In August, the United University Professors (UUP) union negotiated a new, highly-anticipated four-year contract with the New York State governor, a year after the 2016-2022 state contract expired and left SUNY Oswego faculty without adaptive annual benefits. 

UUP, according to the organization’s official website, “is the nation’s largest higher education union, representing the faculty and professional staff of the SUNY system… [and] encompasses the 29 comprehensive, technical, specialized and university centers of SUNY.”

On April 25, during the university’s spring semester, a demonstration of more than fifty UUP union members and supporters gathered at the center of the institution’s campus to rally for the contract’s creation.

With the time frame for ratification quickly coming to a close, an agreement between the two parties had to occur to prevent the freezing of contractual agreements for the second time. 

“What happens under the labor law of New York, called the Taylor Law, when your contract expires and you don’t have a new one, the terms of the old contract are frozen and held in place,”  Elizabeth Schmitt, professor of economics and vice president of academics to the Oswego UUP chapter, said. “So our health insurance… vacation, sick leave, all of that stays consistent. We accumulate it in the same way. We pay the same health insurance premium split, et cetera, and then our salaries are frozen, so we’re not getting raises, but we’re not getting pay cuts, either.”

Among the contract’s demands, the increased pay to hospital workers at SUNY-affiliated hospitals such as Upstate Medical and Stony Brook University Hospital was a do-or-die requirement.

“We wanted to secure significant raises for healthcare workers that went through hell,” Schmitt said. “We wanted to really recognize the contributions of these workers to the health of New York and the state, and the contract had to reflect that.” 

The union contract also fought for the coverage of the part-time, or adjunct, faculty of the university, who cannot bank on the same privileges as their full-time colleagues. 

“We wanted some significant gains for our part-time employees; they’re the most vulnerable,” Schmitt said. “[For] part-time employees, the minimum per course was around 3,000 dollars, and by the end of our contract, it’s going to be 5,500; we almost doubled the minimum. Campuses are going to have to adjust to it, but it’s a significant gain for our part-time workers…” 

Beyond the rigid specifics of the union, the contract also secured across-the-board base salary increases throughout its lifetime. According to the 2022-2026 State/UUP Tentative Agreement Contract Highlights document, a summarization of the union’s negotiations with New York, base salaries will increase by 2% effective 2022, then by 3% from 2023 to 2026, the year in which the contract ends. 

“I think some people are disappointed because that doesn’t really match inflation of the past year because one of the raises is retroactive since we had our contract expire,” Schmitt said. “We’ll get the 2022 raise retroactive back to July of 2022. Three percent is a lot less than eight percent… but that was probably an unrealistic gain.” 

Although the contract was successful in its critical requests for faculty statewide, the agreement also faced some losses. Of those, the most upsetting was the failure to expand online/remote work across SUNY campuses. 

“We were trying to get [the state] to codify when remote work might be allowed,” Schmitt said. “So right now, it’s just really at the pleasure of the state whether they allow remote work… They actually allow some telecommuting remote work under certain conditions, [where] supervisors have to sign off. It doesn’t really apply to faculty, it’s more for professional staff.” 

While the point of remote work was not satisfied in the current contract, the potential for its revival at the bargaining table still exists. “We didn’t give up the right to ever negotiate remote work, but we backed off on that demand,” Schmitt said. However, the subject is complex in that its passing would mean a remote work policy implemented across all SUNY institutions represented by UUP. 

“The problem is remote on different campuses will mean different things, so a statewide contract is really difficult,” Schmitt said. “So I think that’s why the governor’s office held firm and said, ‘We already have a system where different campuses can decide how to handle it…’ so they did not want a statewide policy.” 

The most prominent case study of this difficulty would be the State University at  Buffalo (UB), located approximately two hours west of SUNY Oswego, which hugs the American-Canadian border and facilitates international travel between the two countries. With a student population of 32,099 per the UB Office of Admissions website, the likelihood of an individual needing to cross countries is significantly higher than at other universities.

“I think Buffalo is one issue where a lot of people have spouses in Canada, and so they cross the bridge on certain days,” Schmitt said. “And sometimes that’s half an hour, and sometimes it’s four… In other words, I think Buffalo, in particular, was a campus that was really hoping for a remote work policy and was very disappointed that they didn’t get it.”

The UUP has successfully provided coverage for its statewide population and eased the tension between academics and government officials. Though the 2022-2026 contract has seen some of its demands pulled, the gains it has made for the on-campus faculty greatly surpass these limitations. 

“It’s about respect,” Schmitt said. “No one goes into education to get rich, but I’d like to be paid fairly, I’d like to be treated fairly, I’d like to be treated with respect, and I think that’s a low bar for any worker… In growing industry concentration, it is the power of collective bargaining that gets workers treated with respect. You really have to be willing to stand up collectively to make progress.”