CUNY

DIGITALHISTORYARCHIVE

CUNY Digital History Archive
Professional Staff Congress

Interview with Cecelia McCall
Interviewers: Irwin Yellowitz

March 23, 2016

New York, NY

Transcription: Professional Staff Congress Archives Committee

Irwin Yellowitz: Okay. Today is March 23, 2016. I'm Irwin Yellowitz, and I'm about

Cecelia McCall:

to interview Cecelia McCall for the PSC Oral History Interviews.

Why don't we start with the question that we ask everyone: What
is your background, your family background, your education
background, etc., so that we know something more about you
before we get into the actual questions.

Okay. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Neither, my mother
nor my father was high school educated, although they were very
intelligent people. My mother was very creative; my father was
one of the smartest people I've ever known. She was always a part-
time worker, and he was trained as an electrician. However,
because he was African American, he was never able to get a union
card, so he did off the books work a lot of the time.

I went to the public schools in Boston, Massachusetts. I have
always felt that I received a very good education from those public
schools. It was a very strict system. I don't think I ever had a
teacher who wasn't an Irish-American spinster, and they were
dedicated to the profession, so I was very well educated in the
public schools. However, I do recall when I was in high school, I
was never given any information about going to college - how to


Irwin:

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apply for college, that I should go to college - even though I was the
top student in my class. So, I just sort of stumbled upon it. My
mother said to me once, "Aren't you going to go to college?" And I
said, "Hmm, I guess I am, but no one has mentioned it to me."

So we went to see the counselor, and because | had a very good
academic record, all As, I was accepted into the state college
without an exam.

Do you have siblings?

I have a brother who is younger and a sister who is two years
older.

Were you the first to go to college in your family?

I was the first to go to college. My sister went to nurse training
school to become a registered nurse. My brother started Boston
College, but didn't finish.

How'd you get from Boston to New York City?

I came to New York because my then husband had been offered a
job in New York City that he felt he had to take. I had started a
master's degree at Boston College. When I came to New York, I
finished it at NYU. A few years later, I went into a Ph.D. program at
NYU and finished that, here in New York City.

I did start teaching when I was still at Massachusetts. I taught in
the Newton public schools, and that was a wonderful experience.
When I came here, I taught for one year in the New York City
public schools, and then when I finished my master's, I went to
NYU and worked in their developmental skills lab. It was from
NYU that I came to City University, because then open enrollment
had begun, and they were looking for people with my background
to do the developmental skills work. So that was fortuitous that
the SEEK program started at the same time I was ready to make a
contribution to it. I actually read about that[it] in the newspaper
and decided that's where I wanted to be. And I applied at Baruch
College and got my job there. I stayed at Baruch College until I -
actually the last six years in my career, I was at the union full time.

How did you become involved with the PSC [Professional Staff
Congress]?


Cecelia:

Irwin:

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I actually became involved with the PSC through a caucus that I
was working with very closely, the New Caucus. Prior to working
with the New Caucus, I was with another CUNY faculty and staff
organization called the Concerned Faculty and Staff of CUNY. At
that time, I was more involved in the Faculty Senate. I was actually
vice-chair of the Faculty Senate and was more involved in
governance activities, as opposed to union activity, but the caucus
drew me more toward the union, and when we started organizing,
I ran for chapter chair at Baruch College.

Now we're in the 1990s, and the New Caucus challenged the City
University Union Caucus [CUUC], which had been the dominant
one since the founding of the union in 1972. Why did you believe
new leadership was needed at that time?

Well, I was very, very much a faculty activist throughout the
university. As I said, I was very much involved in faculty
governance through the Faculty Senate. I was on any number of
committees throughout the university. I knew a lot of people on all
the campuses. I saw what was going on on the campuses. Then as I
got drawn closer to the union, I realized that probably we needed
to defend Open Admissions, which was then under attack.

Yes, it was.

And I had come to the university to work in the Open Admissions
program, and for that [the] group of students who were admitted
because of Open Admissions. So, I very much wanted to work in
the defense of Open Admissions and in defense of the university,
which was also under attack at that time. The city had a fiscal crisis
and constantly - that was in the '70s. But after that fiscal crisis, our
finances were ceded to the state. The state never really lived up to
its commitment of fully funding the university and kept
continually withdrawing funds and gradually, when the university
had to make decisions about where to put its money, it decided
that it was going to put its money in the academic side rather than
the developmental and began withdrawing funds from those
programs.

