Title: PSC Treasurer/EC member
Campus: Brooklyn Educational Opportunity Center Department: Academic Affairs

I am writing to express my interest as a candidate for the governing board. As an activist, I am committed to bringing new and different perspectives to the New Caucus from my tenure and experience at CUNY and the PSC. I strongly believe that true organizational strength comes from embracing diverse experiences, backgrounds, and viewpoints. As such, I am committed to amplifying the voices of underrepresented communities and BIPOC members within our bargaining unit while expanding our organizational landscape.

To address key strategic challenges, I aim to use my analytical and technical skills, particularly in the area of membership growth and organizational engagement. The strength of our union comes from its diverse membership and leadership. An important goal of mine is to increase the number of BIPOC members in union activism, whether it’s through committee work, chapter EC, or informal groups.

Key Areas of Focus:

1. Membership Growth
   – Attracting and retaining members from various titles and diverse backgrounds
   – Creating pathways for meaningful participation among smaller constituent groups o Ensuring our membership effectively reflects the rich diversity of our community
   
2. Organizational Engagement
   – Establishing spaces to develop emerging leaders
   – Designing social and networking opportunities that foster genuine connection and a sense of belonging
   – Utilizing analytical approaches to understand and meet member needs

In all, I will continue to actively listen, learn, and lead with empathy and strategic insight to continue the mission and vision of the caucus for its continued growth and success through collaborative leadership and inclusive decision-making.

James Davis, Brooklyn College, Professor of English

I’ve served on the New Caucus governing board since 2018, and I’m the board’s only current PSC principal officer, so I believe I have a lot to offer if elected to continue serving. As an electoral caucus in a complex union, we cultivate new leaders for office and support those we help get elected to chapter and university-wide positions. As a caucus explicitly committed to social justice, anti-racism, and an end to austerity politics at CUNY, we also engage broadly in the work of education and agitation on the issues that matter to New Caucus members. I’m excited about the opportunity to improve our work on both these fronts – as an electoral caucus and a social justice formation within the PSC – particularly once the current contract campaign ends. Our governing board works with the coordinating committee to chart an annual agenda for the caucus. For the New Caucus to build on our extraordinary history, we need to engage our colleagues in all job titles and identify new leaders, while we also nurture the bonds among the longtime New Caucus activists that multiple generations of struggle and camaraderie have forged. Despite the uncertainty and political perils of this moment, I see a real chance for the New Caucus to invigorate and unify the PSC and to mobilize progressive forces in the New York City labor movement. I would be honored to serve on the 2024-2027 governing board and continue collaborating with fellow members on this important work.

Lynne Turner serves as PSC Vice-President for Part-Time Personnel. Lynne teaches Sociology at LaGuardia Community College and Labor Studies at the School of Labor and Urban Studies. She has worked in three part-time titles at CUNY: as a Teaching Adjunct, Non-Teaching Adjunct, and contingently funded Graduate Worker. On the PSC Executive Council, she serves on the Bargaining Team, works collaboratively to build the strength of the Committee for Adjuncts and Part-Timers, and contributes to strategy development. Lynne was a pandemic Graduate Center Chapter Chair and has taken on many PSC activist roles. While a New Caucus Coordinator, Lynne coordinated the April 2020 Panel Roundtable on Bargaining for a Common Good in Higher Ed with panelists from three public university systems organized in coordination national Bargaining for a Common Good leadership. Prior to graduate studies, Lynne was a long-term organizing director, campaigner, and educator in labor and labor-community organizations, as well as a global justice and anti-war activist. Lynne is committed to building the power of our union to win a just contract for #APeoplesCUNY and beyond, for full CUNY funding, vibrant leadership and participation within our union, and to ending the two-tiered conditions of work for Adjuncts and Part-Timers. As a New Caucus governing board member, Lynne will bring her skills, experience, and determination to bear towards forging the union solidarity and capacity to bring these goals to fruition. She would be honored to receive your support for her candidacy!

