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Brian Lehrer: Now folks, some labor news, including your labor news. Listeners, are you part of a labor movement at this time? Maybe you're a teacher at The New School or their Parson School of Design or any of the University of California schools out west, or maybe you work at Starbucks or Apple or for a railroad company. If you're in the process of unionizing or organizing a picket line or involved in a work stoppage, give us a call and tell us what's going on and what you hope to accomplish. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Why do we ask this today? There's a lot of labor news this morning that's very current. For one thing, The New Schools, if you haven't heard this yet, 2,600 part-time unionized faculty adjuncts have gone on an indefinite strike to demand what they see as a fair union contract and a livable wage. As of last Wednesday, they stopped teaching and grading and have been picketing outside The New School. In fact, there is a picket line happening today, I am told in front of 65th Avenue from 11:00 to 4:00. Give us a call.

New School faculty, if any of you happen to be listening right now, especially if you are a striking faculty member. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Part-time faculty, as I say, also commonly known as adjuncts, make up 87% of The New School's teaching staff according to Gothamist. They say they haven't had a pay increase since 2018, and that the proposed raise from administrators in the current contract negotiations does not make up for inflation and high living costs in New York City.

They also criticize, among other things, the fact that they're frequently unable to access healthcare through the school and aren't compensated for many of the critical hours that go into teaching work when you're a part-time adjunct, like communicating or spending time with students outside of class. Union members argue that The New School, which also includes Parsons School of Design, can cost students more than $200,000 for a four-year education and has among the highest-paid administrators in the country.

They say, union members told Gothamist that The New School administration walked away from negotiations after presenting their "final offer", but the union, which is technically the United Auto Workers, did you know that United Auto Workers represents a lot of college professors, says this offer didn't take into account the cost of living in New York City, which was the whole point. Now, the administration certainly has their sides, and this is a two-side negotiation as all negotiations are.

Anybody from New School administration, also welcome to call in. On the West Coast, if you haven't heard locally, almost 48,000 teaching assistants and other academic workers in the University of California system, UC Berkeley, UCLA, all those, went on strike and walked off the job last Monday. Unionized academic workers. I think in that case, it's not adjuncts. I think it's grad students who are teaching assistants and things like that. They want better pay that takes inflation and the price of living into account. California isn't a cheap place to live either, and to be recognized for the essential work that they do to make their schools function, they say.

What a time in the academic calendar to be on strike with midterms and finals around the corner, depending on your school calendar. You remember it was this time last year when Columbia University graduate student workers were picketing for what they saw as a fair contract, and earlier in the spring of 2021, a year and a half ago, NYU grad student workers were doing the same.

There are also other things going on in labor. Amazon, we've talked about so many times on the show with Chris Malls and other guests, Starbucks, there's the possible railroad workers strike which might affect passenger as well as freight rail. We're going to talk to somebody involved with that in a little while. As your calls are coming in, let's hear for a minute from Annie Lee Larson, part-time faculty at The New School and unit chair for the Part-Time Faculty Union. Annie, welcome to WNYC. Thank you for giving us a few minutes.

Annie Lee Larson: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having me. I'm a huge fan. It's an honor to be on your show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. What's the union hoping to accomplish? This is what? The eighth day now of a strike or seventh day of a strike? It's a long time for adjuncts to be out of the classroom and I guess, denying yourself pay for the moment.

Annie Lee Larson: Yes. We've been on strike part-time faculty at The New School since Wednesday, November 16th. This is a really important contract campaign for part-time faculty. We haven't had a new contract since 2014 and we haven't had a pay raise since 2018. The part-time faculty are hoping to reach a fair deal with the university as soon as possible, but the university has not made offers that are acceptable to the part-time faculty, and so the strike continues.

Brian Lehrer: Are you receiving support from the students and full-time faculty? I heard that full-time faculty aren't officially allowed to voice public support for the strike.

Annie Lee Larson: We have immense support from full-time faculty, from staff, from students, from parents. The entire New School community is coming together to hold the university accountable. We have full-time faculty that are striking in solidarity. They are not holding their classes, they are not crossing the picket line. Our students have been really leading the way on our picket line on the days that we've been out, and it's really incredible to see that they understand that our working conditions are their learning conditions.