So you didn't believe that the union leadership was doing enough
to offset these negative factors?

I was not in the Delegate Assembly, but I knew a number of people
who were in the Delegate Assembly, and I knew the union
leadership was challenged in [by] the Delegate Assembly to do
more in defense of the university, and I was influenced by a


Irwin:

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Cecelia:

number of those people who were my close allies in the various
organizations that I was a member of.

Now you're at Baruch, and you say you ran for chapter chair. Did
the New Caucus have an established group at Baruch, and did you
run for chapter chair once, or was it a cumulative process?

No, I ran for chapter chair once. We did not have a lot of New
Caucus people at Baruch, but there were a few who did run with
me. Marilyn Neimark, when I ran for chapter chair, she was vice-
chair of the chapter. I wasn't challenged. We had had one chapter
chair up, at the time that [when] I ran for chapter chair, and that
was Fran Barasch, who was a very strong chapter leader. I have to
say that. She also was the grievance counselor for our chapter at
Baruch, and she saved my job, and she saved the job of many
people then. But she decided not to run, so I was not challenging
Fran Barasch. She just stepped down and the office was open, and I
don't think there was anyone from the CUUC caucus challenging
us, SO we actually won an uncontested election.

Right. Now this follows the pattern of that time, because the New
Caucus won at almost all of the larger senior colleges, including,
say, Baruch, but also City, Brooklyn, Queens. I'm not sure about
Hunter at that time. It did much more poorly at the community
colleges, and I wonder if you have any thoughts about why there
was this divide in the way the faculty responded to this challenge
of the New Caucus?

Yeah. Well, that question actually surprised me when I took a look
at these questions, and I asked about that, because I do remember
that the leadership of some of the community colleges was actually
New Caucus people. It was Bill Friedheim and Jim Perlstein at
Borough of Manhattan Community College. John Hyland was at
LaGuardia. I don't think we ever had anybody at Kingsborough.
Queensborough, | don't think, and I'm not sure of the Bronx or
Hostos. I do remember being among a group of people who were
talking with people at Bronx about starting a New Caucus chapter,
so I think we had some leadership there, but it started late. They
didn't have the time that both the people at BMCC and LaGuardia
had to organize.

So we did lose one election. We won the second time we ran. So I
looked at the figures for the community colleges, and we did win
the vice-president for community colleges. Anne Friedman was
elected vice-president. She got 552 votes. Her opponent was
Katherine Stabile.


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From Queensborough.
Queensborough. She got 457.
And what year was that?

This is 2000. Then we got two of the other officers for the
community colleges. Sam Farrell was an officer at large and Ingrid
Hughes. The other one was Norah Chase, who eventually stepped
down. She didn't hang in there.

So we didn't do that badly at the community colleges. Where we
lost was with the cross-campus chapter. That was a strong chapter
led by Peter Hoberman, I believe.

Peter Hoberman, yes, although by 2000, I think Peter Hoberman
had retired - by 2000. These figures are for 2000, and there had
been a change. The New Caucus grew stronger as you came closer
to 2000. We'll get to the election of 2000, so we can talk about that.

Yeah. Well, we weren't strong, anyway, at the cross-campus level, I
think because of their leadership and because there was a lot of
tension then between higher education officers, CLTs, and the
faculty. I think there was some resentment that the union was
largely faculty-oriented and wasn't really paying attention to the
needs and demands of the HEOs [Higher Education Officer] and
the CLTs [College Lab Technicians].

I think this a longstanding -

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

- belief. Okay. We had two general elections as part of this conflict.
We had 1997, when the New Caucus did not win the general
election. Irwin Polishook was still running at that time, and he won
about two thirds of the vote, and Steve London won one third. But
in 2000, he had retired.

That's right.

So it was an open seat, and Barbara Bowen was now the candidate,
and she won by a significant but not overwhelming margin.

Yes.


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So how do you explain the 1997 result and then the 2000 result?

Well, I think we learned from 1997 how to better organize, and we
did continue organizing until 2000, and we grew stronger on the
campuses. I think we won - I'm not sure, but we might have won
more chapter elections at the campus level.

I think you did, yes, between '97 and 2000.

