Contract ratifications get the headlines, but the work begins long before negotiating teams put pen to paper and members vote. For United University Professions President Frederick E. Kowal, that work began over a year ago.
“Realizing what was happening in Washington and the effects of the Big Ugly Bill and the effects on the state budget, we knew we needed to get negotiating,” he said. The state landscape was also an important one: UUP’s contract could expire in June 2026 with the legislature out of town, the governor in the middle of a gubernatorial campaign, and tighter budgets.
So, the UUP team got to work through the summer of 2025 into the fall, narrowing down their demands and putting together a tight set of proposals before a meeting with the governor in September. After some delays, the team got to the negotiating table in February. They had a tentative agreement by June 2.
“The negotiating team worked incredibly hard and got it done,” said Kowal. “To their credit, the state, the governor’s office, were very good partners.”
“It is a historic agreement on so many grounds.”
The contract is a five-year deal totaling around $3.5 billion dollars, a significant increase from previous contracts. The monetary benefit to UUP members is also significant, with a 4.5 percent salary increase coming in October, the biggest since contracts of the late 1980s or early 1990s. Over the life of the contract, wages will rise 19.3 percent.
Also included in the contract are longevity raises for members who work for more than 17 years, and those already beyond that threshold get a retroactive bump. Another important win was increasing per-course minimums for adjuncts – up to $7,000 per course for adjuncts at University Centers by the end of the contract. Substantial increases in geographic pay were also achieved, with Ulster County being included in those increases for the first time, along with more money for residents of the state’s three teaching hospitals.
But what has really caught the attention of members, and unions nationwide, is the language regarding artificial intelligence.
Building off the language advocated for by NYSUT, UUP and the New York State AFL-CIO in the AI LOADING Act, UUP is now among the first bargaining units in the country to establish grievable AI protections into contract language. The contract stipulates that humans must be in charge and that work done at UUP-represented campuses must remain human work, not AI work. For evaluations, AI can be used as a tool, but a human must still be in charge of the evaluation itself.
“I’ve been reached out to by unions across the country asking to use this language as a template,” said Kowal. “It’s that good.”
From the beginning, Kowal tasked his team with engaging the more than 42,000 UUP members in the process, sharing more information with members than they ever had before. After the tentative agreement, the team held virtual information sessions on every campus to answer all the questions members had. In the end, that work paid off.
The contract was approved by 97.7 percent of eligible members who voted, one of the largest ratification margins in UUP’s 53-year history.
“This is a signal to the governor, to the legislature, to SUNY, that members are engaged,” said Kowal. He credited the work of the larger union ecosystem in the state with helping get the on-time contract.
“The leadership of NYSUT in Melinda Person, the leadership of AFT President Randi Weingarten, the leadership of the AFL-CIO in Mario Cilento, they were really helpful in us getting those early dates for negotiations.”
Now UUP members get to look to the upcoming semester with anticipation, knowing they have a strong agreement, and union, behind them. “We had to be credible, we had to be responsible, and we were,” said Kowal. “And we got a damn good contract.”