Our students at The New School are so bright and intelligent and generous and compassionate, and they have been right out there on the line with us. We have incredible support from our community and the school has been shut down as a result of that mass solidarity.

Brian Lehrer: Do I have that stat right or at least according to the union, that 87% of the faculty members at The New School are adjuncts? If that's right, is one of your goals to have fewer adjuncts even though you represent the adjuncts or you are an adjunct and you want to stand with each other, but to have more full-time faculty positions and less part-time?

Annie Lee Larson: First of all, yes, 87%, that is correct. Part-time faculty make up 87% of the teaching staff at the university. I would say that our contract goals really center around lifting part-time faculty up within their current positions, allowing for fair compensation both in terms of our hourly rates as well as for recognition for pay for out-of-class work. I think the goal is to achieve some parity with full-time faculty, but to lift our part-time faculty up within their current positions.

Again, because we make up the majority of the teaching staff at the university, we feel that our demands are reasonable and that they should be met because without the part-time faculty, The New School cannot provide the education it is known for.

Brian Lehrer: How much of this, and this will be the last question and I'll let you go, besides meeting your material needs, is wanting The New School to live up to its purported values. It's one of the most famous progressive universities in the country linked back to, and there are a lot of progressive universities in the country, but The New School was founded with that in mind long before a lot of other schools came to that in such an explicit way. How would you put the strike in the historical context of The New School?

Annie Lee Larson: Absolutely. We feel that The New School is not living up to its social justice values, to its progressive legacy, it actually is working against that. We believe that the university is engaging in serious union investing tactics against the part-time faculty, things that we might expect to see from employers like Amazon or Starbucks. They are taking an extremely aggressive approach in this contract campaign, and we do feel that it is in a front to the legacy of The New School.

It's not just the part-time faculty that feel that way, students, parents, full-time faculty staff, the entire community is seeing what The New School is doing. We are honestly sad to see this happen in the face of a university that we have loved and that we love working at. That is a huge part of this. Our negotiations with The New School is, we do feel like it is a contradiction to what they believe in.

Brian Lehrer: What do you teach, by the way?

Annie Lee Larson: I teach in the school of fashion and Parsons, I teach machine knitting to undergraduate fashion students and I teach students how to knit sweaters on machines.

Brian Lehrer: Annie Lee Larson, part-time faculty at The New School and unit chair for the Part-Time Faculty Union, in the seventh day of its strike at the New School. Thank you for a few minutes this morning, we really appreciate it.

Annie Lee Larson: Thanks much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll take a break and come back and take your calls about if you are part of any labor movement that's active right at this time, I see some other New School faculty members are calling up, we'll take some of your calls and anyone else, anyone involved in what's going on at Starbucks, what's going on at Amazon, big story in the news right now, railroad workers around the country may be about to go on strike, they actually had an agreement, the union had an agreement with management--

A collection of unions had an agreement and some of the Union rank and file rejected the agreement that their leaders came to, we're going to talk about the railroad situation and take your calls on any labor situation that you are personally involved in right now. Your labor news right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now at this moment of labor rising again in the United States, your calls on labor movements you're currently involved with and Jack in Kensington, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jack.

Jack: Hey, Brian, how's it going?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What's your [unintelligible 00:11:48]

Jack: Yes, I wanted to call in to talk about some of the new organizing that's been happening, you already mentioned Starbucks. I'm with the Democratic Socialists of America and we have a partner organization called the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee that's been working to support this massive new-age labor upsurge you've been seeing, especially among young people working in service jobs around the country over the last year and a half since the pandemic started.

Brian Lehrer: What are you asking for and what do you think you can get?

Jack: Well, I think in the case of Starbucks, we're asking for a contract, there's hundreds of stores just last week, the Red Cup Rebellion organized by Starbucks united and workers at Starbucks stores across the country all did walk out, there are a number of stores in New York City, I was down to the Bay Parkway location with a bunch of workers there, we've been fighting for proper staffing, proper paid sick leave and really, just a chance to actually sit at the bargaining table with a company and get a fair deal for themselves.