Right. We really went at the 2000 election as though it was a real
election campaign. We fundraised. We got a lot of people to
volunteer, to do house parties, so we were able to raise money to
do a lot of literature, to pay for our literature. We were able to pay
for a real organizer, who showed us what we needed to do, and
that was one-on-one contact with people, and that's what we went
to the campuses [for]- each one of us had a list of people to talk to
at our campuses, and we went and we did that.

I also think that part of the reason we won is that Irwin wasn't
running, Irwin Polishook wasn't running, and he didn't endorse a
successor. So he didn't really back, I think it was Richard Boris.

Yes.

So we didn't have that to contend with, and I think the strength of
our organizing, and maybe our message, which was, you know,
every once in a while, you do need change. And that was the
moment where people felt there was some change needed, and
they gave us an opportunity.

And the fact that he didn't run - there's a tendency among unions
that's been well documented that they don't change their
leadership very much. Especially presidents: they stay in office for
very long periods of time.

Yes. Yes.

So I think that the situation in PSC was not unusual at all. But once
he retired and it's an open seat, then it's an entirely different story.

That's right.
Okay. In that 2000 election, you stood as the secretary -

Yes.


Irwin:

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Irwin:

Cecelia:

- and we can now move to your involvement as an officer. When
did you leave office? You came in in 2000.

2007. I retired in 2007.

2007. All right. So we're talking about the first seven years of New
Caucus leadership. What were the major issues that the union
faced in the period that you were the secretary?

Well, first of all, as new leadership, we came into pretty mucha
blank slate, an office where there were very few records, so we
didn't have past experience to fall back on. Even when we went
into bargaining, all we had was a boxful of handwritten notes on
yellow paper. So we had to teach ourselves how to run a union,
and that's what we set about doing.

We worked very closely as a team of four, and with our executive
committee, Executive Council, we worked through. We followed
the constitution very strictly, so that we wouldn't get into any
trouble. I think that was the main hurdle we had: teaching
ourselves how to be union officers and to represent our
constituency.

Then we had to go into bargaining, and of course, that was
something new for most of us also. We had to sit across the table
from management and stare them down and win what we thought
was a pretty good contract, because | think in our contract, we
actually used the money differently. We actually raised the people
at the bottom in a higher percentage than people at the top. We
also won something for adjuncts that they had not had before,
which was that office hour. And that's what we actually - the
bargaining went longer than we thought it would, because that
was the one thing that management wouldn't yield on until the
very end. So that Kept us out for a long time.

And then, again, the defense of the university - That was the era of
Giuliani, and he really was not a friend of the university. He
demeaned the university and its students whenever he could.
There was very negative publicity. And again, we were facing a
state that didn't want to fund us. So we had to develop a really
strong lobbying and legislative program, which was one of my
responsibilities, and we did develop a good team for that. We
really wrote all of our own literature. We never asked for less than
what the university was asking for. We always asked for more, and
we had the data and the figures to show why we needed the
money that we were after for the university.


Irwin:

Cecelia:

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Now, the staff was pretty much the same. Was the staff helpful in
this transition from CUUC to New Caucus?

Well, as I said, we didn't have a paper trail to look at. We didn't
have a history to look at. We didn't have files to look at.

And you had a new Executive Director.

We had a fairly new Executive Director. He had worked for Irwin, I
believe.

Frank -
Frank Annunziato. Yes.

Yes, but he was replaced by Deborah Bell at some point early in
your -

Not for a while. Frank was with us at least for a year.

Oh, I didn't recall that.

But he was different from the New Caucus people.

Right.

And some of the staff were strong supporters of him, as opposed
to strong supporters of us, and a few did actually resign, have to
leave. Not many. I can think of three people, actually: the editor of
the Clarion, the woman who was the secretary for -

That was Carol Sims, the editor?

Carole Sims was the editor of the Clarion. The woman who had
been Irwin's secretary and Frank Annunziato's secretary - She
worked in that center little -

Oh, Robin Forman.

Robin. And then the office manager also resigned, and I can't
remember her name, either.

Yeah.


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So there was some hostility, but by and large, people like Debra
Bergan who was there before us, she's still here.

Still here. And Nick Russo stayed on.
Nick Russo, he was terrific. I always enjoyed working with Nick.
Clarissa stayed on.

