Mediation and Strike Deadline Updates
*UPDATED NYU and UNION SUMMARY POSITIONS*
*STRIKE DEADLINE: MARCH 10*
After making no concrete movement for the last nine months, the university administration made a written proposal in our eight-hour mediation session Wednesday night. We cannot recommend this proposal since it fails to address core demands of our members. Because NYU has made clear this is a firm framework for settlement, we have responded with a revised set of economic proposals that we believe addresses the needs of our members and makes NYU more accessible and competitive.
Our revised demands are reasonable: 100% healthcare, support for student workers with families, tuition remission for working PhDs, and fair annual raises. NYU can afford this: for example, just half of one executive level NYU administrators’ salary can can fund healthcare for all of us who currently receive no support!
Our mediator asked us to extend our strike deadline to March 10, so he may prepare a mediated proposal for the Union and NYU to consider on March 9, the earliest date he is available to meet again.
At our last mediation session, the committee members present authorized an off-the-record conversation between NYU’s Director of Labor Relations, Terry Nolan; our UAW Region 9A Director Julie Kushner; and mediator Martin Scheinman. We maintain that it is essential to have union members present for all negotiations. However, our mediator explicitly asserted that he would walk out of our negotiations, and stated that NYU would not comply if we did not allow private off-the-record conversations among the above parties.
We have decided to extend our strike deadline to March 10 in order to push negotiations as far as we can. We are working hard to reach an agreement by March 9, but we must all be ready to strikeMarch 10-13 if we cannot. We must also continue preparing for the serious threat of repeated and/or longer strikes. If we have to strike, we will maintain an active picket line to make it clear and visible to the community around us that we are on strike and encourage respect and support for our work action.
We can make NYU respect the work we do with a fair contract! Our mobilization committee will be working across campus in every department to galvanize support. Please contact our mobilization committee to organize your departmental colleagues and help with strike preparations.
Our next weekly member meeting will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb 17 at 4pm in the Silver Lounge, Room 120.
