Henry Drobbin Talks Unions, Layoffs, and Restructuring

Henry Drobbin: Teamsters Local 1205 was not consulted on the layoffs. In my role as shop steward, I represent the interests of the members of my union. I’d say I’m one of the few people at the university who knows from a worker’s perspective exactly what goes on at The New School (TNS). I’m there to make sure the university adheres to the collective bargaining agreement and contract they’ve agreed to. TNS has a legal obligation to do a few things: keep the unionized work within the bargaining agreement and discuss changes to remove that work from our bargaining unit prior to any actions.

On Sep. 25th, we received one meeting with TNS in which we were told there would be cuts. We were offered no specifics. This falls far from our standard conversation regarding change at the university. On Oct. 1st, alongside everyone else, we received notification that 122 workers at TNS were going to be laid off.

Starting with the announcement, there was a flood of anxiety for an entire week. We did not know what was to come, what the plan was, or how these decisions were being made. On the Friday the layoffs were announced there was a lot of upset and anger – mourning is the word many have used. It was more than that: it was defeat. Workers who have spent 35+ years at TNS received a package and notice that this was their last week.

Afterwards, the remaining members of the university knew they were going to have to do more with less. I had many conversations with faculty who were concerned [about] additional administrative work. Traditionally, when a department is reorganized, the union is given a description of both the jobs terminated and where that work is going. We can advocate for our member’s interests and needs, but that was not part of the process this time around – and for such a large cut to our workforce. 

We’ve asked the question, “Who is going to do this work now?” It does not simply go away. So we asked the university: Show us. Tell us. Not after the fact. Before things become final. 

It comes down to this: people who have worked for 35 years – people of color, women of color, caregivers – have been laid off from their jobs in an unceremonious way. After giving so much – such a big portion of who they are – and committing to what makes us a success… It seems that TNS has retained what are primarily white male administrators. 

I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is to say, “I gave thirty-five years, and I did not know that my last week at The New School was going to be in a Zoom meeting with one week’s notice. That’s not how I wanted to leave this place I devoted my life to.” That’s a perspective that deserves consideration, and one the university has not considered.

From what we can see, TNS is not cutting from the top, but from the bottom. The effect of the cuts on the overall budget is not substantial: some workers work part-time for around $20/hour. We understand the school is in a difficult situation, but we want to be at the table. We want to make these decisions and be part of the process – not have them thrust upon us. We want to be partners in the university; historically, we have been. This administration certainly hasn’t held up their end of things.

As an administrator at multiple universities throughout his career, President McBride is likely aware of the many tactics management uses to squeeze labor. 

Staff at the university have been betrayed. Our collective bargaining agreement directly stipulates that before decisions affecting staff are final, it must be discussed with us. Discussed. Not just told, but discussed. 

It’s union busting. To have clear and direct language in a collective bargaining agreement, a precedent that has been followed for 10 years, and then to cast it aside and say, “We don’t follow that. We don’t need to have this conversation with the union…” 

In the past, we’ve had that conversation many times. 

At great risk to their families, the affected staff were some of the first workers who, in the midst of Covid-19, returned to campus after being furloughed. About a month later, they received their notice. This back-and-forth in their employment shows a lack of consideration both for their services and their persons.

The New School Labor Coalition is a collective of unions that connected at the outset of the pandemic in response to Covid-related austerity measures. Austerity measures were imposed on many of its members. We wanted a seat at the table to talk as a collective. We hoped to share resources and information moving forward.

TNS Labor Coalition’s videos have gotten 4 or 5,000 views. Our letters have been shared and viewed thousands of times by members of the community and in greater academia outside the city. There are eyes on TNS and what they’re doing here. 

The unions that make up the TNS Labor Coalition have individual contracts with the university. These contracts state that these unions are recognized by TNS as representatives who can bargain on behalf of their workers. We have even more right to demand that the university speak with us regarding these changes to our unit. The administration has not yet committed to meeting with TNS Labor Coalition. We’ve made efforts to work with them. It’s certainly frustrating that they haven’t done the same. 

The New School needs to make dramatic changes away from corporatization and look in a direction that encourages a discussion of equity, how to achieve it, and how to achieve it with labor as a true partner. 

Right now, at-will employees do not have a voice. The future for them is likely pay freezes, hiring freezes, retirement freezes – those freezes are critical to your work-life balance. Not only are you going to be worried about your job security, you’re going to be worried about paying your bills. Costs go up. On top of that, non-unionized workers are likely to face increased medical costs at TNS. Many of those same concerns are shared by the unionized staff. To think that the university can cut 200 positions (122 layoffs and 80+ eliminations through attrition) and then change course to focus on executive training as its way of subsidizing the cost of education on such short notice is incredibly shortsighted. 

