The New School part-time faculty union has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board in response to the university asking employees to fill out weekly surveys attesting to having performed work duties, according to the union.

In an email to its members yesterday afternoon, ACT-UAW Local 7902, which represents the striking part-time faculty at The New School, urged members not to complete the forms and called them “illegal.”

The union claimed that The New School violated the law in two ways. First, by suddenly requiring employees to fill out these surveys without bargaining over it, the university allegedly “bargained in bad faith.”

“Rather than bargaining over the issues affecting 87% of their teachers, the university’s approach was to unilaterally change the terms and conditions of part-time faculty employment, potentially in violation of the National Labor Relations Act,” Annie Levin, a staff organizer for the union, said.

The union also said that the university was “coercing” employees.

“The school’s negotiations team is interfering with, restraining, and coercing part-time faculty in the rights guaranteed them under the Act by using this certification form to poll members concerning their current, and ongoing, participation in the strike,” ACT-UAW said in the email.

The university issued a statement to The New School Free Press via Amy Malsin, the assistant vice president of Communications and Public Affairs, disputing the claim last night.

“We strongly disagree with the claims made by the union and look forward to presenting the facts to the National Labor Relations Board,” they said.

The work certification surveys arose as a way of determining which employees are working during the strike. The university started withholding wages — including health insurance and retirement contributions — from employees who were no longer working during their scheduled hours on Wednesday, according to an email to the community from Tokumbo Shobowale, executive vice president for Business and Operations.

“We cannot afford to continue to pay wages for individuals who are no longer working and must carefully reallocate those resources to implement measures that ensure our students’ academic needs are met,” Shobowale said in the email.

Employees have since been sent various emails telling them that they must submit work certification forms weekly in order to receive pay.

“To enable consistent and accurate attendance records, effective December 7, 2022, all full-time faculty must complete weekly certification forms attesting to work they completed during the prior week,” a leaked email from MyDay, a platform for New School employees, allegedly said.

Student workers who are paid in stipends have been told to fill out a Google Form attesting that they are completing their work responsibilities.

These actions come in the fourth week of the part-time faculty strike, which began when the university and the union failed to come to an agreement regarding the part-time faculty’s contract.

In response to the university withholding pay from striking employees, full-time faculty and students have shown continued solidarity with adjunct faculty.

In an open letter to The New School administration, the New School chapter of the American Association of University Professors demanded that the university withdraw its plan to withhold wages by Wednesday at 5 p.m. As the university failed to do so, full-time faculty across all divisions of The New School have begun discussions of a vote of “no confidence” in university President Dwight A. McBride and other senior members of the administration, Julie Beth Napolin, an associate professor and president of the New School AAUP chapter, said in an email to the Free Press last night.

Students also occupied the University Center at 63 Fifth Ave. yesterday afternoon.

“We will occupy the building day and night until the administration resumes pay, full healthcare protection and retirement benefits to all school employees, and until the university reaches a fair contract with part-time faculty,” the Student Faculty Solidarity group said in an Instagram post yesterday.

A few hours after the occupation began, McBride said in an email to the community that the university had made significant progress toward meeting the part-time faculty union’s contract demands.

“We are taking the extraordinary step to agree to all of the union’s compensation demands, with the addition of an administrative services fee to compensate part-time faculty for their work outside of the classroom,” McBride said.

The union has since said on Instagram that the strike is still ongoing, and that “no deal has been reached.”

“Use critical thinking when reading @thenewschool emails & posts,” the union said in the post.

In a video posted to Instagram, Matthew Spiegelman, a part-time assistant professor at Parsons School of Design, said that the university sent out the email that appeared to signal that the committee was close to reaching an agreement at the same time as it was being presented to the union for the first time.

“So if that doesn’t feel like a P.R. move or a power play, I don’t know what does,” Spiegelman said in the video.

According to Spiegelman, the email created “unnecessary widespread confusion.”

The union is in the process of reviewing the university’s offer.