NYSUT-purchased ads urging support for the 400-plus locked out members of the Long Island University Faculty Federation will appear Friday in the Daily News Brooklyn edition and in three weekly Brooklyn newspapers: the Brooklyn Paper, Park Slope Courier and Caribbean Life Brooklyn. The half-page ads call for ending the lockout, a return to good-faith bargaining and pledge the statewide union’s support for members.
On midnight Saturday, university administration locked out faculty members, cut off their health insurance and hired adjuncts and administrators to lead classes. Hundreds of LIU Faculty Federation members began informational picketing Wednesday, the first day of classes, outside the university’s Brooklyn campus.
Nearly half of the Brooklyn faculty are paid less than their LIU Post campus counterparts, in Nassau County; some by as much as 20 percent. Yet both campuses charge the same tuition — $32,000 a year — and faculty credentials are equivalent. LIU says it will not reach parity between the two campuses until 2020. The union wants to achieve parity by 2019.
The Brooklyn faculty union’s contract expired Sept. 2.