Facing Down Austerity, AAUP-TNS Stands in Solidarity With the New School Labor Coalition
AAUP-TNS Statement of Support for The New School Labor Coalition
September 11, 2020
The New School Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-TNS) stands in solidarity with The New School Labor Coalition (NSLC) in their demand to be recognized by the university as an indispensable workforce upon which our institution relies. The coalition represents: UAW Local 7902; UAW Local 7902, SHENS-UAW; Teamsters Local 1205; UAW Local 7902, SENS-UAW; and Local 802 AFM, together accounting for 3,700 workers, an overwhelming majority of The New School’s workforce. The NSLC has asked President McBride to recognize their formation and meet in two separate letters sent in July and August respectively. The administration has refused to acknowledge or meet with the coalition, and is ignoring their demands to be included in any and all planning processes about the future of The New School. Instead, University leadership has launched a campaign to disempower, disenfranchise, and disrupt the solidarity of labor groups across the institution.
These ongoing anti-labor policies and practices are proof that The New School merely markets itself as an institution committed to social, economic and racial justice. In practice, our leadership has embraced the corporate logics that depend on and perpetuate the inequality and violence that they claim to abhor. By refusing to recognize a self-organized coalition of labor groups who have come together, The New School is signaling its preference to divide and conquer the people on whom their exorbitant salaries rely. To state the obvious: by excluding a coalition of core staff and faculty from participation in the restructuring process, the administration has put executive salary and profits before its own community of workers.
The AAUP-TNS is committed to working alongside our comrades in The New School Labor Coalition toward their goals of: holding our leadership accountable for the labor policies they are enacting; building increased solidarity across all sectors and categories of workers across the institution; and transforming The New School into the workplace and the university we all need and deserve. The AAUP-TNS urges the administration of The New School to recognize and work with the NSLC and extend, as they have demanded, an invitation to participate in any and all planning processes about the future of the university.