As Long Island U.’s Faculty Lockout Nears 2 Weeks, Both Sides Dig In

On Tuesday, Day 11 of the faculty lockout at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus, someone finally inflated the “union rat,” standing over 8 feet tall in front of the college’s main entrance.

The plastic rat, commonly displayed by union organizers to protest employers who hire temporary labor, is red-eyed and menacing. A locked-out faculty member stands close by, guarding the fan that pumps air into the enormous vermin.

The union rat is the latest bit of ugliness to emerge in the aftermath of the administration’s decision to lock out its faculty — 236 full-time professors and 450 adjuncts — as the two sides negotiated a contract to replace the one that expired at the end of August.

On Monday, as a new week dawned on the bustling, downtown campus, about 200 students walked out of their classes to join faculty members in protesting the extreme measure. “They say lock out, we say walk out,” some students chanted. “Let us learn,” they yelled. “Let us teach,” professors responded, standing outside the campus’s green gates.

Some student protesters met up with their locked-out professors at one of the area’s many coffee shops later to plan events for the rest of the week.

Students aren’t just protesting the lockout, but also the army of temporary instructors and administrators who are fielding their classes, which started last week, in place of their professors. Many students said instructors were merely taking attendance and then dismissing students, leaving them to wonder what they are paying for.

But these grievances have been well-catalogued, as labor activists and professors nationwide publicize the cause of the Brooklyn campus’s faculty. What’s less apparent amid all the noise: What is the administration thinking?

On Tuesday morning, administrators said they were prepared to take a few hits and make sacrifices if it means keeping costs down for students.

“Every student here has a compelling story,” said Gale Haynes, the campus’s chief operating officer and general counsel. “You realize what sacrifices they’ve made in their journey to be here, and you have to be prepared to make similar sacrifices to get them through.”

Members of the Long Island University Faculty Federation, the faculty’s union, have, among other things, demanded that their new contract mend the pay disparity between the Brooklyn campus and LIU’s Post campus, in Brookville, N.Y.

The university’s last published contract offer proposes that Brooklyn faculty members whose salaries are less than 2 percent below the minimum salary of a Post faculty member of the same rank get a salary adjustment this year to bring their pay up to the Post minimum, then a 1.75-percent raise each year from 2016 to 2018, and a 2.25-percent raise in 2019 and 2020. Brooklyn faculty members whose pay is more than 2 percent below the minimum for a Post professor of the same rank would get 2-percent raises each year until they reached the Post minimum.

Christopher Fevola, the university’s chief financial officer, said it’s difficult to offer much more than the figures in the proposed contract because of the university’s 2014 pledge to not raise tuition by more than 2 percent a year until 2020. Ninety-one percent of the campus’s funding comes from tuition revenue, the administration says, while labor makes up two-thirds of the university’s total operating cost.

“From a fiscal perspective it’s very important that we’re able to manage the institution and do so in a way that we are not passing those costs on to our students,” Mr. Fevola said. “I think there’s a national awareness around tuition affordability and institutions being able to live within their means.”

But when asked to provide details on how, specifically, salary increases requested by the union would translate into tuition increases, Mr. Fevola and Ms. Haynes said they could not disclose that number because negotiations were still going on.

Union leaders and university administrators last met in a seven-hour negotiating session on Monday night, and are scheduled to meet again on Wednesday. Mr. Fevola said he’s confident that the gap between the two sides will continue to close.

But Arthur Kimmel, a professor of sociology and social work and a member of the union’s bargaining team, said the negotiations aren’t only about the money.

Faculty members would probably accept the economic package as it stands today, Mr. Kimmel said, but he and the union team are fighting for language affirming the university’s commitment to issues like shared governance, equal treatment of the Post and Brooklyn campuses, and increased adjunct pay.

So he said he’s picketing until a fair contract is offered.

Altered Lives

The lockout is taking its toll on faculty members, who had to quickly turn from filling their days with planning lectures and research to coordinating call-in protests and applying for unemployment benefits.

