The New School Unit represents the New School part-time faculty.

The unit settled and ratified its first contract with The New School in November, 2005. We won significant job security provisions including replacement rights for annual faculty, multi-year contracts, course cancellation fees, longevity increases, recall rights, improved access and employer subsidies for the New School health plan, 10% employer pension contributions by the end of the contract, and many other significant gains.

Organizing our union at the New School came out of the formation of Adjuncts Come Together (ACT-UAW) by the adjunct faculty of NYU. In March 2003 a petition for representation was filed with the NLRB. It was eleven months before a union election took place, in the face of protracted employer opposition. In spite of this, the part-time faculty of the New School voted to have a union. The New School administration filed objections to the election, which in May 2004, were found by an Administrative Law Judge to have no merit. Our union was certified by the NLRB in September 2004, with the university only coming to the bargaining table after a successful events boycott that fall.

We began negotiations with the university in October 2004. Even with our certification from the NLRB the administration refused to acknowledge the right of the faculty of Mannes, the New School for Music, to be members of our union. On the eve of a strike deadline, reached agreement with the New School on October 31, 2005, including recognition of the rights of Mannes faculty to be included under the contract.