A LETTER FROM
BARBARA BOWEN
April 2009
Dear PSC Colleague,
I’m writing as the New Caucus candidate for re-election as president
of the PSC. I am seeking the honor and the challenge of serving as
your union president for another three years. While I hadn’t
planned to write another personal letter about the election, I feel
it’s important to speak to you directly and honestly, above the
noise of the election.
There is a real
political choice in this election, and I think the only serious
choice is the New Caucus. The New Caucus has a record, a strategy
and a political analysis. We do not have to rely on accusations and
empty promises. I am writing to ask you to vote on the basis of the
facts.
Most of us don’t
expect people to lie. We assume that when someone sends a printed
message with what appears to be information, the sender has taken
pains to make sure it is true. Not so the CUNY Alliance. They do
not scruple to circulate lies if they think it will help them to win
votes. With zero experience either negotiating a contract or
leading a union, they are apparently hoping that a barrage of
accusations—regardless of whether the accusations are true—will
conceal their lack of substance and their real politics.
The Truth about
Promises
The truth is that the
New Caucus has delivered on salaries—for example, the top professor
salary step will show a 34% increase by the end of this contract,
and the bottom CLT step an increase of 45%. Those are substantial
economic gains. But we have gone beyond salaries to deliver a whole
array of new benefits that lift the quality of our professional
lives: well-paid sabbaticals, junior faculty released time, paid
office hours for adjuncts, paid parental leave, 200 new full-time
lines for former part-timers, professional development funds, and
more. We were able to succeed because we built the political
leverage of the membership: it was political leverage that forced
CUNY to drop its demand to remove department chairs from the union,
and political leverage that won the 6% increases to the top salary
steps this October. Of course there are things we have not yet
achieved, and of course all of us feel acutely that salaries and
working conditions at CUNY must be further improved. But the way
to achieve that is to do the hard work of organizing for greater
power—not to make irresponsible promises without a plan for
achieving them.
It’s clear that the
CUNY Alliance has no record. Just as disturbing, however, is that
they have no strategy for doing as well as—let alone better than—the
New Caucus. One of their recent missives promises that they will
“negotiate” everything from large salary increases to reduced
teaching loads. (They also announce that they will negotiate
provisions the New Caucus leadership has already won—such as
increased annual leave for counseling faculty.) The critical
question, however, is how. For all their chatter, the CUNY Alliance
is silent about strategy. The gains they promise would cost at
least two or three times the value of any contract won by any New
York union. Making extravagant promises without a strategy,
especially in this economic climate, is irresponsible—if not
worse.
In the seven years he
was an elected member of the union’s Delegate Assembly, CUNY
Alliance candidate Fred Brodzinski never attended once, in 67
sessions. He never participated in the strategy discussions that
produced our contract gains and never joined in the analysis of the
obstacles we have faced. He has never won a single gain for
colleagues on his campus. He was defeated two-to-one in the
election for leadership of the higher education officer chapter. He
offers no basis for trusting him with your future.
In 2000, when I first
ran for union leadership, I had spent five years as the union
chapter chair at Queens College. I had been a leader in the
successful fight against retrenchment at Queens in the 1990s, fought
and won the battle over increasing our teaching load, and ended the
practice of failing to pay adjuncts on time. Steve London had been
a chapter chair at Brooklyn College even longer before he ran for
union-wide office and had a similar record of accomplishment. The
New Caucus did not seek your vote and your trust until we have
proven ourselves union leaders. Brodzinski asks you to vote for him
on the basis of fantasy.
The Truth about
the Contract
Failing to offer a
strategy, Brodzinski and the CUNY Alliance have resorted to lies.
Theirs is the familiar strategy of “the big lie”—tell a lie so
blatant and so often that no one will doubt that it’s true. That
practice alone should discredit them, especially in an academic
community. They constantly repeat the mantra that our salary
increases have not kept up with inflation, when they know that is
false. Their recent missive about our salaries comes up with a
figure below inflation because it omits both the September 2007
increase and the October 2008 increase. You can make the numbers say
anything if you are willing to lie.
I would welcome
honest debate about what the PSC has and has not been able to
achieve in our contracts. But what CUNY Alliance offers is not
honest debate. We should build on the heightened interest in the
union generated by this election and begin a union-wide conversation
on strategy, but a conversation based on facts, not lies.
I do not plan to
refute every one of the CUNY Alliance’s lies and distortions here; I
just ask you to go to the public record. You will find that CUNY
Alliance has distorted the truth on everything from Welfare Fund
benefits to my expenses. For instance, it is an outright lie that
the New Caucus “has eliminated benefits for spouses of deceased
members”: the Welfare Fund’s policy on spouses of deceased members
has not changed since 1989. It is also a lie that we “hid” the
state of the Welfare Fund from the membership. The exact opposite is
true. We conducted a series of public meetings across the campuses
to discuss the Fund’s finances and wrote about them repeatedly in
Clarion articles. CUNY Alliance’s accusations on stipends,
expenses and other subjects are equally unfounded.
The Truth about
Politics
The New Caucus
leadership stands for public investment in institutions that serve
the public. All of our work is based on the belief that a public
university with CUNY’s historic mission should be a great
university, not one constantly strapped for funds—and that our own
working conditions as faculty and staff should be supportive of our
work. As recently as last week, we saw the results of the New
Caucus leadership’s work: in a grueling year for the New York State
budget, the PSC agenda of progressive tax reform (in coalition with
many other unions) was enacted; CUNY was excluded from Governor
Paterson’s announcement of 8,900 layoffs of State workers, and
millions of dollars in proposed cuts to CUNY were reversed. That
record is testimony to years of patient analysis and organizing.
In contrast, Fred
Brodzinski, who heads the CUNY Alliance slate, does not mention in
his many campaign emails that he is an activist in the Republican
Party and an avowed opponent of public investment. “The mission of
the Republican Party is to promote, preserve, and protect individual
liberty, free enterprise and limited government,” states the website
of the Hamilton Township Republican Committee, of which Brodzinski
is president. PSC members are entitled to participate in political
activities, but I think you are entitled to know what CUNY Alliance
stands for. At a time when the PSC under New Caucus leadership has
devoted every resource it can to increasing public investment in
CUNY and preserving CUNY jobs, Brodzinski espouses “limited
government.” That is exactly the agenda that plunged CUNY into
decades of poverty.
Political Choice
I am sure you will
continue to get CUNY Alliance emails until the vote is counted, and
that they will contain the familiar mixture of the big lie about our
record, empty promises about their own candidacy, and “revelations”
about the other candidates and me. Check their accusations against
the record. When you do, I think you will share my sense that
people who are willing to be dishonest to get your vote are not
people you should trust with union leadership.
I do not expect to
write to you again as a candidate in this election, because the
current moment is perhaps the most important in a generation for the
State and City budgets. During this period I have been testifying at
City Hall, advocating for CUNY in Albany, meeting with the
governor’s office to press for more federal stimulus funds for
public higher education, participating in budget hearings on the
campuses, and working with our representatives in Washington to
maximize federal stimulus funding for public colleges and
universities. In short, I have been doing and will continue to do
the work of the union president. I feel that is the only principled
thing to do, especially in this economic moment.
I am proud of what we
have been able to accomplish together, under New Caucus union
leadership. The PSC has grown exponentially in effectiveness and
influence and success. We have raised members’ expectations of
their union, and that’s a great thing. We have much more to
accomplish, and I would like to do it with you. I ask you to
repudiate the dishonest politics of the CUNY Alliance and show your
support for transparency, integrity and principled leadership—for
the New Caucus.
In solidarity,
Barbara Bowen
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