Join Solidarity Caucus members by participating in Labor Notes’ series of workshops and conversations throughout the month of April about organizing a stronger union. The program includes organizing basics, labor and the Green New Deal, caucus building, how to refuse austerity measures, and a chance to hear more about the organizing at Amazon. Highlights include:

• Don’t Be Fooled: Your Job Won’t Love You Back, a conversation with Sarah Jaffe (author of Your Job Won’t Love You Back) and workers who’ve learned that lesson and are organizing (April 1, 7 p.m. EDT)
• Labor and the Green New Deal (Date and time TBD)
• Building a Caucus and Transforming Your Union (April 15, 7 p.m. EDT))
• Austerity: the Myth and How to Fight It (Date and time TBD)

You can read more and register here.

At the December 15, 2020 Emergency Union meeting, University President Richard Helldobler was given a platform to reiterate the logic behind his push for extensive faculty and staff layoffs at William Paterson. While WPU’s financial concerns are legitimate, significant restructuring will have a negative effect on our mission, similar to what is happening at other small, public institutions as discussed in this piece from the NY Times. In the meeting, we were pleased to hear that our local–as well as the Council of New Jersey State College Locals–plans to fight the layoffs, but it is still unclear how or when that fight will take place.

We understand that the specifics of strategic mobilization plans cannot be revealed publicly, but we urge the union to begin a public campaign NOW before it is too late. Union members are ready to fight!

As we wrote in an earlier post, the University Administration continues to state that the layoff decisions will be “data driven,” but the entire method of analyzing the data needs to be reviewed. Many of our questions remain unanswered, and we are anticipating receiving initial notices of possible layoffs within the month.

Unanswered Questions:

1. Why did President Helldobler agree to accept a raise from the Board of Trustees while he is in the midst of laying off significant numbers of faculty and staff?
2. Why are we accepting the Administration’s formulation of which data should be used and how it should be analyzed (years selected, measures, etc.)? Many faculty have expertise in data analysis, and the following issues have been raised by union members:
3. We frequently hear that salaries are the largest portion of the budget, but the available data does not break that information down into faculty and staff salaries as opposed to administrator salaries. Our union has asked for that breakdown in the past. When will it be shared with the broader university community?
   • Available public data on the WPU website indicates that Administrative positions have grown by 16% over the last 10 years. Why does President Helldobler continue to suggest that the Admin has not grown?
   • Some of the budget issues we face are temporary (e.g. lost dorm money from pandemic). Which budget savings measures address long term vs. short term deficits?
   • According to the operating budget charts on the WPU website, the second largest area of expenditure after Academic Affairs is Administration & Finance ($44.4M, 19%). What specific cost-saving measures are being implemented in that area?
   • It is unclear how NTTPs are being counted as the President stated they are not included in layoffs. We were told that NTTPs were included in the data as presented by the Provost. If they are not being considered for layoffs since they can be non-reappointed, then the data needs to be re-analyzed without including them.
4. President Helldobler has cited other schools in other states that are going through layoffs and “rightsizing.” What are activists and unions doing at other schools to push back against layoffs?
5. How can we reach the Board of Trustees to explain that these layoffs may appear to be a cost-saving venture, but in reality they will decimate the quality of education at WPU and will likely have a negative impact on our current high rating on the social mobility index? 
6. If enrollment is not as good as expected, how is the enrollment team being held accountable?
7. Given the positive trend in WP Online, isn’t it premature to layoff faculty and staff who are capable of/interested in doing more remote teaching? How will that be factored into the decision-making?
8. What are the specific measures that will be used to demonstrate mastery of the skills they plan to assess faculty based on? What are the specific technological and cultural skills?
9. How will we continue to serve our student body so that they are successful (a population hit hard by the pandemic) with far fewer FT faculty than we have now?
10. What do institutions that have successful retention rates have in common that we don’t? What is their competitive advantage?
11. The President presided over the layoffs of 180 employees at his previous institution. Were those people faculty, staff, or administrators?
12. Can we defer the capital investments in 1800 Valley Road to save student-facing faculty jobs?

We are a group of union members (Faculty, Professional Staff, Adjunct Faculty, and Librarians at William Paterson University in New Jersey) whose goal is to strengthen our local union by engaging members and increasing solidarity among the cohorts of our bargaining unit. Currently, most of our members come from the Full-Time, tenured Faculty, but many people in the other three cohorts have expressed support for the goals of the caucus. We seek to grow caucus membership by including more Professional Staff, Librarians, and Adjunct Faculty.

We believe a healthy union empowers ALL members to participate at every level, and we seek to build a strong infrastructure that can withstand changes in both Union and University leadership.

We are establishing this caucus to demonstrate publicly that there is significant interest in working towards these goals within our local union. We believe an educated and active membership will strengthen our local bargaining position and generate solidarity among faculty and staff at WPU.

Our current state contract has been ratified, and references to constitutional revisions have often been made in membership meetings. The impact of COVID-19–combined with renewed attention to the disastrous effects of systemic racism–have forced us to reconsider many past practices in a new light. We believe the current crisis provides a perfect opportunity to affirm and shore up our union’s democratic foundations.

The goals of the Solidarity Caucus are to:

1. Promote solidarity among the cohorts of our integrated local (Full Time Faculty, Adjunct Faculty, Professional Staff, Librarians, and NTTPs), by acting to ensure equity and shared sacrifice in local negotiations and seeking member input across the bargaining unit.
2. Examine our practices of inclusivity in order to ensure that diverse voices are sought out and welcomed in the decision-making process via general membership meetings, committee work, and membership surveys.
3. Revitalize our collective power on campus by using creative solutions and direct action to make change.
4. Restore the democratic bodies that are described in our Local Constitution (Local Council, Negotiations Committee, Standing Committees), make transparent the election and governing process of said democratic bodies, and ensure members have publicly available official bylaws detailing their rights.
5. Revise our Local Constitution and official bylaws to ensure transparency in the democratic process. In the event that bylaws are not available, this will include the drafting of bylaws to make transparent the election and governing process of democratic bodies.