions that the university plans to present all counter proposals at once, as a full package, the part-time faculty bargaining team has made it clear they expect proposals to be negotiated in good faith as they are presented.
The university wants time off to observe Yom Kippur. The New School recently removed Yom Kippur as a planned day off on the academic calendar, so why should university administrators be able to use it as an excuse to delay bargaining?
Tyce proposed a three day marathon Zoom bargaining session the following week, on Oct 12, 13, and 14, from 8am-5pm each day.
Tyce committed to sharing a full package of university responses to the 30 proposals our bargaining team has submitted. Part-time faculty are hopeful this remains the case.
The marathon session could affect our ability to engage in open bargaining. Our bargaining team is composed of hard-working faculty who teach during the day (among other things) and are unable to commit 8 hours a day for three days to attending bargaining unpaid. The university’s team may be able to clear their calendars for three full days, but we simply cannot.
The university wants to keep part-time faculty from being in the negotiation room and being part of the collective bargaining process. What are they afraid of?
Since negotiations began in June, the part-time faculty bargaining team has made itself widely available to the university, even being willing to come to table on evenings and weekends. The university has not been amenable to meeting at times that best suit part-time faculty, refusing to work outside of regular working hours.
In order to reach a fair contract for part-time faculty as soon as possible, the bargaining team not only accepted the three day session for next week, but also offered additional times to meet this week. Again, the university rejected all proposed dates, saying it was their intent to reschedule even though the part-time faculty did not agree to reschedule this Thursday’s regularly scheduled bargaining session and expect the university to show up ready to negotiate.
Keep coming to bargaining sessions!
Part-time faculty remain committed to open bargaining even if the university does not. RSVP for next week’s bargaining session here.