The PSC Fiddles While Your Seniority Burns

Sharad Karkhanis sent my piece "The PSC Fiddles While Your Seniority Burns" as a Patriot Returns issue to 13,000 CUNY faculty and staff.  The PSC is the union that represents the CUNY faculty. Its leadership is fringe left.

THE
PATRIOT
RETURNS

   Vol. 54, No.3                                                          February 28, 2011

 

PSC Fiddles While Your Seniority Burns

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Brooklyn College

 

In 1960 Sumner Slichter et al. claimed that by rationalizing the workplace unions had improved management. Whereas bribery and caprice characterized the foreman-dominated shape-up system of an earlier age, unions encouraged rules that made personnel decisions predictable and efficient.* Among these were seniority systems and bumping rights. Soon after The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management's publication, unionism's role in education grew. By 1981, Douglas Mitchell et al. observed that collective bargaining had been one of the three most important developments in education in the preceding 30 years.**

But Slichter and Mitchell never observed President Barbara Bowen and her Merry Prankster-like New Caucus. Had they, they would have given up on unions. Not since the days of the Industrial Workers of the World has there been a leadership so out of touch with the realities of the workplace and American politics. Worse, now that the bureaucratic model of unionism that Slichter et al. recorded is under assault, the PSC is distributing e-mails about proprietary schools, the Egyptian crisis and Puerto Rico.

A Union Leadership Losing Touch

This is what the PSC has accomplished in the past few weeks. First, President Bowen distributed an email protesting charter elementary schools. Then, she distributed one urging the PSC's membership to take action about fraud in proprietary colleges. On February 15 Anthony Gronowicz distributed an email to the PSC-DA email list concerning human rights in Puerto Rico under Governor Luis Fortu. Angel Gonzalez adds that the struggle against Puerto Rican privatization ought to be at the forefront of the PSC's concerns. Then, taking a breather to focus on something related to a faculty union, on February 21 the PSC put forward a resolution condemning the limitations on collective bargaining and the elimination of faculty bargaining in Wisconsin. Quickly, Nancy Romer and Bill Friedheim added a crucial point: that a resolution concerning Egypt should be read at "all our Wisconsin support events."

While the PSC is busy equating the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wisconsin State Senate there has been a simultaneous New York conflagration concerning bumping rights and seniority rules in public schools. This local, and, to the New Caucus, apparently uninteresting debate may eventually affect your own bumping rights and how you are treated during an economic downturn. The New York Post observes that a New York group called Education Reform Now is running advertisements attacking traditional bumping rules in lower education. At the same time, President Obama's education czar, Secretary Arne Duncan, argues against traditional LIFO bumping rights. Mayor Bloomberg openly speaks of repealing the traditional rules.

Speculatively, this could be a harbinger of an assault on not just bumping rights but also tenure in higher education. Yet, President Bowen becomes cross when disturbed from her meditations on Cesar Chavez, Sami al Arian and fraud in proprietary schools.

Background

There are arguments for and against seniority and tenure as management techniques in industry. That is, while those arguing for merit-based employment systems claim that they will reduce costs, their arguments can be refuted. In the private sector the Japanese use less merit pay and place more emphasis on seniority than American firms do, but Japanese firms are more efficient. The Japanese made their greatest gains when they relied on seniority and did not use merit pay. The last time I looked Toyota did not have to be bailed out, but unlike GM its engineers are not subject to employment at will.

Although the Japanese commitment to lifetime employment has waned, their firms are less likely to lay off workers than are failed American firms on Wall Street and in Detroit. At the same time, neither the managements of Japanese firms nor the leaders of the enterprise unions, the company unions that have assisted Japanese firms by representing employees, waste their time debating the Iraqi War and the Unabomber's free speech rights.

Conclusion

CUNY's faculty ought to consider what personnel policies would be best for CUNY and best for the faculty itself. As well, a lobbying strategy aimed to educate the legislature about faculty practice and ways to improve higher education ought to be established. If tenure policy is eventually associated with seniority, wise input from reasonable faculty leaders will become important.

Moreover, in order to achieve a vision of what higher education ought to be, a university-wide dialogue is required. But there has been none. The absence of coherent discussion reflects the New Caucus's inability to coherently frame personnel issues in contemporary terms. Instead, anyone who disagrees with the New Caucus's foreign policy is silenced. Rather than discuss seniority rights, the New Caucus complains of Puerto Rican privatization and complex events in Egypt whose implications specialists do not fully comprehend.

Do Barbara Bowen and the New Caucus offer CUNY's best face? Are you confident that when discussion about CUNY's personnel policies is forced into the public arena the New Caucus will effectively represent you?

* Sumner H. Slichter, James J. Healy, and E. Robert Livernash, The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management ( Washington , D.C. : The Brookings Institution, 1960

** Douglas E. Mitchell, Charles T. Kerchner, Wayne Erck and Gabrielle Pryor, "The Impact of Collective Bargaining on School Management and Policy." American Journal of Education 89:2 pp. 147-88, 1981.

 

Sharad Karkhanis, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Editor-in-Chief

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I Help Expose Faculty Union's Lies

Professor David Seidemann of Brooklyn College sued the faculty union of the City University of New York, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC).  The suit concerned the far-left union's use of dues money for political purposes unrelated to contract negotiation or administration.  The State of New York threatens any faculty member who would rather not pay dues to the union with violence.  Those not in the union must pay an agency fee.   The union has done little, if anything, to further the faculty's broad economic goals. Once the highest paid faculty in the nation, the CUNY faculty are now in the bottom quartile.  But the union spends an inordinate amount of time  in pro-left-wing and pro-Obama political activity. Initially, the current leadership's insurgency had been funded by one of George Soros's institutes.  In effect, the leadership is using the union as a cash cow to fund left wing political activity while failing to competently operate a union.