What we're asking people to do regular people, there is a lot of people, I'm sure, listening to this show right now who maybe don't work at a job that they totally hate, or maybe they do, but they don't think they can form a union together on this to really get out there and get involved with groups like EWOC and DSA, we have a new union power effort that we're starting, we'll have our first meeting on December 1st at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple at 7 PM if you want to come.

The message here is really that, every time you see a little news story about a group of workers stepping out or about the huge, huge efforts that's gone into build up towards what we've seen at the University of California and the New School in the past week, that's the result of regular people in their workplaces talking to each other, and deciding that they deserve more, or raising their expectation collectively, and they're taking action against their bosses to get what they deserve.

The last thing I want to say is that coming up into the next year, the Teamsters are quite likely with new leadership to strike UPS and for exactly those things, raising expectations for workers across the country to get what working people deserve. If you're listening to this, you can go to workerorganizing.org to plug in and get involved and I really encourage everyone when you see a labor action happening, if it excites you, if you believe in what people are doing, talk to your co-workers, go out there support people on the picket line.

Brian Lehrer: Jack, thank you for your call. We appreciate it. Alexandra in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alexandra.

Alexandra: Hi, what an honor to be on. Thank you. I'm about to go out to the picket line at the New School where I've been teaching for 26 years. I just wanted to make the point because it's known that adjuncts are underpaid throughout the country and it's like the New School, since we're 87% of the faculty, we're not really adjunct, we are the faculty and it's interesting that one of the things that we've been asking for is simply to have department-wide meetings where we have some input in the curriculum and some say in how our students are being taught, we're really sort of each teaching in a vacuum and I hope that-

Brian Lehrer: You mean faculty meetings that they hold, departmental meetings, or however they're organized, only includes full-time faculty.

Alexandra: Right and it's really a disservice to our students. We're each teaching in our own little bubble, and yet, we're part of larger departments, so we feel that that's an important thing to have a say in. A lot of the things we're asking for have to do it with really being able to be the best educators we can be.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe just nitpicking but if 87% is the stat for the percentage of faculty member who are adjuncts, what percentage of the classes does that mean you teach, if you know, because of each adjunct only teaches one or two classes and faculty members are teaching more classes because when people hear that stat, certainly when I hear that stat, I'm like, what? 87% of the classes are taught by people who are in full-time faculty members, but it's not 87% of the classes. Do you know what it is?

Alexandra: Yes, it is. At least that's the statistic that we've been using and I believe that's true. The New School is widely adjunct taught and that's the only way that-- We've been traditionally so underpaid that of course, many people are teaching at a number of different places just to make ends meet but we are the New School and it's such an honor for me to teach there. My mother, who was a Hungarian immigrant whose high school education was interrupted by the war, came to New York and took classes at the New School every semester, and got her education that way, so it's got such an amazing history and it's just really sad, what's going on right now.

Brian Lehrer: It's a national issue in Higher Ed, as I'm sure you know the adjunct deification of colleges and universities where, I guess, many are trying to save money by having a smaller percentage of classes taught by full-time faculty members and a larger percentage of classes taught by adjuncts. I wonder if you think that there's sort of an unfair bias against adjuncts in the way that tends to get framed like the full-time faculty members are, for some reason, going to be better, maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. How do you think people should see the increasing percentage of classes being taught by adjuncts nationwide?

Alexandra: Well, I think you're right, it's framed as an economic decision by the universities, but at least at the New School, we have the same qualifications as a full-time faculty, for the most part, I'm a pretty well-known book editor, and I'm bringing that to my fiction classes that I'm teaching. I think it's just a way that the university administrations have framed it to justify the pay differential which is huge where a full-time professor is paid three times what we're paid to teach the same course.

Brian Lehrer: Alexandra, thank you much for calling in. Good luck to you and everybody.

Alexandra: Thank you much for having us on.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about this railroad strike potential. We may see a railroad worker strike soon, maybe you've been seeing this in the national news over the last day or two. This has been years in the making. It's taken three years and many intense negotiations in Washington, just to get this current tentative contract settlement brokered, but about half the workers that would cover are not satisfied with it. Railroad workers have been fighting for better pay that takes inflation into account like so many of the unions are raising and better schedules and attendance policies, among other things.