The faculty are concerned about ways they’ll be squeezed, and with the burden of administrative work, they’ll be spending less time on groundbreaking research and ever-critical teaching – these things are our primary sources of funding and the reason everyone supports our mission in the first place. 

If there was a clean way of quickly making the university less tuition dependent, it would have been done way before President Dwight McBride. To think there’s a solution that can happen so quickly now is shortsighted. If we’re ultimately to become less tuition-driven, it’s about taking small steps over a short period of time. If TNS wants trust and justice there needs to be permanent seats on the board of trustees for labor. They need to treat us as true partners.

There were concerns that enrollment would be below 50% during the worst crisis TNS has seen. All workers– faculty, staff, and administrators– stepped up, mobilized, and took all steps possible to prevent these dire drops in enrollment. Overall, we saw a 10% drop in enrollment. Look at all the workers who have contributed to reducing the budget deficit, who worked to make sure enrollments were at sustainable levels. The workers who were laid off helped us to achieve this critical success. I think these layoffs are very Nixon-esque, Trump-esque. 

The New School was founded by ex-Columbia professors who wanted to leave behind university corporate behavior. The direction it’s taken is in direct contradiction to what the founders hoped TNS would become. It’s evident in their actions – the university preaches social justice but doesn’t practice it. 

There was a certain pattern in the layoffs from what I observed. It’s disconcerting. 

One of the testimonials at the Oct. 6th Teach-In on TNS Austerity and Restructuring was from Emerson. It struck me that he was one of few people of color in the administration at the College of Performing Arts, a historically privileged craft. For students who interacted with him, his presence made them feel welcome in this environment. To lay off a critical member of a college’s administration, and one of the few people of color, sends a message to its students – a message that is concerning to us. It’s certainly a problem TNS has. 

It’s also important to remind readers of the social contract at TNS. It is a non-profit. They don’t pay taxes on the buildings we own. But they must uphold their end of the social contract and treat their workers with respect. With a collective bargaining agreement in place they should adhere to it. 

Often the past is a good indicator of future behavior. I’ve been at The New School since 2007. In my first year here, we had the 2008 financial crisis. The university froze wages for all non-union workers for at least a year. Between the 2008 financial crisis and the current Covid-19 crisis, the university sold two buildings for a value of about $80 million dollars. Even though they had a windfall from these sales, they didn’t go back and make wages for those workers whole again. Instead, they put that money into the endowment. The largest increase to the endowment was not due to our past president’s success in attracting donors to donate. It was from the sale of real estate. Past actions like these raise the question of whether or not the university will act justly in the present crisis. 

What I’m hearing from a lot of faculty is that there is a lack of understanding about what the plan is. It’s not: Here’s the plan. Here are the deep cuts. To the contrary, it’s been: Here are the deep cuts. Now make the plan. That makes it hard for people to do their jobs.

People are here because they want to succeed at research. They want to succeed at teaching. They want to succeed at learning. They want to succeed at TNS, a place where they feel there’s a mission of social justice in everyday life, no matter what they’re doing. Whether you’re a security guard or the provost, you’re hoping your education, or whatever you contribute to education, ultimately leads to a better world. I think the changes and how they were rolled out make that very difficult. The university speaks a lot about inclusivity. These changes don’t look inclusive. 

I’ve been a steward with the union for many years. People ask me: Why do I work so hard defending the rights of workers? I can easily answer that question: I care about it. But I do it here, particularly, because I care about the university. How can we bring this message of justice and inclusion to other places if we can’t have it here?

I do think we live in a world where conspiracies become a problem. It comes from a lack of both substantive discussion and inclusion in processes like these. When people feel they are left outside the process, there is a sense there are alternative motives. It creates an environment of fear. And the university’s management, or I’ll say management in every workplace, wants workers to feel this way. Unempowered. They use that feeling of defeat to push wages down. The more they can push wages down, the more they can justify their high salaries. 

Former president David Van Zandt made more than a million dollars per year, plus other forms of compensation like pension contributions, housing, etc. For this reason, the actual figure has varied from year to year. This is one of the top salaries in the country, and on top of this incredibly high salary, there are unseen compensations. 

