At 11 a.m. on Monday, just as New York University students returned to class from spring break, hundreds of their teachers went on strike.
The 950 full-time faculty members who walked away from their classrooms are non-tenure track faculty represented by CFU-UAW, and they were prepared—back in February, 90 percent of their membership voted to authorize a strike if the university refused to come to an agreement on terms like workload, compensation, and academic freedom.
"For almost a year and a half, the administration was dragging its feet. We finally had to set a strike deadline in February, and they still moved slowly," Jacob Remes, a labor historian, assistant professor at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and a member of the bargaining committee for CFU-UAW, told Hell Gate.