CUNY Adjuncts Refusing to Teach Spring 2020

[spork]

How do the demands of the Harvard GTAs who are now on strike compare to the CUNY adjuncts' demands? Economically, graduate students who teach are identical to adjuncts.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/12/04/harvard-graduate-assistants-strike-over-prolonged-contract-negotiations

I am very unfamiliar with CUNY, but I do know that despite rising real estate prices over the last thirty years, rents are far less expensive in the greater Boston metropolitan area than in Manhattan and much of the nearby boroughs.

[Wahoo Redux]

I don't care what anyone majors in.  I care a lot that people are being sold a bill of goods about the relative value of some types of education that rely heavily on having a good social network and other social capital when the individual students are in college for the hopes of a better job.

Sigh, this is just nonsense. Nobody is being sold a bill of goods, students are way too aware of the value of degrees and given the quite small number of liberal arts majors, there's no reason to think that students who choose to major in liberal arts subjects are being duped.

The latest iteration of Sauron-esque rationals.

[Caracal]

The vote is in:  75% of those eligible to vote did so.  The contract passes with 86% of those voting in favor of the new contract.  CUNY has 12k adjuncts out of 30k total faculty.

The terms, for those who want to be outraged, include:

* In fall 2022, the minimum is $5500/three credit class, but that also includes one office hour per week and the instructions for those who don't have an office are to tell students to meet you in the library/cafeteria, etc.  The angry folks at Twitter have repeated pointed out that, factoring in inflation, this results in more work for less money and is nowhere near the $7k/three-credit class now that was still poverty level for people teaching only a couple classes per term.  The angry folks at Twitter are really, really angry that this is being billed as a 71% increase instead of not even keeping up with inflation.

Unions, by their nature, tend to be pragmatic institutions. The people the Union represents, the CUNY adjuncts, don't want to go on strike next semester. They want to teach their classes and get paid more for them. I doubt it is an an accident that the deal got made right before the end of this semester. I'm sure the Union has been fielding lots of anxious messages from people trying to figure out if they should be making alternative plans for next year. Randos on Twitter might have the luxury of standing on principle, but the Union negotiators really can't do that.