According to NPR, four freight rail unions rejected the latest five-year contract being offered to them and if a consensus isn't reached by December 8th, a strike involving all of the 12 major rail unions, there are 12 different unions involved in that industry, that's 115,000 workers, according to NPR, may happen which would not only affect the US supply chain, but commuter rail travel as well, and we're going to talk for a couple of minutes now to Dennis Pierce, National President of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. Dennis are you on, can you hear me? You're on WNYC. Hello.

Dennis Pierce: I'm here. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear just fine. What happened here? Did your union come to a tentative agreement and the rank and file turned it down.

Dennis Pierce: Well, there were two unions voting at the same time. Our union represents the vast majority of the nation's locomotive engineers smart transportation division represents the conductors there. There's two people in most all those trains out there. Both sides of the cab, as we call it, of the locomotive, were voting on the same contract at the same time. Their union voted no. Our union voted yes, but they were both very close votes.

We ratified by a margin of 53.5% in favor. They failed by our roughly 51% opposed. It isn't that the two unions are that far apart on it. It was a close vote for both unions. Their union will return to the bargaining table. I believe they're meeting today. Our union will then move forward to get the terms of the ratified agreement implemented but it doesn't mean that we've solved all the problems in the rail industry that led us to this point.

Brian Lehrer: What are the no voters most rebelling against?

Dennis Pierce: It's a combination of things and you have to put the whole thing in perspective. In the last five years, the railroads, most of the class one large railroads in the country implemented what was called precision scheduled railroading. It doesn't involve that much precision or scheduling for our advantage point. As part of that process, they cut about a third of their workforce.

They then set forward to, for the sake of profit, try to get the existing employees to do more work, fewer employees, more work, more profit, and it worked. The railroads are celebrating some of the most profitable years ever, and that's 150, 160 years worth of profitable years. The program that they implemented made a lot of money, but it alienated the workforce by expecting the existing employees to step up and work more. That might be forced extra shifts, forced extra overtime and along the way in the middle of this event came the pandemic so the railroads had already slashed their workforce.

They slashed it more as things slowed down during the pandemic. When things started to pick up again, they did not have the staffing to run the nation's freight so they implemented attendance policies, forcing people to work more that in one railroad, BNSF had over a thousand people resign over it and say, we're just not going to work this much. This isn't a job anymore.

It's self-inflicted for the most part because of their business model. This expectation in the workforce in America today that people want to just live to work as compared to work to live is just a fundamental self-inflicted wound to not only the railroads but to the supply chain because we've got trains parked all across the nation for short staffing.

Brian Lehrer: Politico today says the no vote adds to pressure on Congress to step in and avert a work stoppage that could impede coal shipment, shut down most passenger rail, imperil drinking water and cost the economy billions per day, what role do you think Congress has to play here or do you want them to stay out of it?

Dennis Pierce: Well, under the Railway Labor ACT's a very unique mall that railroads, airlines, steamship companies work under and it was designed almost a hundred years ago to make it very hard for labor to interrupt the supply chain. That's what it's all about. We've reached the end of those rules and if these parties that are still at the table, there are four unions back bargaining at the table, that did not ratify their agreements, all of them by equally close margins, then they will reach the end of what's called a cooling off period and at the end of that, in December, the unions would have the legal right to strike, but the railroad would also have the legal right to lock them out.

It's really speculation on what Congress will do. I can tell you what they have done. In 1991, the last time we reached this point in one of these negotiations, 31 years ago, one union struck just on CSX, I believe it was the machinist, and to push Congress to get involved. The railroads locked every employee out nationwide. Collectively, all the railroads bargained together. That was their way of negatively impacting the supply chain to force Congress to interject itself into it.

Those options will all become available to both sides in December, and time will tell whether they're able to work out a contract. I think the big takeaway is that what those record profits I talk about, the railroads can afford to give the unions what they ask for, what their employees ask for, which is more important than just the union. There are things that they could do to improve this workplace that would make these contracts ratify by a much larger margin.