Clarissa stayed, and she retired just a few years ago. She was very
helpful. She knew her job, certainly. And I think gradually other
people left, but that wasn't because they felt they had to leave. I
think it was just attrition and retirement. We got a wonderful
executive - oh, before we got Debbie Bell, we had an interim
Executive Director, Leslie Kagan, who was an activist that we had
known through community work and work throughout the
university. So she helped us over a period of time, and then we
finally found Debbie Bell, who you know is - I mean, she's an
absolute workhorse. Yeah.

Right. And had a lot of experience in New York City unionism.
Yes, a lot of prior union experience.

Yes.

I think she came through DC 37.

Yes. Yes, she did. And what about the issues that you faced? Other
than getting acclimated in running the union, what were, do you
recall, the major issues that the union had to face, beyond the
contract? Having Giuliani as mayor was an issue in itself, but...

Well, we also had to face our constituency. As I think I mentioned
earlier, there were great divisions among the various members
that we represented. The HEOs felt we weren't representing them
strongly enough, that we were terribly, you know, too oriented
toward faculty. The adjuncts, of course, felt that they were not at
all represented and what the union offered them was very limited.
So we needed to build support among those constituencies, make
them feel a little more comfortable.

I don't think we have as much angst among the HEOs anymore, but
there has always been tension between the full-time faculty and
the part-timers. Though they're the majority, you know, we still
feel we have to represent them as a part-time working force. They

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are a part-time working force, and we want to maintain that
difference between them and the full-timers while trying to give
them parity and as much representation as possible and as much
security as possible. But it's still a part-time working force, and we
see them as such.

Did you find in the negotiations - as I had done negotiations when I
was in the leadership - did you find that the university was more
resistant to making changes in the adjunct area than in any other
area?

Hands-down.

Because it is cheap labor to them, and they did not want to change
that in any significant way.

Right. Hands-down. Absolutely. The management was very
disparaging toward part-timers - not only the adjuncts, but also
HEOs, the full-time HEO staff. They were adamant about not
yielding on many of the issues that were important to them as
well. So in some ways, it wasn't easier representing the full-time
faculty, but I think management understood the needs of the full-
time faculty better than they were willing to have empathy for the
needs of the adjuncts.

I think one of the first negotiations that we had, we put on the
table a healthcare system for part-timers, and they thought that
was laughable. So from 2000 to, I guess, 2014 or '15, that was an
issue that we had been negotiating. And it took us that many years
to win healthcare for part-timers because the university was
adamant in not allowing that to happen.

Yeah. Well, they did have healthcare in the welfare fund.

Through the welfare fund, but that was a drain. That was a drain
on the welfare fund.

Yes, and it was limited.
Yes.

A limited program. Now they get their healthcare through the New
York City health plan.

That's right. Yeah.

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On the legislative side, you were a major force in that for the years
- and even after you left as secretary, you continued to head the
Legislative Committee. You say it was a blank sheet of paper when
you came in, with contract negotiations. Was it also a blank sheet
in Albany, or did you have experience in Albany beforehand, and
how did you just handle that whole legislative area?

I was flying by the seat of my pants, basically. No, I did not have
any - well, I knew a lot of people. I did know people, but I had
never worked as a lobbyist. But through community work and
social activity, whatever, I did know some people in Albany, and I
think that was strength.

There was money that we had to spend. The money that was
rebated by NYSUT-COPE [New York State United Teachers -
Committee on Political Education] funds had never been spent, so
we had a pool of money that we could start with. So, I organized a
conference to bring in our members from all over the university,
from every campus. We developed a legislative book, a huge
binder of materials with all the information about the City Council
and the state representatives in that. That was the beginning of
how I tried to organize a group that would fight for the union and
defend the university.

So that was really how it started, and then of course from that
conference, we were able to develop a strong committee that we
met with monthly. We tried to develop - we weren't as successful
as developing legislative committees on the campuses. That was
one of our goals, but that really never came to fruition. The best
we could do was to try to get a representative from each campus
to our central legislative committee.

I think your legislative efforts were stronger than any that I
remember from my days in the leadership.

Yeah. As I said, we used the money that was rebated to us for our
lobbying efforts. That year, I noticed that we did have that fund, so
that's what I used to develop the beginnings of the program.

In Albany, did you find that there was generally support for CUNY,
or was it a struggle?

