{"id":150,"date":"2026-06-09T19:40:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T19:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/?p=150"},"modified":"2026-06-09T19:40:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T19:40:29","slug":"the-nyu-strike-showed-how-to-reverse-the-downward-spiral-in-higher-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/?p=150","title":{"rendered":"The NYU Strike Showed How to Reverse the Downward Spiral in Higher Ed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While teaching and conducting research can be wonderful experiences, working conditions in higher education have become increasingly horrible. In the United States, massive state disinvestment coinciding with 50<\/span>\u00a0years of neoliberalism has resulted in both soaring tuition costs for students and large-scale budget cuts to universities. As a\u00a0result, faculty teaching loads have increased while wages have stagnated. Meanwhile, university administrators across the country have replaced full-time and permanent faculty with insecure, part-time positions, and rarely replaced faculty who retired or moved. Whereas in the 1970<\/span>s, more than half of U.S. faculty were tenured or on the tenure-track, today that figure stands at just over one\u00a0quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more How Resisting Trumpism Could Revive the U.S. Labor Movement<\/a><\/p>\n

Students suffer because their professors have far less availability and are far more stressed. Faculty are forced to hustle, often taking on additional jobs, and are left with less time for teaching and research, thereby undermining the mission of universities. Unsurprisingly, universities have, on the whole, become far worse institutions for both students and\u00a0teachers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the face of this downward spiral for higher education, university workers are fighting back on behalf of themselves, their students and their institutions. New unions of faculty and student workers are being formed at a\u00a0rapid pace. Union faculty often make the argument that teachers\u2019 working conditions are students\u2019 learning conditions, meaning if those whose job it is to teach are worse off, so is the educational experiences of students. And when they take action and withhold their labor, higher education workers can make real\u00a0gains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was put on display this March when nearly 1<\/span>,000<\/span> non-tenured faculty at New York University (NYU) went out on a\u00a0two-day strike\u2009\u2014\u2009and came out victorious with a\u00a0strong first contract. Following more than a\u00a0year of negotiations, the union\u2009\u2014\u2009Contract Faculty United, affiliated with the United Auto Workers\u2009\u2014\u2009won a\u00a0minimum $14<\/span>,000<\/span> raise for all members starting next semester, higher minimum salaries for new hires and 3<\/span>.5<\/span>% annual raises for the duration of the\u00a0contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The union also successfully negotiated on behalf of those earning the lowest salaries, who will receive the highest raises. Another consequential gain was the guarantee of long-term employment for these non-tenured faculty. As the Village Star-Revue<\/em> reports, the contract will guarantee these workers \u200b\u201c<\/span>the highest minimum salaries of any unionized, full-time, non-tenure track faculty in the\u00a0country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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NYU is the largest private university in the country, with an enrollment of more than 60<\/span>,000<\/span> students and a $6<\/span>.7<\/span> billion endowment. At elite, wealthy private universities, non-tenured faculty and graduate students generally teach fewer courses than at public universities and community colleges. But at NYU, non-tenure track faculty teach about a\u00a0quarter of all\u00a0courses.<\/p>\n

In These Times<\/em> recently spoke with Jacob Remes, a\u00a0leader in Contract Faculty United-UAW, about the union\u2019s success. Remes is a\u00a0clinical associate professor of history at NYU\u2019s Gallatin School. According to Remes, many members were \u200b\u201c<\/span>itching to strike\u201d because \u200b\u201c<\/span>people were so sick of being insulted.\u201d Remes believes that the strike was educational for the membership and even \u200b\u201c<\/span>transformative,\u201d in how it generated a\u00a0sense of power and\u00a0community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, the victorious strike did not just happen overnight. There\u2019s a\u00a0nearly decade-long history involving Remes and other faculty who organized among their fellow workers for years. Non-tenured faculty began their union campaign in 2017<\/span>. The drive was stalled by the Covid pandemic in 2020<\/span>, but negotiations between the union and NYU\u2019s administration eventually began in 2024<\/span>. After ten months of pressure, the administration
\nto voluntarily recognize the\u00a0union.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Remes stressed how important it was that his union did not pursue the typical path of workers who are seeking to organize a\u00a0union and receive employer recognition\u2009\u2014\u2009an election administered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). As many union activists and their allies have come to understand, the current NLRB is broken and unable to do its job of promoting unions because of a\u00a0decades-long anti-union onslaught by employers, including those in education. While about 70<\/span>% of Americans are pro-union and millions of workers would be happy to join one, union membership hovers at around 10<\/span>% of the U.S. workforce, with only 6<\/span>% in the private sector\u2009\u2014\u2009lower than before the NLRB was created in\u00a01935<\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The union\u2019s victory early this year, as Remes sees it, was made possible by Contract Faculty United-UAW\u2019s successful fight to represent a\u00a0much larger group of faculty than the administration had argued for, and the subsequent victory when the administration was forced to recognize the union. According to Remes, \u200b\u201c<\/span>if we had done the NLRB route, we would have a\u00a0union hundreds of people smaller, therefore with substantially less\u00a0power.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the union won voluntary recognition, \u200b\u201c<\/span>the administration\u2026dragged their feet for 17<\/span> months,\u201d according to Remes, before finally agreeing to the first contract won earlier this year following the strike. The administration only delivered its final comprehensive offer just minutes before the strike deadline\u2009\u2014\u2009already extended by three hours\u2009\u2014\u2009but since the union found it unsatisfactory, the strike went on as\u00a0planned.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ahead of and during the strike, the union ran a\u00a0campaign to seek support from students and their families who were encouraged to send emails to the university\u2019s Board of Trustees imploring them to negotiate in good faith with the union. The student government association was supportive as were many student activist groups. Many students joined their professors on the picket line, while others refused to attend classes despite the requests of administrators. One student quoted by The New York Times<\/em> said, \u200b\u201c<\/span>The fact that the people who are running the university are making upward of a\u00a0million dollars, whereas our professors can\u2019t make enough to comfortably live, is so\u00a0insane.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

One other relevant factor was the local political scene under new Mayor Zohran Mamdani. While Mamdani didn\u2019t walk the picket line, according to Remes, Deputy Mayor of Economic Justice Julie Su, a\u00a0newly created position, played an important role during the strike, talking with administrators on the union\u2019s behalf and passing information along to the union about where the administration could move. Before the strike, a\u00a0group of 66<\/span> elected officials urged NYU
\nto \u200b\u201c<\/span>come to a\u00a0fair agreement,\u201d warning that an extended strike could \u200b\u201c<\/span>seriously disrupt life for tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are students, employees, and members of the NYU community.\u201d In Remes\u2019s words, \u200b\u201c<\/span>New York City feels like a\u00a0city where workers are ascendant, unions are coming into their own, and where employers have to reckon with\u00a0us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contract Faculty United-UAW has demonstrated what unions can do\u2009\u2014\u2009including prioritizing the lowest paid faculty. As Remes boasts, \u200b\u201c<\/span>We\u2019re the largest union of any non-tenure-track faculty in the U.S.\u201d <\/p>\n

Read more No New Beds<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By withholding their labor earlier this year, non-tenured faculty at New York University won major gains\u2014and helped create better learning conditions for their students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-labor"],"yoast_head":"\nThe NYU Strike Showed How to Reverse the Downward Spiral in Higher Ed - Summit Relocation Timess<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/summitrelocationtimess.com\/?p=150\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The NYU Strike Showed How to Reverse the Downward Spiral in Higher Ed - 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