The railroads have started this panic attack having shippers and everyone call Congress and you have to get involved because quite honestly, that's their backstop. They prefer not to bargain. They prefer to have congress step in, and they're willing to negatively impact the supply chain, which they've already done with their business practices. If anybody's angrier than the employees, it's probably the shippers right now.

Brian Lehrer: That Politico passage that I read included shut down most passenger rail. If there is a strike, would that affect Amtrak? Would that affect commuter lines like Metro North and Long Island Railroad in our area? Where does that come into play?

Dennis Pierce: Your commuter agencies, I don't think would be affected at all. On the corridor, I'm not sure that Amtrak would be because Amtrak's not part of the railroads or the unions that are involved in these negotiations. When you get off corridor out in the Western parts of the country, Amtrak could be impacted but again, a lot of these are the choices these employers are making as they try to intimidate Congress into taking action by fearmongering and overplaying the steps they think they have to take.

If the unions don't capitulate, I guess is what they're actually seeking so time will tell. Like I said, we've not had a strike in this industry since that event in 1991 on a national scale for the freight roads and after they locked us out, Congress interjected themselves in about less than a day and they imposed the recommendation that had come from a non-binding panel much like we're looking at right now. The last strike before that I was around four, it was in '82.

I think we were out for four days and Congress interjected themselves then so it's likely with supply chain as fragile as it is that Congress will interject. I think the railroads would be more required and inclined to do real business if they did not have Congress to help them standing behind them as they are right now.

Brian Lehrer: Dennis Pierce, National President of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainman, thanks for giving us a few minutes when I know this is all coming to a head for you and your colleagues. Good luck to everybody.

Dennis Pierce: Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get one more call in before we run out of time in this segment. One of the ongoing current labor situations that I haven't mentioned has to do with the publishing industry. HarperCollins has been experiencing a strike this month. I thank Zach at Columbia University is calling in about that and other things. Zach, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Zach: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having me. I am not a HarperCollins worker, but I am in amalgamated Union local 2110, also in the United Auto Workers. I wanted to give a shout-out to my union family at HarperCollins who are entering their ninth day of a strike today. Again, dealing with a corporation that has made tons and tons of profit during the pandemic and are refusing to give my union siblings a fair deal even though they can more than afford it.

One thing that I'm noticing hearing the different callers on the program this morning is that in this time of record profits, companies are doubling down on herding workers and it's unacceptable. I work at Columbia University, I'm an administrative assistant here, a UAW member for five years and I was on my bargaining committee recently. We just got what I thought was a really bad deal and Columbia made record profits on their endowment during the pandemic. Their endowment grew by 33%.

It's valued at over 14 billion now. In our fight with Columbia, the university forced healthcare givebacks onto us and the members, unfortunately, accepted it, but I was one of the people who helped to organize a no-vote campaign which the person who was just on the line before me was talking about organizing no votes as well. You were asking about what people are fighting for.

I wanted to say what I'm fighting for in my shop at Columbia and across the United Auto Workers is democratic reform in the way that our union is run and in collective bargaining. Although we are being forced, these bad deals are being forced onto workers everywhere right now and we're having to bear the brunt of a high cost of living. Also for too long, union leaders in our unions have been comfortable and have prevented our rank and file from taking a more militant approach in the way that we negotiate and fight back against the boss so that we can get what we deserve as workers. That's partially what we face to Columbia.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for your call. I'm going to leave it there because we're running out of time in the segment. On the HarperCollins strike listener who's apparently involved, tweets HarperCollins Union 250 members, including editors and production editors and designers, marketing and sales staff, and more have been on strike since November 10th. We are the only union at a book publisher.

When that strike started on the 10th, the New York Times subscribe the issue as the union saying it's members who've been working without a contract. Since April wanted better family leave benefits and higher pay to raise the minimum starting salary to $50,000 from $45,000. The union has also demanded, the company addressed the lack of diversity in its workforce.

The time says publishing has long been a low-paying industry with long hours for its entry and mid-level employees and it is based in New York, a very expensive city. It is also an overwhelmingly white industry and many in the industry feel the low pay is part of what makes diversifying the industry difficult. With that thought on HarperCollins, we come to the end of this call in for you on labor movements that you're involved in right now. Thank you for helping us report these stories.

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