Union Negotiations at The New School

Unions are part of our culture at The New School, and we have nine unionized groups of employees on our campus.

We are negotiating towards renewed agreements with SHENS and SENS, both represented by UAW Local 7902.

SHENS-UAW Local 7902 represents 20 employees including therapists, counselors, nurses, social workers, and physicians. The current contract is set to expire on August 11.

SENS-UAW Local 7902 represents 1,000 Academic Student Workers, including teaching assistants and fellows, research associates and assistants, course assistants, and tutors. The current contract is set to expire on August 31.

The university and the SENS bargaining committee met for their fifth session on September 22. We offered a number of dates to meet with the union and have asked to have the sessions go longer than two hours. We are waiting to hear back on their availability and willingness to increase the bargaining session time. The next planned meeting between the university and SHENS will be on October 2 followed by confirmed additional sessions on October 16 and November 6. You can see a timeline here which shows the university's efforts to begin bargaining with Local 7902 since spring.

We remain ready to meet at any time, during business and after hours, on weekends, and for any amount of time so we can reach a new agreement. 

The university is committed to transparency, and we have offered to make a Zoom link available for bargaining sessions. Elected bargaining committee members unable to attend in person would be able to actively participate in the discussions. All other members of the university community would be able to view the sessions in real time through their New School email account or could view a recording later. We hope that the union agrees to this, so that our whole community can listen to what is said at the bargaining table.

In a further step towards ensuring full transparency, our bargaining team also asked the union to publish its written proposals on its website, as the university is already doing, and the union has not agreed to this.

Negotiating a collective bargaining agreement is always a complex process, even more so when it involves our students. Graduate teaching and research assistants are a vital part of our community, and we value them greatly.

The university’s position is that academic student workers are students first – and the work they do is directly related to their education and towards completion of their degrees. As the majority of graduate students are here only 2-3 years, their employment is not intended as a long-term, sustained professional engagement. These are part-time positions, with a maximum of 20-25 hours per week. That means that the needs of these workers, and the university’s relationship with them as employees, differs from other non-student employee groups.

We deeply value the work of these 20 employees and everything they do to protect, support, and care for our students’ medical and mental health needs. Our approach to bargaining with SHENS UAW Local 7902 is guided by the core values of our institution – and will be in the same positive spirit and with the goal of mutually beneficial outcomes, as with all our labor negotiations. 

For our Academic Student Workers, the university presented an initial offer to SENS on July 17 valued at $46 million over 6 years. It includes a 29% pay increase over 6 years, which is similar to the percentage agreed upon for part-time faculty, as well as pay for necessary training, competitive health insurance options, sick leave and subsidized paid family leave premiums.  

For our Student Health Employees, the university made an opening proposal on July 19 to SHENS that offered enhancements such as establishing a professional development fund and updating paid sick language to enhance the statutory amounts.

Both offers were intended as jumping off points to advance substantive discussions about what terms and benefits matter most to our employees.

Although the university has presented opening offers, we have yet to hear from either SENS or SHENS on the substantive economic and non-economic terms that matter most to their members.

To date, the SENS and SHENS unions have responded to only a handful of proposals on peripheral issues, such as meeting spaces and university-provided uniforms. To ensure equity across groups and sound financial stewardship, the university cannot respond until the unions have weighed in on core issues such as wages and healthcare. Bargaining piecemeal is not a best practice in labor relations.

Once the university receives comprehensive and substantive responses to our initial offers, we are committed to working quickly to be responsive and move the conversation forward.

The SHENS contract expired on August 9 and the SENS contract will expire on August 31.

We have requested contract extensions, made our bargaining team available to meet at any time and as often as necessary, and have requested the support of a professional mediator. These offers have been refused by the union to date.

We have been focused on repairing the strain on our community stemming from last year’s strike and understand it can be easy to jump to that scenario. We have learned from the events of last year and are doing everything on our part to reach fair and competitive renewal agreements as soon as possible.

In the event of labor-related disruption, the university will fulfill its responsibility to deliver the education we promised to our students – and we are required to do so in order to maintain our accreditation.

The university has a long history of reaching agreements with the nine unions on campus – including the one we reached with our part time Jazz faculty this spring. 

Unions are part of our culture and community, and The New School’s interactions with organized labor are consistent with our values as an institution. We are focused on reaching outcomes that improve the education and support the success of all our students and that benefit the full New School community.

While the PTF strike was a difficult period for everyone, it’s important to remember that we have a longstanding history of respecting our employees’ rights to seek union representation and of working together — even when that process is a hard one.

The university’s bargaining team is made up of a wide range of people who bring individual skills and expertise to the process. This includes New School employees who have in-depth knowledge of the specific issues under discussion, as well as individuals whose skill sets we do not have in-house.

While it is true that we face significant hurdles with regards to our budget, efforts are underway – led by the expanded University Budget Committee and supported by the entire community – to implement solutions that will create a more sustainable future.

For more information about this work please visit the University Budget Committee page. You can also follow @KnowOurNewSchool on Twitter and Instagram. 

The university has been in discussions with the proposed New Student Workers Union (NewSWU), which is seeking to represent eligible non-academic student workers. We support the right of our non-academic student workers to pursue union representation under the process established by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

NewSWU has filed a petition with the NLRB to join SENS, meaning academic and non-academic workers would be represented by one union. The university’s position is that academic and non-academic student workers have different needs (like staff and faculty) and they should be represented separately.