For some, it has meant changes in other areas of their lives, too. Take Emily Drabinski, for example. Ms. Drabinski, a library-instruction coordinator who’s been one of the chief organizers of locked-out faculty members, has been trying to maintain a training schedule for the New York City Marathon this fall, but she said she’s become too stressed and angry to run. She lost six miles last week in her training plan because of the lockout.

“When you and everyone that you spend your life with lost their job, there’s nothing else you can do but fight to get it back,” Ms. Drabinski said.

Others, like Kathryn S. Krase, an associate professor of social work, worry about how the lockout is affecting their students, who are being taught by temporary instructors and administrators, and what they may do if that situation continues.

At Tuesday’s student walkout, two undergraduate seniors ran up to Ms. Krase, asking her if she knew who was teaching their research course, but she said she didn’t know.

Social-work research is one of the toughest courses of the major’s curriculum, and Ms. Krase was supposed to teach it. She said she’s emailed students during the lockout, and even spoken with some concerned administrators who have to teach courses, but she just wants to get back to the classroom before students start dropping out.

“The longer it goes on, the less hopeful I am,” Ms. Krase said.

Like other faculty members, she’s showing up at events that aim to get administrators to budge on the contract talks.

Administrators want professors and adjuncts back in the classroom, said Jennifer L. Solomon, a university spokeswoman, but they remain firm that the lockout was the difficult right choice.

“By and large, the experience has been very positive,” Mr. Fevola said about the student response to the lockout.

Even when it ends, the lockout may have consequences for the long-term health of the institution, said Stephen Brier, a professor of urban education at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Students will be hesitant to enroll at LIU, he said, and may take their money to another campus.

“This is a kind of step that administrations take when they are in desperate straits,” Mr. Brier said. “It’s going to devalue education at LIU.”

‘Difficult to Go Back’

On Tuesday, the campus gates on Flatbush Avenue were a dividing line between two realities. Outside, union members handed out flyers and spoke with students when a larger protest wasn’t happening. Inside, the campus appeared to be functioning as it normally would. Students are reading and chatting with friends on courtyard benches, and still going to class.

Victor Dominguez, a biology freshman, said he’s going through the motions, wandering in and out of classes, but he’s ready for the lockout to be over with and start doing course work. “I’d rather do real work cause I’m spending 36K,” he said.

And the lockout is an unwelcome surprise for students and faculty alike, said Ms. Drabinkski, who said she never imagined that after her tenured position was approved in 2014 she would question how she would make it without a salary.

“How could you imagine that this charade would go on?” Ms. Drabinski asked. “I’m prepared for this to be a long story. I hope that I’m wrong.”

Her colleague, Srividhya Swaminathan, an English professor and chair of the English department, said that when Kimberly R. Cline was named LIU’s president in 2013, she had a looming suspicion that something drastic would happen during the union’s bargaining year, and she started setting money aside just in case.

Ms. Swaminathan said she suspected that Long Island University had hired Ms. Cline, a former president of Mercy College and a former chief financial officer of the State University of New York, to break up the unions at LIU and reduce labor costs.

Ms. Cline was not available for an interview on Tuesday, but Mr. Fevola said any accusations that she was anti-labor were simply not true, citing the 16 total unions operating in the university system.

Ms. Swaminathan said that it had been unimaginable that the university would move to lock out its own faculty and operate with temporary labor, and that administrators would have to grapple with that when the faculty returns to campus.

“No one anticipated a cruel tactic of a lockout,” Ms. Swaminathan said. “It’s very difficult to go back after something like this, but I think it’s important to remember than the difficulty will be between administrators [and faculty], not between faculty and students.”

Before the lockout, Ms. Drabinski said she was named to a hiring committee for a new academic vice president and had been looking forward to working with Ms. Haynes, the general counsel, but now she doesn’t know how she will face her.

It’s a dynamic administrators are all too familiar with, Ms. Haynes said, as the university has dealt with union strikes in the past. She said she’s confident relations will normalize when faculty return to campus.

“Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of experience with job actions,” Ms. Haynes said. “I always advocate for the fact that when people are serious about their work, they get back to doing their work. The work brings people together.”

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a web writer. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.