Strike Ends at the New School and Parsons School of Design (Published 2022)

Part-time faculty members at the New School have agreed to end a grueling three-week strike over pay and benefits after reaching an agreement late Saturday with the university.

The sizable walkout had left the school at a near standstill. Classes were canceled because nearly 90 percent of the faculty is made up of untenured adjunct professors and lecturers. The school had also been facing a lawsuit from irate parents, who had threatened to withhold payment or force their children to transfer to other institutions. Some had called for the school’s president, Dwight A. McBride, to resign.

The instructors had argued that they had received only a meager increase in their salaries over recent years, despite inflation and the strain of the pandemic. They also said that a disproportionate amount of university expenses went toward the salaries of administrators, even though enrollment had been rising in recent years.

“We have countersigned a tentative agreement and the strike is ending,” the union representing the part-time faculty, the ACT-UAW Local 7902, wrote on Twitter. Union members said that compensation was still not on par with those at comparable institutions in the city but that all their demands over health insurance had been met.

They said that the new contract would see pay rates rise by 13 percent in the first year for the best-paid adjuncts. An adjunct being paid $5,753 over a semester for a three-credit course — the ceiling until now — would earn $6,520. By the fifth year, the adjunct would receive $7,820, a 36 percent rise.

Some adjuncts at Mannes Prep and Mannes conservatory, a part of the New School, would receive a 31 percent raise in the first year of the contract, a jump that reflects the relatively low starting rate that adjuncts were being paid.