I am a member of the Brooklyn College Chapter of the PSC and a full professor in the Political Science Department of Brooklyn College, where I am just finishing a term as Chapter Chair. I want to join the Governing Board of the New Caucus in order to assist the PSC in being the kind of progressive union we have always hoped it would be. I actively worked in the campaign to bring the New Caucus to the leadership of the union under Barbara Bowen 25 years ago and continue to support strengthening our union. I have been active in the union in various ways, as a delegate for years, and as a member of various committees: Legislative, International and Academic Freedom. I bring my years of experience as a union organizer and activist and my knowledge of the history of trade unions here and abroad expressed in my many works published around the world and as editor of the high academic impact Journal of Labor and Society.

I would try to serve the most oppressed at CUNY, including our super-exploited part time faculty, our retirees, HEOs, CLTs, and our multi-national, working-class students with whom we would collaborate. As a member of the Governing Board I would be committed to maintaining the strength of the PSC by democratic participation of our members, by promoting unity and consensus, and by taking part in militant action challenging the CUNY administration and the legislative bodies that determine our budget. While I would expect the PSC to struggle to meet the immediate needs of our members with regard to their income and working conditions, I would also seek to uphold the identification of the PSC with social unionism in advocating , for example, funding to meet social needs as in health and education rather than a budget dominated by military spending.

My name is Marcella Bencivenni and I am a Professor of History in the Behavioral and Social Sciences Department at Hostos Community College, where I have been teaching full time since 2004. I have been an active union member since my very first year of employment at CUNY and I have served the PSC over the years in many different capacities — as a delegate, a member of the Hostos chapter EC, and, most recently, as co-chair of my chapter.

My interest in union work stems from a strong personal belief in the collective power of working-class organizing, as well as from my scholarly studies in labor history and the history of the Left.

I was born and raised in Italy, a nation with a strong tradition of unionism and working-class movements, where “the right to work” is the first principle recognized by the republic’s constitution. I have seen first-hand how my parents’ generation was able to win important pension benefits and labor rights thanks to the hard work of trade unions and this inspired me to demand the same for myself and my fellow faculty and staff at CUNY.

In the PSC I have found a community of incredibly talented, principled, and dedicated people, committed to not only further the rights and interests of their members, but to also fight for a better and more just world. It’s been an honor to be a part of it, and I look forward to continuing contributing to its mission in any way I can.

Hi. I am asking for your vote in the New Caucus Governing Board election. I have served on the New Caucus Governing Board and as a New Caucus coordinator in the past and I believe my experience and knowledge of the history of the caucus would help the Governing Board in the important work it has to do. I have been active in the union. At the chapter level, I have served as vice chair and I am now a delegate. Also, I am the Kingsborough Campus Action Team (CAT) coordinator and with other KCC members have worked hard to turn out chapter members to PSC rallies and to make the chapter a more active chapter. That hasn’t always been easy but I am happy to say that through my work and work of others, several new folks at KCC have stepped up and gotten active in the chapter and in the union’s Legislative Committee. When the New Caucus ran a slate at Kingsborough in 2019, I ran on the slate and campaigned hard for it. I was also on the PSC Executive Council for two terms and on the PSC bargaining committee (where I was on the PSC-CUNY subcommittee which negotiated the teaching reduction agreement). Last while I have my own strong views, but I work well with others which I think is an essential quality for a Governing Board member.

Nivedita Majumdar, Professor, Dept of English, John Jay College

Thank you for considering my candidacy for a position on the Governing Board of the New Caucus. I have been a proud member of the New Caucus since 2008, and have served in various leadership roles in PSC in the past fifteen years.

Currently, I’m co-chair of the John Jay PSC chapter along with Zabby Hovey. We are engaged in building the contract fight at our campus, strengthening our department rep structure, ensuring contract enforcement, and fighting to defend members every day against the steady and myriad administrative onslaught on work conditions. From 2015 to 2021, I had the privilege of serving for two consecutive terms as PSC Secretary. It was an incredibly challenging period in union history with the loss of agency fee, and the negotiation of two very ambitious contracts, all in a climate of fiscal austerity and racist attacks under a proto-fascist president and a neoliberal governor. With all the odds stacked against us, it’s deeply meaningful for me to be in a union where we have not only resisted attempts to continually decimate our university, but made powerful gains.

