As of 11:00 a.m. on Monday, March 23, roughly 950 contract faculty at New York University (NYU) are on strike, demanding higher wages, better job security, and various protections, including stronger academic freedom provisions. NYU Contract Faculty United (CFU) voted to unionize in early 2024, joining their adjunct faculty, graduate worker, and academic staff colleagues in the UAW. Undergraduate workers also voted to join the UAW later that same year.

NYU is in the top 1 percent of wealthiest universities in the country and the second-largest private landowner in New York City, after Columbia University.

Contract faculty at NYU are full-time, non-tenure track faculty on limited-term renewable contracts. Essentially, this means they are doing similar work as tenure track faculty but for less pay and benefits, and they have to reapply for their jobs every few years. The union has described this arrangement as contract faculty functioning as “rental” tenure track workers. This multi-tier system, with tenure-track faculty at the top, contract faculty in the middle, and adjunct faculty and graduate student workers at the bottom, is designed to save the university money while weakening solidarity between different groups of workers. A tiered system helps the university to frame the contract faculty as greedy, attempting to set students and lower-paid categories of workers against them and attempting to sow doubt within the union.

The strike deadline was originally set for 8:00 a.m. Monday morning, but the bargaining team agreed to extend it for 3 hours after bargaining through the night. With several issues (compensation and workload chief among them) still unresolved by 11:00 a.m., the strike began. CFU members are able to join bargaining sessions via Zoom and to see the full text of all proposals from both sides in a public bargaining tracker, enabling greater member participation in the bargaining process than most unions. Open bargaining makes for stronger unions and stronger strikes because workers are able to observe management’s tactics directly and hold their bargaining team members accountable for their actions at the bargaining table. When workers can view sessions and proposals, they can also discuss among themselves what they think and how they feel about the proposals, and take action accordingly. It’s hard to believe in the slogan “we are the union” if one is excluded from the union’s own activities — open bargaining helps workers feel a sense of ownership over contract negotiations, which can foster a sense of agency as workers and embolden them to fight for more.

Many undergraduate students joined their professors on the picket line. Seniors may remember the NYU adjunct faculty union’s anticipated strike, which was called off in the final hour when an agreement was reached, in 2022. They or their friends may be organizing in Student Workers at NYU (SWAN), the undergraduate workers’ union. NYU YDSA has also been promoting solidarity with the strike on their social media accounts.

In the early afternoon, somebody led the strikers in chant of “students, workers, stand together; solidarity forever.” Teamsters Local 803 sent an email to its members announcing the strike and reminding delivery drivers of their own contract provision that protects drivers’ right to respect picket lines and not deliver goods to struck workplaces. Meanwhile, academic workers from other universities across the city are making plans to visit the picket lines to support their striking colleagues this week. Full time contingent faculty at area schools like Barnard College, City University of New York (CUNY), Rutgers University, and Fordham University are likely paying extra attention, as the NYU contract faculty’s contract will have implications for their own next bargaining cycles, just as CFU is citing the Barnard, Rutgers, and CUNY contracts as examples of wins for workers in similar positions that they would like to emulate. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Solidarity with the contract faculty at NYU!

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