You know, that's a difficult question to answer, because when you
meet individually with legislators, of course, they're welcoming
and they listen politely and they offer comments. I think it
probably was easier on the Assembly side of the legislature than

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the Senate, because the Senate had been typically Republican. I
think one of problems we had was - I'm not sure if this is a
problem, but then, when we began, NYSUT believed in a divided
legislature. They believed that the Assembly should be Democratic
and the Senate should be Republican, and they tried to work both
sides of the aisle. That never really worked out too well, I don't
think.

So we did work to try to persuade NYSUT to change some of its
role and the way that it approached elections, and I think that
finally has happened, also -

Yes.

- because we have a much more, I would say, aggressive and
militant leadership on the legislative side in NYSUT. And I think a
lot of that was through the influence - not so much me, but Steve
London and other people.

Right. Okay. In terms of the leadership, what was your role in the
leadership? That is, was the leadership a leadership in which the
president did most of the decision-making? Was in a cooperative
leadership? How did the leadership operate?

Well, I always tell this story. The first day we all came into office -
literally, walked into the office - I was coming in early in the
morning to prepare materials for our first Delegate Assembly.
When I went to the copying machine, Barbara Bowen was there
already, doing my job. So I had to tell her, "Barbara, this is my job.
According to the constitution, I'm responsible for this, that, and the
other thing." So I knew what my job was, and I really attended to
that, as the secretary of the union. Beyond that, I really was
responsible for doing the recording of all of the deliberations
during negotiations, which really was tough, and that really wore
me down. But we were a collective. We did work as a group of four
in decision-making. And that's the most important thing, I believe,
for the officers to realize, that though you may have that role of
treasurer, of looking after the funds, and you may have a certain
responsibility as secretary, the real role is to make decisions that
affect our membership. And so we did. We worked as a collective.
We had a lot of arguments. I have to say that. We did not always
agree. There was a lot of yelling across the table. But we really
worked through that.

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Do you think the leadership, the four officers, were able to lead the
Executive Council and the Delegate Assembly, or was it a more
chaotic situation once you went out?

Well, of course it was much more chaotic in the Delegate
Assembly, because even though we had won the leadership, we did
not have a lot of delegates who were New Caucus. So the first
several meetings were really chaotic because, I think, there was
still a great deal of resentment on the part of some CUUC [City
University Union Caucus] people toward us, and they really
wanted to gum up the works. They didn't want us to - I guess they
didn't want us to be successful, basically. But gradually, through
successive campus elections, we got the majority of the delegate
assembly, and that made it easier.

The Executive Council was not so difficult because we had a
majority on the executive council from that 2000 election.

Okay. Is there anything else you want to say about the PSC before
we leave it and go to some of your other activities that were going
on at the same time?

Not really. I think the leadership works very hard for not just the
membership but for the students and the university at large. They
feel responsible for getting as much funding for the university as
possible. They struggle around that issue each and every year,
through the legislative work, working closely with NYSUT and
bringing people up to Albany to lobby.

And then, of course, they're persistent and stubborn, and even
though it might be easier to give in, they hold out for their
principles. They've certainly held out on this last contract, because
they don't want to settle for anything less than what our members
deserve. A six percent increase, which is below the level of
inflation, certainly isn't something that they're going to accept. So
this is a very trying time for the leadership, but I have a great deal
of admiration for them.

Okay. You mentioned NYSUT [New York State United Teachers]
several times in connection with legislative work. Was NYSUT a
major asset in legislative work, or did the PSC primarily work on
its own?

Oh, no. We never worked on our own. We always tried to work
through NYSUT, although there were many differences, ideological
differences, between NYSUT and the New Caucus leadership. But

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Irwin:

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Cecelia:

NYSUT was very helpful from the very beginning, because, as I
said, we were trying to figure out how to run a union, and they had
a conference for us, a small conference for us, at a little hotel in
Tarrytown. They had sessions for us, workshops, sort of taught us
the ropes.

Did their lobbyists follow your lead? As you were the head of the
Legislative Committee -

Yeah. Yes, they did.

- and they have full-time lobbyists in Albany, did they follow your
lead in lobbying?

Yes, they did. Yes, they did. Yes, they did. They certainly did. There
was never any antagonism there, even though we did hire our own
lobbyist for a while. We felt for a long time that the predominant
constituency for NYSUT was K through 12, and that's really where
they put most of their energy and lobbying, and we were sort of
second-class citizens. And it took us a while to get NYSUT to shift
and pay more attention to the needs of higher education, but
gradually, that did happen, and I think we're very well represented
now.

