BROOKLYN, September 8—Workers, professors, and students unite against the racist and sexist lockout of professors at Brooklyn Long Island University (LIU)! Students are leading the fight: hundreds walked out of their classes and they lead the daily protests with chants and signs. Electricians, carpenters, and custodians from LIU haven’t had a contract for four years and also joined in.
In solidarity, several dozen members of the Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York (PSC-CUNY), including members of the Progressive Labor Party, came to the demonstration. This is an important struggle for the working class because students, professors, and workers are seeing that this is everyone’s struggle. When workers unite, we are a force to be reckoned with and we are one step closer to communism!
Students Bear the Burden
The professors are locked out without salaries or health benefits because the administration wants to force already low-paid adjunct professors to accept pay cuts. This is just the latest attack. For the past two years, LIU President Kimberly Cline has made cuts to departments and student services and laid off professors, forcing other to take on higher work loads. All this translates to students getting fewer resources and a worse education. Cline says it is to “balance the budget” while she pockets an annual salary of more than $650,000.
These budget cuts attack students and make it increasingly difficult to get an education. Students at LIU pay over $34,000 in tuition, with tuition increasing every year. That doesn’t even include the cost of food or housing. Many go into crippling debt just to pay for college. What do they get for their money? The LIU administration replaced 400 of the faculty with a couple hundred “scabs with doctorates” who were unprepared or unqualified to teach the first day of class. When professors are attacked, students bear the brunt.
Several speakers at the rally also pointed out that these attacks are racist and sexist. The LIU C.W. Post campus has mostly white students, while the Brooklyn campus is over 50 percent Black, Latin, and Asian students and 70 percent women. Students pay roughly the same tuition, but funds are re-routed to the LIU C.W. Post campus. Professors at the Brooklyn campus make lower salaries and receive fewer benefits. One of the demands of the faculty union, the LIUFF, is for equal salaries for both campuses.
Worker-Student Alliance
All across the country, both public and private universities are using more and more non-tenure track, contingent professors—adjuncts—who are given low salaries and few, if any, benefits. Workers seldom get new contracts to match the insane cost of living. Students are constantly paying more in tuition and getting less for their money. That’s how capitalism works everywhere: bosses maintain profits by making it easier to fire workers and by cutting benefits and resources.
The fight at LIU is for students, workers, and faculty everywhere. The bosses want us to believe that professors, students, and manual workers all have different struggles and that they must fight back separately. That is why it is key that all different workers are coming together in this struggle. The protesters understand that if management is able to lock out union members and force them to accept concessionary terms, it’s a blow to working people everywhere.
As the working class at LIU fight for better living conditions, we must all follow their example. Workers and students everywhere should support the professors and students of LIU. CUNY students are facing tuition hikes and should join the struggle. CUNY professors, and especially adjuncts, are facing similar attacks and must show solidarity. Demand that our unions rally in solidarity. Rank and file members should demand that the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) organize its hundreds of thousands of members to come to LIU, join the picket lines and shut the campus down until we win this struggle!
Let’s not forget that as long as the bosses still run this capitalist system, they can always take back whatever we win in our struggles. We need to build solidarity, fight racism and sexism, and organize for a better world in the future! The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is organizing in over 25 countries against the many abuses workers suffer under capitalism. These abuses will only end with communist revolution where workers run the world. Staff and students at LIU should join this worldwide struggle. Join us in the fight for communism.