The New Caucus stands as a testament to the depth of progressive commitment of PSC leadership over the last 25 or so years. It has never simply been about wielding power, but to remain accountable to the political values that animate our fight. I’d consider it an honor, given the opportunity, to serve on the Board of New Caucus.

I am currently the HEO Cross-Campus Co-chair and HEO delegate for John Jay College. As a New Caucus member, I will always fight to sustain our current rights and secure new rights for all PSC members.

In the past 30 years at John Jay, I have been in the following positions, Assistant to the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, Executive Assistant and then Chief of Staff to the President, Academic Advising Director and Senior Co-Curricular Administrator and now Department Deputy for Administrative Affairs in the Department of Africana Studies.

Over the past 20 years, I served in numerous roles with our union such as the PSC Welfare Representative @ John Jay, HEO delegate, Co-chair of the Anti-Racism Committee, HEO Grievance Counselor, Health and Safety Committee, HEO Advisor, Legislative Committee, Environmental Justice Working Group, as a liaison to the John Jay Faculty Executive Committee, and now on the Executive Council of the PSC.

As one of the University-wide Officers on the Executive Council, I strive to advocate for all members. There are many challenges our members face and the first one for me is that we are asked to do more work without compensation or even acknowledgement from CUNY. Our members are mandated to learn new technology and do more trainings without being allotted the time to learn new skills to do our jobs effectively and efficiently or even be trained to be in compliance with all the numerous new policies, laws, and procedures we are supposed to adhere to.

After the pandemic, it has become more apparent that flexible schedules are a necessity in sustaining our members as employees. Our lives have drastically changed in the past few years and more members have become autoimmune compromised and are dealing with delicate family priorities such as child and elder care. CUNY wages are not keeping up with the cost of living in New York which also makes it impossible for us to financially take care of our families on our current living wages. PSC should demand flexible working schedules and equitable remote work for all members, but especially HEOs and CLTs.

I’m applying to continue on the Governing Board because I believe that the New Caucus’s fundamental analysis is correct in recognizing that CUNY is, in the powerful words of Cecilia McCall, “the locus of a class struggle, contested territory, an example of what a free, quality, public higher education could be”. As a member of the New Caucus for eight years, a coordinator for four years, and a board member I am firmly committed to this project. If elected I will support the further expansion of committees within the New Caucus, particularly those around current campaigns like anti-racism, anti-bullying, and Bargaining for the Common Good, strengthen political education projects and union orientations, help to build chapter activism in chapters without New Caucus leadership (specifically KCC), continue to plan programs like ones on the Rutgers 2023 Strike and Bargaining for the Common Good. I also hope to create a space in the caucus for mutually respectful conversations about the Gaza Conflict and our ongoing opposition to US military adventurism.

I’m currently Associate Professor of Communication studies at Baruch, Chair of the Baruch PSC-CUNY Chapter, Co-chair of the 1-1 Conversations Committee, and a Senior College Officer in the PSC Executive Council. I am also a New Caucus Governing Board Member and Coordinator. I participated in the PSC’s “Next Generation Leadership” Program in 2018-2019; I was also named one of City and State’s Labor 40 under 40 in 2021.

I’m putting forth my candidacy to serve as a member of the New Caucus Governing Board. Since joining CUNY and becoming a PSC member, being active in the union has been incredibly important to me. I firmly believe in the power of organized labor to help build stronger, more just communities. This led me to join the New Caucus, in an effort to support constructive action, effect change, and take part in the democratic process. I am currently a New Caucus coordinator, serving since 2022. I believe member engagement, political education, and well-organized programming will keep the caucus vital. As daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, this work aligns with my interest in increasing diversity and helping bring in others, like me, to take part in more union work. If elected, I plan to continue this work through the end of my term.

I am HEO, working as research center staff at the Graduate Center, am member of the Legislative Committee, One-on-One Conversations committee, and part of the first cohort of NYSUT’s BIPOC Pathways to Leadership program. I have also done similar work with the UALE Northeast Summer School for Union Women and Interference Archive.