Dozens of City University of New York faculty and staff were arrested Monday during a protest near Columbus Circle to demand a new union contract with higher pay.
The rabble-rousers — including Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) union president James Davis, an English professor at Brooklyn College — blocked the 10th Ave. entrance to John Jay College, where the CUNY Board of Trustees was holding a Manhattan borough hearing.
The union represents about 30,000 faculty and staff who haven’t gotten a blanket raise since November 2022. They’ve been fighting for over a year for a new agreement.
“CUNY offered unacceptable raises seven months ago, a year after their top executives received 27% and 30% bumps in pay,” Davis said in a statement.
“They haven’t shown faculty, staff and students the respect of a fair economic offer and haven’t put another dollar on the bargaining table since March. We’re demanding real raises, job security, and urgency. There can be no business as usual at CUNY until we get a fair offer.”
Davis and PSC secretary Andrea Vásquez, alongside about 30 others, were arrested just after 6 p.m. for disorderly conduct.
In March, CUNY offered 3% annual raises in 2023 and 2024, growing to 3.125% in 2025 and 2026. Union leaders said the proposal failed to keep pace with inflation, the cost of living in New York City, or with comparable public education contracts. They added CUNY salaries, for example, lag thousands of dollars behind those of professors at University of Connecticut, Rutgers University, and Stony Brook University.
Instead, the union has proposed compounded raises totaling 18% over four years; CUNY’s proposals adds up to 12.25% over 4.5 years. They’re also pushing for pay parity and job security for adjunct faculty, and remote work, among other priorities.
Their most recent contract expired in February 2023. It remains one of the largest unresolved agreements between the city, state and their public sector unions after contracts were settled with the United Federation of Teachers and the Police Benevolent Association, among others.
CUNY spokespeople did not immediately return a request for comment.
Inside the public hearing — one of five this school year in each of the boroughs — CUNY faculty testified to under-staffing and deteriorating infrastructure, and asked the Board of Trustees to work with them to push the city and state for more aid.
When Davis tried to speak, he was told by a board member he did not sign up for public comment. The trustees muted his microphone, called for a recess and left the stage. More than 100 faculty and staff filed out of the auditorium with signs, while chanting for a contract.
Jennifer Gaboury, a women and gender studies professor at Hunter College, who is the first vice-president of the union and sits on the bargaining committee, said negotiations have been “slow and frustrating” — and that students are being hurt in the meantime.
“We have a hard time attracting people to come to work at CUNY,” said Gaboury. The impacted departments include the financial aid office, which once had a dozen workers, and was down to four employees during the height of the problematic rollout of the federal government’s financial aid form.
“In a super crazy busy season — when there was a (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) meltdown — we had just a handful of people working trying to get offers to people,” Gaboury added.
Contract negotiations at CUNY come against a backdrop of painful budget cuts and hiring freezes in recent years, as university finance officials try to shrink a deficit that reached a high of $234 million in fiscal year 2022. About 85% of CUNY’s operating budget is made up of personnel costs, officials testified at a city budget hearing.
Finance officials have attributed their recent budget woes to enrollment declines since the start of the pandemic, city budget cuts, and the loss of federal COVID-19 emergency aid.
“We have been relentless in our efforts to mitigate the harm from these cuts and preserve our academic mission and reputation as the nation’s leading urban public university,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez at the hearing in May. “Still the negative effects … are now widespread and unavoidable.”