One other thought that occurs to me is that we have a sister union
in SUNY, and they also lobby in Albany and work on legislature.
What was your relationship to them and were you able to work
cooperatively with them?

We did work cooperatively - We had to build a relationship with
the UUP [United University Professions], because until the New
Caucus became the new leadership - PSC, the UUP was
predominantly the major voice in higher education at the state
level, and the AFT [American Federation of Teachers]. And when
the PSC started to become more aggressive in that arena, UUP had
to take notice and maybe change its strategy.

I remember once overhearing one of the leaders of UUP say, "Well
you know, before this election there was no PSC, but now there is a
PSC." So I think the fact that we made our presence known - and
the other thing we did at the RA [Representative Assembly], we
were a factor at the RA -

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Cecelia:

The [New York State United Teachers] United Representative
Assembly -

Yes, because we went to the RA with many resolutions,
representing various needs of different committees of whatever
for the PSC, and that was one of the first times that we were
recognized as a force, because prior to that - and I had
remembered looking through some of the RA material before we
went to our first one, and there were no resolutions from the PSC.
So we totally changed that. We made that part of our strategy.

Okay. Do you think that one of the problems with working with
UUP is that they have term limits and their president changes
every six years and often many of their other officers, whereas PSC
does not have term limits and therefore has a much more stable
leadership?

I'm not sure it's term limits. I think their structure there - You
know, they're so huge - I think they're so huge, and they have to
operate differently from us. We're here in the city, we're a smaller
union; we see each other every single month in the Delegate
Assembly. They don't have that. So they're so widely dispersed, I
think it's much more difficult for them to really be able to have the
kind of presentation that we have - the kind of presence that we
have.

Okay. Let's turn to the AAUP [American Association of University
Professors], which is another affiliate of PSC going back to 1981.
You were very active in the Collective Bargaining Congress of
AAUP. Would you tell us about your role there and what you think
the Collective Bargaining Congress could accomplish?

Well it was very difficult when I was on the Collective Bargaining
Congress [CBC], because there was a great deal of friction between
AFT [American Federation of Teachers] and AAUP at the national
level. And the Collective Bargaining Congress of AAUP was very
confused as far as I was concerned. One moment they say we are a
union and the next one we're not a union.

They're supposed to be a union, a collective bargaining congress -
They didn't know that. It took them a long time to realize that. So
there was that friction. And I was the only African American on the

Collective Bargaining Congress, and some of those guys - and it
was mainly men - some of those guys were really right-wingers,

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Cecelia:

Irwin:

Cecelia:

Irwin:

Cecelia:

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Cecelia:

whether they thought so or not, even though they were collective
bargaining and they negotiated contracts. Some of the things they
said were really beyond the pale.

So I thought it was very difficult, but I always - I spoke up. I
defended my positions. Gradually, the situation between AFT and
AAUP grew better, because they started working more
cooperatively instead of opposite one another. They started
organizing collectively, you know, together on various campuses.

Joint ventures they called them.

Joint ventures. And their relationship became much better. So we
always felt that the PSC should be a presence on the Collective
Bargaining Congress. I think I didn't just represent this union, I
think I represented, you know, generally the constituency of AAUP.

And did attitudes change among the men who you first met as time
went on? Because you were there well beyond 2000.

Yeah, I think the biggest problem with AAUP is that they don't
have term limits on the CBC [Collective Bargaining Congress], and
the positions rotate from - though they do have term limits - but
what they do, they rotate from one position to another. If their
term is up as secretary or person at large, representative at large,
they'll go to other one, so that they just keep - it's the same voices,
over and over again. So I think that's really not a good thing for
AAUP to allow that to continue, because I haven't been active
nationally for a number of years, but when I go to the conferences,
the spring, the June meeting - the same people. The same people
are there.

Can they accomplish anything as a Collective Bargaining Congress?
Do they have money that they can use to help affiliates in hard
times? What is it that they think they're doing?

Well, they do collective bargaining. They have collective
bargaining chapters. They do have money. They only part of AAUP
that's growing actually is the CBC unit, not the - what's the other
one?