Side Bar: DVZ’s Salary FY 2018

The president’s townhouse is a big one. Smaller but significant ones are internet costs, house cleaning, cell phone costs, and other write-offs. The profit margins are incredibly high compared to those who lost their jobs who are, for example, often spending 50% of their wages on housing. All of our students pay for housing in some way. The large, top salaries at the university are the real problem, not the salaries of a senior library clerk or an office assistant who comes in and does an honest day’s work. There needs to be an administrative, non-teaching salary cap at TNS. There are so many problems with that structure. Period. 

Let’s draw people in who want to be here. Most of the people who were cut at the bottom were not here for the paycheck. Those aren’t jobs that are going to pay well. There should be job security. They do the on-the-ground work. They’re the people you would’ve interacted with at the library. They’re the people who would have made the behind-the-scenes things happen for you at TNS. Who made sure you were safe by going over immunization forms at Health Services. I could go on and list what these people, these workers do and did and how they are the critical, essential workers at TNS.

Justice is consistently applying rules and regulations across the board. Whether it’s a democracy or not, TNS should make just decisions. 

In the past, there might have been 2 or 3 positions eliminated. But now, I am working with 33 affected employees in my bargaining unit. The university will have hard decisions to make. But include us in the process. Let us make the hard decisions. In this instance, that did not happen. TNS has imposed their will. It was an unequal application of policy and past practice. 

Governance is a really important question. In some ways, we don’t really have a head of a school. That might be the problem. We have a head of a corporation. Over the years, especially during the tenure of the last president, TNS has moved away from deans who have an educational component and farther in the direction of CFOs, CIOs, COOs, and CMOs. Perhaps we need someone who is going to put education first. That structure comes not only with steep costs – corporate titles earn a lot of money – but is also a move away from education. 

There’s a lot of talk about the cost of education in the US. When you are having that conversation, you really want to ask: What is driving that increased cost? Is it the person who directly gives you services? Or, is it the manager of the manager of the manager? And what are their salaries? I would encourage students to look at the school’s not-for-profit filings called 990s. Look at those numbers. See what’s driving the cost of education at TNS. 

What do we actually change? What are the correct actions? The communication and transparency are a big part of the frustration. This is compounded by smaller staff doing more work at a flat or decreased rate of pay and retirement contributions. Is that justified? 

On their website, Huron Consulting Group has a lot of straightforward language stating that they look at the pandemic as an opportunity. To see a public crisis as an opportunity seems, from my perspective, against the TNS’s mission. That’s how Huron brands themselves on their website. Consulting firms are just employees often hired to do management work that can’t be done in-house. This work can be done in-house.

Huron’s outcomes have been consistent: they look at universities and recommend, after a crisis, large cuts and how to do it. So, you hire them if that’s what you want done. My understanding is Huron held a few, very limited listening sessions for the staff at TNS. The narrative can always be biased. I’m sure Huron’s narrative is a positive one. But a worker who was laid off was probably devastated that it ever happened. 

We live in a world of laws and contracts. People in power want to keep away from workers the knowledge of how to navigate these laws and contracts – what’s right and what’s wrong. When unions are involved, they bring that expertise and collective intelligence to a worker. TNS also pays for collective intelligence. They have an HR department, but the average worker doesn’t. When workers unionize, they’re able to meet that collective intelligence the university has with their own collective intelligence. This ensures justice in the workplace. 

Management does not want you to know what they’re paying other people. TNS has put together an administrative compensation structure in recent years. This comp structure changes without notice. It does not have clearly designated roles, responsibilities, or associated wages. These types of structures can be used to justify offering less pay in the hiring-negotiation process.

When workers unionize, they get to negotiate on compensation and rate of pay. Over the last 10 to 15 years, the university has been as vague as possible about information about salaries and compensation structures, so they have leeway to make inconstant decisions. One of the things on TNS Labor Coalition’s slate is to establish a clear practice for how people are paid. What exactly are the salary bands and classifications? Who falls into what areas? This is information is not provided to non-union workers; if your work portfolio has increased without this information or transparency, it’s difficult to make a case that your title or compensation should increase. 

The solutions here are certainly within grasp. It’s about having the hard conversations with people who may not agree or have differing interests. Save workers’ jobs and make sure the legacy of TNS continues in spite of the immediate financial challenges. 

The workplace may not be a democracy, but democratic principles can still be considered in the workplace. Justice means bringing all stakeholders into the conversation. 

Henry Drobbin has worked for 13 years at the NSSR and is currently a senior secretary in the politics department. For the last 10 years, he has held the role of lead shop steward. Henry represents administrative and clerical workers, library workers, and professional librarians who are with Local 1205.

Next time: Dara Levendosky, formerly the senior secretary in the sociology department at NSSR and the managing editor for public seminar, discusses the experience of losing her positions at TNS.