CUNY workers,

Once again, we are in the midst of stalled contract negotiations with the university and the state of New York. “Our” negotiating team (who never cease to remind us of their supposed electoral mandate) fail to fight for any of the meaningful demands we make, in particular that of $7K per course for adjuncts. This is intentional: the leadership of the PSC-CUNY are capitalist lackeys. Their negotiations are a process of finding out where they can retreat in our fight against the State. Later, they will present themselves as the conciliatory voice of reason above a dangerous rank-and-file. They do not dream of our liberation – instead, they lust after their own private benefit, as technocrats serving the bourgeoisie.

The petty-bourgeois elements that make up the right wing of this union prove this fact about themselves when they make “professionalization” a central tenet of their negotiations with the university. They do so to divide us from our friends in other occupations, who struggle for the same things as we do: strong wage increases, stabilization of precarious employment, improved working conditions, more funding, and more hiring. But the PSC leadership have made clear their opinion that we are somehow above the rest of the working class. One of them scornfully told a Graduate Center chapter meeting that “the other unions won’t accept” the wage increases that we demand. Our illustrious bargaining team, they plead, is not at fault for the failure of negotiations, nor is the State that this union bows down to, but rather the rest of the working class is responsible!

This is not the position of a militant class union. It is the bleating of a regime union that is in the hands of the bourgeois State. When the PSC leadership emphasizes professionalization, militants reply: we fight alongside the whole working class! When they blame other unions for our troubles, militants reply: all trade unionists are our comrades! When they attack the rank-and-file $7K or Strike movement, militants reply: the leadership are traitors in the class struggle!

Our real liberation as educators, and the liberation of our students, will only come with the liberation of society as a whole. This social liberation will be communism. The means to achieve it is the revolutionary struggle of the international working class to overthrow capitalism. The International Communist Party is the vanguard of that struggle. Our party understands that building militant class unions is essential to the success of the workers’ revolution. We take part in rank-and-file campaigns around the world to lay the foundations for unions that are able to revolt against the bourgeoisie. You can help us fight for educators and for the whole working class by joining our party.

Workers of the World, Unite!