Six professors at City University of New York filed a lawsuit to break from the Professional Staff Congress, a union that represents all the school’s faculty, because of its “ideological and political advocacy,” National Right to Work reported.
These professors, including five Jewish faculty members, stated in the lawsuit that PSC approved a union resolution that they “view as anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish, and anti-Israel.”
The complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, said that the six professors do not belong to the union, yet it has a legal right to represent them.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation represents Avraham Goldstein, Michael Goldstein, Frimette Kass-Shraibman, Mitchell Langbert, Jeffery Lax and Maria Pagano in the lawsuit.
The complaint further stated that PSC conducts itself “in a manner that harms the Jewish plaintiffs and singles them out for opprobrium, hatred, and harassment based on their religious, ethnic, and/or moral beliefs and identity.”
The plaintiffs also seek relief from the New York State comptroller and New York Public Employee Relations Board chairman, who enforce the rules that gives PSC monopoly control over CUNY’s faculty representation.
Although the plaintiffs left PSC, the state has forced them to retain PSC as their “exclusive bargaining representative.”
Michael Goldstein, who felt compelled to hire a body guard for on-campus security, said that he “has experienced anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist attacks from members of PSC, including what he sees as bullying, harassment, destruction of property, calls for him to be fired, organization of student attacks against him, and threats against him and his family.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission already ruled that CUNY and PSC discriminated against Lax, “retaliated against him, and subjected him to a hostile work environment on the basis of religion.”
The lawsuit further said that Lax “has felt marginalized and ostracized by PSC because the union has made it clear that Jews who support the Jewish homeland, the State of Israel, are not welcome.”
