Lockouts are increasingly prominent as a way employers pressure union workers into accepting terrible contracts. Just tell them not to come to work, and don’t pay them, until they give in. But this is a new one: a university locking out its faculty. That’s just what Long Island University did over Labor Day weekend (yes, really). LIU is looking to squeeze its faculty hard:
Long Island University is a private institution with two campuses; the main campus, located in Brooklyn, and a satellite campus, called LIU Post, located in Brookville, New York. Faculty in Brooklyn are paid less, which is one of the main points of contention in the contract negotiations. The other is the treatment of adjuncts; the university says its adjuncts are paid far more than other adjuncts around the city and wants to adjust downward first-year salaries as part of a “commitment to affordability,” LIU chief operating officer Gale Stevens Haynes says. (If the labor dispute is resolved, it is expected that the faculty will get their jobs back, but there is no time limit on a lockout, so some faculty may find other employment in the meantime.)
Arthur Kimmel has been an adjunct at LIU’s Brooklyn campus for more than 20 years. Under the terms of the proposed contract, he would have his income cut by 30 to 35 percent, he said. That’s because, in addition to the $1,800 or so per course he teaches, he has received pay for having office hours and money from an adjunct- benefits trust fund to help defray the cost of health insurance. Kimmel says the university’s proposal would eliminate the adjunct- benefits trust fund and payments for office hours, among other cuts.
LIU has brought in scab workers, but it’s not going so well, and hundreds of students walked out in protest on Thursday:
"We aren't planning to go back to class at all until our professors are back," said Sharda Mohammed, 18, a sophomore studying philosophy. "Today I walked into my English class and the guy gave us a syllabus and told us we could leave. He couldn't even pronounce the names of the books."