Current Actions

  • City Budget Act Now June 2013

    Mayor Bloomberg’s Executive Budget would reduce City operating support for CUNY community colleges by a million dollars, according to CUNY. His plan for CUNY also assumes a requested $300 tuition hike that many community college students cannot afford and it defunds council-supported initiatives that enrich the college experience and improve student success.  Visit our City Budget Campaign page to learn the issues, and then send this letter to key members of the New York City Council.

  • NYS Dream Act Letter 2013

    NYS Dream Act (A 2597 Moya / S 2378 Peralta)

    The Dream Act grants access to financial aid, opportunity programs, student loans and New York’s 529 college savings program for qualifying undocumented immigrant young adults. It also creates a privately funded NYS Dream Fund to provide scholarships to college-bound children who are the children of immigrants, and establishes a NYS Dream Fund Commission to administer the NYS Dream Fund. An estimated 4,500 undocumented students are now able to attend CUNY because they pay in-state tuition rates. Many more could attend if they had access to state financial aid.
    Campaign Page │ Support Memo │ NYSUT Member Action │ Sign the 2013 Petition │ Bill & Sponsors

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  • Tell Washington: Defend the Social Safety Net and Raise Tax Rates on the Wealthy
    We have a chance to send a strong message to Washington while negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff” are going on. It’s critical that New York’s congressional delegation oppose the right-wing agenda of cuts and privatization that threatens Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Instead of cutting programs that millions of low-income and middle-class Americans depend on, Congress should end the Bush tax cuts and increase taxes for the wealthy, as President Obama has advocated. Please send an electronic letter to your congress member urging him or her to reject any “grand bargain” that hurts the poor or working- and middle-class Americans.  And learn more about the fight against austerity in the national budget on our Social Safety Net Committee’s webpage.

  • CALL FOR A REDUCTION OF TEACHING LOAD FOR FULL-TIME FACULTY AT JOHN JAY COLLEGE

    Dear friends and colleagues,

    Our campaign for teaching load reduction for full-time faculty at John Jay is getting strong. The PSC resolution for teaching load reduction at the college was recently endorsed by the Faculty Senate. For our campaign to be successful, it is imperative that we have a united faculty behind this demand. To add your voice to the campaign, please sign the petition and urge your colleagues at John Jay to do the same.  


    In solidarity,

    Nivedita Majumdar

    John Pittman

  • Petition for a Moratorium on CUNY's Pathways Curriculum

    A Message from the CUNY Faculty and Staff

    This is a watershed moment for higher education.  The “reform” agenda that brought relentless testing and widespread privatization to K-12 schools has surfaced in higher education.  Forty years of public policy focused on access to college is being replaced by a single-minded demand for increased graduation rates—whatever the cost in academic quality. 

    The battle for educational quality is being fought hard by faculty and staff at The City University of New York (CUNY), long a focal point in struggles for educational justice. 

    CUNY’s educational mission is under attack.  Chancellor Matthew Goldstein and the CUNY Board of Trustees, led by Benno Schmidt, Jr., are trying to impose a diluted system of general education, “Pathways,” that seeks to save money at the expense of students’ learning.  Facing intense faculty resistance, the CUNY administration has resorted to threats and intimidation.  Under the pretext of easing student transfer and increasing graduation rates, Pathways will deliver a minimal curriculum for CUNY’s working-class students: it removes science lab requirements, limits foreign language requirements, and cuts back on faculty time with students in English classes.  Pathways is an attempt to move students through the system more quickly even as budgets are cut—by reducing academic requirements. Pathways is austerity education for an austerity economy.

    With your help, we can defeat Pathways and achieve a victory for educational quality that could have national implications.  Please add your voice to ours and take a stand for the integrity of higher education. 

    Barbara Bowen
    President, Professional Staff Congress/CUNY

    Terrence Martell
    Chair, University Faculty Senate

    This petition was created by Professional Staff Congress/ CUNY and The CUNY University Faculty Senate. The Professional Staff Congress/CUNY is the union that represents more than 25,000 faculty and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the CUNY Research Foundation. The University Faculty Senate is the faculty governance body in academic matters of university-wide concern at The City University of New York.

  • NYCCT No More 24 Campaign Letter

    Faculty at City Tech teach 24 contact-hours per year, the highest teaching load of any senior college in CUNY. All other senior colleges at CUNY have a 21 contact-hour teaching load. We're demanding equity and getting organized so we'll have more time for our students and more time for scholarship and research.

    On May 31, 2012 President Hotzler, after receiving a petition signed by 80% of the City Tech faculty, agreed to write into the City Tech Budget Request for fiscal year 2014 a request for specific funds from the state to reduce our teaching load to 21 hours.  Please send this Act Now letter to President Hotzler to remind him of his promise. The budget request is finalized in the fall, so please act now!


  • Stop Job Losses & Heath Care Cuts at SUNY Downstate Medical Center

    As CUNY faculty and staff living in Brooklyn, you may already be aware of the recent troubles ay Brooklyn’s only medical center: SUNY’s Downstate Medical Center. First, Downstate was targeted for privatization, and then the institution merged with former Victory Memorial Hospital (now SUNY Downstate Medical Center at Bay Ridge) and acquired Long Island College Hospital. Both institutions were millions in debt and facing bankruptcy before being acquired by Downstate.

    Now, Downstate Medical officials have announced a restructuring plan that is expected to include the loss of necessary health care services and significant job cuts. This plan could leave thousands of Central Brooklyn patients without vital health care services and hundreds of health care workers out of work.

    Downstate’s College of Medicine graduates hundreds of doctors – many of them physicians of color – each year. More than 80 percent of Downstate alumni remain in New York and provide vital care services to patients in New York City, particularly in Kings County. Downstate provides care for nearly 400,000 patients each year.

    PSC’s sister union United University Professions (UUP) has been waging an aggressive campaign to save jobs and health care services at SUNY Downstate.  PSC members are standing up for our colleagues at SUNY, as they have done for us in the past.

    Please sign this UUP petition and share it with/forward it to your colleagues and friends in Brooklyn.

  • NYCCT No More 24 Campaign

    Faculty at City Tech teach 24 contact-hours per year, the highest teaching load of any senior college in CUNY. All other senior colleges at CUNY have a 21 contact-hour teaching load. We're demanding equity and getting organized so we'll have more time for our students and more time for scholarship and research.

  • Pass the NY Healthy Workplace Act Letter

    Join us in our campaign to stop workplace bullying. Send a letter urging Albany to pass the NY Healthy Workplace Act, legislation that would give bullied workers the right to sue employers who don't take appropriate steps to end abusive behaviors at work.

    Workplace bullying is a huge problem: nearly half of American workers have experienced it either as a victim or as a witness, and it is undermining their health and productivity.

    Workers who are bullied are more likely to experience physical and emotional ailments. Employers who allow this type of inappropriate and unnecessary behavior risk higher employee turn-over and absenteeism, low employee morale, higher costs and lower productivity.

    The law provides remedies for workers who are discriminated against based on sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, disabilities or veteran status, but it provides no help for workers who are abused or mistreated for other reasons. We’re fighting to change the law.

  • Don’t cut the safety net!

    Congress’s Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (i.e. the “Super Committee”) is meeting in secret, and making plans that could increase economic insecurity and reduce access to health care for millions of Americans. The fight is on to protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, employee health benefits, public-sector pensions and other safety net programs. 

    As workers, we’ve earned our network of benefits, and we must fight to keep them. National safety net programs, public pensions and other benefits are under attack. 

    Send this letter to your representatives and congress. Tell them, hands off the social safety net!