New York GSEU Bargaining Community Support Letter

State University of New York (SUNY) system is the US' largest public education system that houses more than 320,000 undergraduate students across 64 campuses. As public education faces a myriad of challenges, SUNY is still one of the most important examples of what public education ought to provide and symbolize: a public good offering affordable and quality education that enriches students and provides skills, knowledge and connections key for enhancing their subsequent life opportunities after graduation.

Public university systems differ from private universities in various ways. Not only is their funding based on public sources and citizens’ taxation, they also have representational responsibilities to symbolize the values, culture, aims and priorities of the public. A public good belongs to all, a good created by the public and answerable to it. SUNY therefore belongs to all New York citizens. It is where many of us receive or received our education, where our children are currently enrolled, where we work.It is an institution created by our contributions and in every decision represents the New York public.

In New York’s public education system, no essential educator and researcher should suffer poverty conditions. We are dismayed to learn that graduate student workers, an indispensable part of SUNY’s educational force, live under such conditions.

Graduate Student Employees Union represents over 4,800 Teaching and Graduate Assistants in the SUNY system. These TAs and GAs teach their own courses, conduct independent scientific research, assist in faculty members’ courses where in many instances they undertake the majority of grading labor. They are official employees of the SUNY system and NYS. An independent study in Stony Brook University, for example, found that graduate student workers were the largest instructional group in the university. This means the hundreds of thousands of SUNY students every year interact mostly with graduate student workers as their teachers.

What are the living conditions of these educators of our state’s education system? These educators and researchers get paid significantly below the cost of living in their areas, and their compensation also falls below their peer institutions. New York State fails to provide a compensation to its essential educators that is dignified and reflects the value of their labor. This leads the majority of graduate student workers to report having financial problems, suffering from mental health problems due to financial issues, and being unable to concentrarete on their research and teaching due these issues. This especially impacts international graduate workers who are extremely limited in attaining outside employment and represent a large percentage of the graduate student body.

The current contractual minimum stipend in SUNY for graduate workers is $10,500. While university centers pay above this minimum (albeit still below the cost of living), this minimum is kept in many colleges. In the recent negotiations, SUNY first proposed to increase this limit by 3%, to $11,102, and then merely increased their offer to $15,770. This is an unacceptable amount for educators that make possible our esteemed public education system. In the past several years, many SUNY’s peer institutions, including public universities like the University of California system and the New Jersey higher ed institutions, increased the compensation levels for graduate workers significantly: Rutgers University offers $40,000; the UC schools offer stipends between $33,000 and $37,000. It is time for SUNY to prove that it too values its educators.

As those to whom the SUNY system really belongs, we call on NYS and SUNY leaders to correct this injustice that is being inflicted by our state. We call on our representatives to immediately oppose this undeserving treatment of our educators, and call on SUNY and NYS to offer a living wage to graduate workers and bargain with them in good faith. New York State’s public education system should not force its essential educators into conditions of poverty. Instead, New York should be where educators and researchers are cherished, respected, honored and held in high regard; and this requires that they receive a dignified contract.