Seidemann had sued to require that non-members who are violently forced to the agency fee be able to get a refund for the portion of their dues spent for political purposes.  Initially the PSC claimed that less than 1% of the dues was used for political purposes.  One of Seidemann's former students is now an attorney at the prestigious firm of Jones, Day and he took the case pro bono. Because of a pro-union federal magistrate, the case had to be appealed twice.  As the case was appealed, more and more of the union's budget turned out to be devoted to political purposes.  When they were still not fully examined, the PSC decided to cut its losses and offered to pay Jones, Day Seidemann's legal fees.  By the time they settled, the court had forced the PSC to admit that over 14% of its budget is spent for political purposes.  The true amount is even more.

Yet, in a statement to its executive committee, the PSC lied once again and claimed to have won the case.

Sharad Karkhanis asked me to write an article for his Patriot Returns newsletter, which is sent to 13,000 CUNY employees.  The newsletter went out this morning.  I had asked the PSC to comment on the case, but they did not respond.  But this morning, after the newsletter was released, I received an e-mail from Dania

Rajendra, the PSC's coordinator, of communications. The e-mail added nothing.

My Letter in the Chronicle of Higher Education

The Chronicle of Higher Education printed my letter concerning David Seidemann's case here:

To the Editor:

The remarks of union officials quoted in "Federal Judge Rules Against Faculty Union on Refunds of Nonmembers' Dues" (The Chronicle, April 25) are misleading. There have been considerable "soft" activities by the leadership of the faculty union at the City University of New York involving protests, demonstrations, and conferences about the war in Iraq. The leadership is paid salaries to represent the faculty, but much of the leaders' time has been spent in antiwar and other political protests.

To be fair, agency dues payments should be reduced by the proportion that salaries for the union leadership's time spent on unrelated political activities bears to the union's total budget.

The article quotes Christopher M. Callagy, a union attorney, as saying that the union's chief political efforts have been in Albany. The union leadership has many times notified faculty members about antiwar protests via CUNY's e-mail system and used union officials' time and union resources for such protests, conferences, and related activities.

Professor David E. Seidemann's case does not go far enough. Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Association, on which Magistrate Judge Lois Bloom relies in Seidemann v. Bowen, anticipates that agency payers may be free riders because they receive the benefit of collective bargaining but would not contribute to the costs of negotiation if they did not pay dues. But the Professional Staff Congress has won no benefits for its membership. Rather, because of its adversarial approach, it has managed to diminish faculty wages and benefits relative to virtually every other New York union.

Mitchell Langbert
Associate Professor of Business, Management, and Finance
Brooklyn College
City University of New York
Brooklyn, N.Y.

David Seidemann Slam Dunks Barbara Bowen in Law Suit

David Seidemann just e-mailed me that he has defeated the Professional Staff Congress's (PSC), CUNY's faculty union, in a federal court law suit, Seidemann v. Bowen, in federal district court. This case is of national importance because it establishes standards of disclosure for agency fee bargaining units. An agency fee arrangement occurs where the union agreement compels non-members to pay dues even though they elect not to belong to the union. Agency arrangements differ from union shops in that under agency arrangements members are permitted to refuse membership in the union (unlike union shops), but they are compelled to pay dues nevertheless. CUNY has an agency shop. A number of faculty, myself included, do not belong to the union but are compelled to pay dues. Professor Seidemann's law suit concerned the PSC's failure to accurately disclose the portion of dues that the PSC devotes to political contributions unrelated to the PSC's collective bargaining and higher education activities.

The PSC is an unusually ineffectual union that has failed to win wage increases one half of what New York City's modestly paid teachers (in comparison with teachers in neighboring municipalities and suburbs) have won. The teachers won 16 percent over three years and the PSC won six percent over three years for CUNY's faculty. The PSC has repeatedly refused to represent faculty in grievances. At the same time, the PSC has served as a conduit for political contributions to various extremist causes. Before Sharad Karkhanis's and David Seidemann's protests, the PSC was sending Iraqi War literature to the CUNY faculty almost daily, even as it failed to represent faculty in collective bargaining and grievances.

According to Professor Seidemann, the federal court ruled by summary judgment* that:

1) the PSC violates the First Amendment rights of agency fee payers because it fails to provide them with sufficient information to gauge the propriety of the union's agency fee expenditures;

2) the PSC unlawfully charged objecting non-members for some of the union's political activities by inaccurately characterizing them as contract-related activities. Among the activities that the PSC improperly claimed were contract-related was a forum on an anti-war resolution. The PSC also improperly charged fee payers for public rallies, picket lines, concerts, letter-writing campaigns - all political activities - under the category "office supplies". (How does one confuse a paper clip with a picket line?)

3) Further, the District Court enforced a ruling in Professor Seidemann's case made by the Second Circuit in August 2007 that held as unconstitutional the PSC's requirement that non-members annually renew their objections to political expenditures. (The Second Circuit ruling applies to all public unions in New York, Vermont, and Connecticut.)

*The Court finds that plaintiff is entitled to a declaratory judgment that defendants' notice to fee payers for the years at issue violated plaintiff's rights under the First Amendment. Plaintiff is entitled to injunctive relief and defendants are enjoined and prohibited from requiring nonmembers to file an annual objection or to identify the percentage of the agency fees in dispute in order to file an objection. Defendants shall send plaintiff and all nonmembers a notice that complies with Hudson and the Second Circuit's Mandate as set forth herein. Defendants shall provide the financial [*37] information necessary for fee payers to gauge the propriety of the agency fees, either by mail or by posting on the union's website, at least thirty days prior to the start of the fee payer objection period. The financial information PSC provides to fee payers shall set forth the basis for the allocation of both the chargeable and non-chargeable expenses.