TO:                    Workplace : Journal of Academic Labor

DATE:               December  04,  2005

RE:                   CRISIS AT  NYU:  HELP US STOP UNION BUSTERS

Subject: Crisis at NYU

Dear Friends,

Please forgive this letter out of the blue.  We are writing from a
university in profound crisis to ask that you consider sending a letter to
the President of NYU, John Sexton, protesting his recent actions and
asking him to reconsider his decision to go all out to break GSOC, the
Graduate Student Union at NYU.

Some Background:

Until August of this year, New York University graduate students were
organized in a union, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee,
affiliated with the UAW.  They were the first and only such union at a
private university, formed under a unanimous ruling from the National
Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 2000 that granted them the right and the
legal protection to organize.  After fighting, the university finally
signed an agreement and a 3-year contract.  This sensible step brought
extraordinary benefits to the graduate students and to the university more
generally.  Average stipends went from less than $11,000 per year, to over
$18,000, and health insurance coverage went from 0 to 100%.  Under the
years of the contract, we attracted stronger students to our graduate
programs.

Unfortunately, George Bush appointees to the NLRB vacated the previous
unanimous decision and voted, 3 to 2, to strip graduate students at
private universities of the legal protection to organize.  Despite this,
NYU was free to recognize GSOC and negotiate a second contract.
Shamefully, the administration chose not to do so.

President John Sexton and a group of appointed advisors, appallingly
styled the University Leadership Team, decided to go all out to break
GSOC.  They did so with no meaningful faculty consultation, and despite
many warnings from faculty that predictable labor strife following an
attempt to break the union would damage all aspects of the university.

GSOC members voted to strike, and a strike commenced on November 9.
Hundreds of classes have moved off- campus to restaurants, bars, union
halls, and our apartments. Throughout the crisis, the university
administration has followed a script written by the union-busting law
firms they have hired.  They have taken a series of steps that would be
illegal under the previous NLRB ruling, that may be illegal today, that
are certainly immoral and abhorrent to the values that should animate
university life, and that have made a mockery of faculty rights and to the
traditions of shared governance.  That they have done so under the claim
that they are preserving academic rights is outrageous.

We are members of Faculty Democracy, a group of over 240 faculty members
at NYU who have resisted the usurpation of faculty rights at NYU.

We write now because the most recent actions by President Sexton and
Provost Davis McLaughlin set precedents that threaten faculty rights
generally.  A letter from Sexton to the striking students threatens
retaliation and blacklisting to striking Instructors and Teaching
Assistants through the revocation of their fellowships, and directs
departments to revoke teaching assignments that have already been made.
Students have been commanded to sign individual contracts and return to
work by the end of next week.  Students who stay out on strike into the
Spring will lose a year of fellowship support.  Despite these
unprecedented threats, however, the students are resolute in their demand
for recognition and a negotiated settlement.  This is, indeed, a profound
crisis.

We urge you to take a moment and write to John Sexton to protest his union
busting tactics.  Several hundred academics around the country have
already written, and we believe the outcry might be having an effect.
(We were especially pleased that Fred Jameson joined with Judith Butler,
Jonathan Culler, ---- in a letter of protest.)  Many letter writers have
suggested that until the administration agrees to negotiate in good faith
with GSOC, they would find it hard to recommend NYU to their best
students, despite the many gains the institution has made in recent years.

To learn more about the crisis at NYU, visit the Faculty Democracy
website, www.facultydemocracy.org, or the GSOC website, www.gsoc-uaw.org.
Copies of the letters sent by Sexton and by McLaughlin can be found at the
FD site, as well as a list of the hundreds of academics who have written
in protest.

John Sexton can be e-mailed at john.sexton@nyu.edu.  Provost McLaughlin at
provost.nyu.edu.  We ask that if you do write, please cc Deans Catharine
Stimpson (whose stance against the graduate students has severely
disappointed many of us) at catharine.stimpson@nyu.edu, and Dean Richard
Foley, Dick.Foley@nyu.edu, and to send a copy, as a different e-mail, to
one or all of us.  (Our names on a cc line would certainly invite
retaliation;  the Humanities departments most supportive of the democratic
rights of our graduate students have already been threatened with
unspecified dire consequences.)

Our graduate students have shown extraordinary courage and exemplary
commitment to democratic rights in this struggle, and would welcome your
support.  WE want to get back to work, to get our graduate students off
the picket line and into the classroom.  The corporate mentality that has
provoked and prolonged this crisis threatens colleges and universities
throughout the US, and we hope that you will join us in fighting back.

In solidarity and friendship,

Rebecca Karl
José Muñoz
John Waters
Xudong Zhang