Catching Up to Our Own Roadmap

This time things are just in the wrong order temporally…

Over the past year, many conversations about bargaining have centered on one question: Are we ready?

That question prompted me to revisit an internal document drafted by the New School’s Bargaining Working Group in April 2025. It wasn’t a list of bargaining proposals or contract demands. It was something much more fundamental: a roadmap for building the organizing infrastructure needed to support a successful bargaining campaign in 2027.

Reading it today is both encouraging and sobering.

Encouraging because it demonstrates that our union understood what would be required to win long before bargaining began. Sobering because, by its own timeline, we are now well behind where we hoped to be.

A Vision Worth Revisiting

The document divided preparation into two distinct phases.

Year 1 focused on building the foundation:

• reviewing the previous round of bargaining;

• mapping departments and workplaces;

• identifying and recruiting leaders throughout the university;

• creating systems for one-on-one conversations;

• reviewing the contract language;

• collecting bargaining issues from members;

• developing leadership;

• creating communications infrastructure; and

• beginning the organizing necessary to support future negotiations.

Year 2 assumed those foundations were already in place. The focus would then shift toward:

• member assemblies and town halls;

• developing bargaining demands;

• testing organizing networks;

• building a strike captain structure;

• escalating collective actions;

• demonstrating unity;

• electing the bargaining committee; and

• launching the bargaining campaign.

It is a thoughtful plan. More importantly, it reflects an organizing philosophy that many of us still share: bargaining success begins long before anyone sits across the table from management.

Where We Are

By the roadmap’s own schedule, we should now be well into the second phase.

Instead, many of the foundational Year 1 goals remain unfinished or have not become visible to the broader membership.

Among them are:

• comprehensive workplace and department mapping;

• identifying leaders throughout every department;

• broad one-on-one organizing conversations;

• leadership development;

• widespread contract review;

• a bargaining issue tracker;

• regular bargaining communications;

• member stories and issue collection;

• workshops preparing members for bargaining; and

• the organizing infrastructure necessary to support larger campaigns.

Some of this work may have occurred internally, and organizing often happens quietly before it becomes public. But from the perspective of most members, much of the infrastructure envisioned in 2025 has yet to materialize at the scale originally imagined.

That matters because Year 2 depends on Year 1.

It is difficult to hold representative town halls without established communication networks.

It is difficult to develop member-owned bargaining demands without broad issue collection.

It is difficult to test an organizing structure that has not yet been fully built.

And it is difficult to demonstrate overwhelming member unity without first investing in the relationships that create it.

What This Means

Recognizing that we are behind should not lead us toward smaller circles or narrower participation.

It should lead us toward more organizing.

The answer is not fewer members becoming involved because bargaining is approaching.

The answer is more members becoming involved because bargaining is approaching.

If anything, the roadmap itself points in that direction.

Again and again it speaks about:

• identifying leaders;

• leadership development;

• one-on-one conversations;

• town halls;

• issue groups;

• member ownership;

• communication networks; and

• ultimately, electing a bargaining committee.

The underlying assumption is clear: bargaining is strongest when the campaign belongs to the membership, not simply to those already serving in leadership positions.

Catching Up Together

Being behind schedule is not a reason for discouragement.

It is a reason for urgency.

The good news is that organizing is cumulative. Every new conversation, every new volunteer, every new steward, every department that becomes connected strengthens our ability to bargain effectively next year.

The roadmap drafted in 2025 remains a valuable document because it reminds us what we originally set out to accomplish.

Rather than asking whether we have accomplished everything on the list, perhaps the better question is:

How can each of us help complete it?

If bargaining is truly the work of the membership, then catching up will not happen because a handful of people work harder.

It will happen because many more people decide that now is the time to participate.

That was the vision laid out in 2025.

It is still a vision worth pursuing. We shall see if the remainder of the year affords us enough time to…