The advocacy unit.
Advocacy unit. That seems to be dying. So the money that's coming
into AAUP is really coming through CBC. And they do have an

organizing staff that is hired nationally - at the national office - but

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Irwin:

Cecelia:

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Cecelia:

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Cecelia:

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Cecelia:

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they do send them out to the various campuses where they're
needed. They do offer great support, and | think they have been
able to negotiate some pretty good contracts for their people. So
they do offer their affiliated chapters a lot of assistance.

Did you have any problems with the other side of AAUP,
[American Association of University Professors] the advocacy side,
because that's always - they've always had the split? It was only in
the early 1970s that they accepted collective bargaining as a
legitimate function of faculty. Did you have any problems in that
area with the people who do not have collective bargaining?

No, I worked on some committees with them. Some of them were
very pleasant people, very committed people. But my feeling about
that side, it has no reason for being as far as I can see. | was a
delegate to their session during the June meeting, and there was
no business conducted at all whatsoever at that meeting. They
have nothing to talk about. So I don't see that continuing much
longer. They don't have a role; they do not seem to have much of a
role in the congress [AAUP].

What about their academic freedom work or the Red Book which
has these principles -

Well the Red Book is - Yes, but that's not just the advocacy side,
that's CBC as well.

Yes, but it did come from the advocacy side, and they depend on it
more heavily because they don't have a contract.

I know that, yes. And they do cite the Red Book a lot when I guess
when issues occur at their campuses, but I just don't see that they
have any strength.

Well, there have been attempts to take them over by AFT
[American Federation of Teachers] and NEA [National Education
Association] in the past, but it hasn't happened.

Yeah, they want the CBC chapters -

They also want the academic freedom part of it.

Yeah.

NEA was very interested in that back in the 1980s, because they
believe that the academic freedom role - Committee A as they call

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Cecelia:

Irwin:

Cecelia:

Irwin:

Cecelia:

it in AAUP - that that was very valuable, and that NEA did not have
anything like that. And they tried to take that over, and it came
very close to happening.

Yeah, most of that work is done at the national level. It's not done
at the local level.

Yes, it's national. Now the New York conference of the AAUP,
you've been active in that for - I guess from the time you took
office in PSC in 2000, and you're still active in it. So I've also been
very active in the New York conference for many years, and I guess
the question that somebody would ask both of us would be, "Why
do you need a New York conference?"

I'm not sure, would be my answer, unfortunately, because again
that is a small group of people from very committed campuses,
really, talking to one another, and they've never really been able to
bring in all of the other chapters in the state to become active in it.
You know, if we somehow or other could wake those chapters up
and get them involved, maybe that would become a more vigorous
state conference. But it isn't, and I'm not sure what's going to
happen there.

Okay. When you were in Washington at CBC meetings, did you
hear any discussion of whether conferences had any value to
AAUP? Because there's always been a feeling among the
conference leadership that the national leadership does not really
pay much attention to them or even think that they're of much
importance.

I've never heard that said explicitly, but I think the feelings from
particularly the New York State Conference is well founded,
because it seems that when there are issues related to chapters
here, affiliates here, we're not consulted, and that's always been
the problem. I think they tend to be forgotten. I think they're just
forgotten. They [are] left to do whatever it is they do. Maybe they'll
take an issue to national, but other than that - ] don't think
national considers them at all. I've never heard anything said
disparagingly, but I think basically they're out there doing their
thing, and national's going to do its thing anyway. There have been
attempts to negotiate agreements - you know, the state conference
would be consulted or at least informed about a local issue - but
that isn't consistent at all, I don't think.

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Irwin:

Cecelia:

Irwin:

Cecelia:

Irwin:

Cecelia:

Irwin:

Cecelia:

Yes, I would tend to agree with you from my experience. The
conferences are not taken very seriously by the national
organization, and that is a weakness of AAUP.

But I think the strength of the conference is that CBC and advocacy
do have an opportunity to meet at the state level and talk about
issues that are important. So, I think that is one strength of the
conference, that it is both CPC and advocacy.

Yes, and many of its leaders have been from the advocacy side.
Yes.

Okay, that concludes the questions that I had, but is there anything
else that you want to expand on or add? Any areas that I haven't
covered that you think are important?

No, I don't think so.

Okay, well, thank you very much, Cecelia, for giving me this time
and for putting it in the permanent record of the PSC. Thanks.

Thank you.

[End of recorded material 47:13]

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