Students at New York University returned from their spring break on Monday morning to find their Manhattan campus in turmoil, as hundreds of members of the private school’s faculty walked off the job over a contract dispute.
Around 11 a.m., a union representing about 950 full-time faculty members who are not on track to earn tenure began their strike, several minutes after the university’s lawyers responded to the group’s final offer, said Brendan Hogan, a spokesman for the union. Professors and students joined a snaking picket line that stretched the width of a plaza at the John A. Paulson Center on Mercer Street. They held tambourines, bells and shakers, and chanted for a fair contract.
The members of the union, the Contract Faculty United-UAW, teach classes and advise students. They have complained that they are paid far less than their colleagues who are on track for tenure or who work under contract.
Along with big pay increases and more job protections, they have demanded help offsetting the high cost of housing in New York, a benefit they said their colleagues received.
The move raised the prospect that New York City could see strikes at two of its most prestigious universities this spring. The student workers’ union at Columbia University voted this month to authorize a strike, demanding better wages amid a “cost-of-living crisis.”
In the lead-up to the strike at N.Y.U., a group of five dozen elected officials urged the university in a letter to “come to a fair agreement,” warning that an extended strike could “seriously disrupt life for tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are students, employees and members of the N.Y.U. community.”
The university’s president, Linda G. Mills, and its provost, Georgina Dopico, said in a letter to the campus on Monday that N.Y.U. was working to “ensure the smoothest possible experience” for everyone.
Classes were expected to continue on Monday for more than 29,000 undergraduate students, with a “qualified substitute instructor” or “trained administrator” presiding over some classes, and with alternative plans being developed for others.
“Strikes are intended to be disruptive,” the letter said. “We ask for your patience as the plans we have made for academic continuity fall into place.”
Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for N.Y.U., added in a statement that the university had presented what he described as “a generous and comprehensive package that would improve the lives of every one of its members, including significant raises.”
“We respect our unionized contract faculty, but this strike is fundamentally unnecessary,” the statement from Mr. Norvell said. “We have a collective responsibility to our students, and the union owed it to them to pursue every option at the negotiating table before disrupting their education. They haven’t.”
The faculty members’ walkout is the first since they formed a union and began bargaining over compensation and work rules in 2024.
They began their strike several minutes after the university’s lawyers responded to the group’s final offer, and Mr. Hogan, the union spokesman, said that there was not time to review the latest counteroffer before a revised strike deadline of 11 a.m.
He said that the walkout would continue until the bargaining committee had reached terms that it wanted to present to the members for a ratification vote.
The current negotiating session had been going on for 26 hours, Mr. Hogan said around 11 a.m.
“There was a lot of 11th-hour back and forth between the bargaining committee and management,” he said. But “their response to our final proposal came to us at around 10:53 a.m., which did not leave enough time before the deadline for careful consideration.”
The strike was authorized by a vote in February that was approved by 90 percent of the members, the union said. On Monday, members led a booming chant: “What do we want? Contracts! When do we want them? Now!”
Mr. Hogan said that they were frustrated that they have shouldered 29 percent of the teaching burden at N.Y.U. but received only 2 percent of all the salaries paid to faculty members.
“We’re bearing all of the housing costs,” said Mr. Hogan, who teaches the history of philosophy. “But we’re making around 60 percent of what the tenure-track faculty are making.”
Maria Hodermarska, 64, was in the picket line on Monday with a whistle around her neck and a handmade sign that read “I’m union made, born proud.” She said the sign invoked her many relatives who were part of unions, including her grandfather, a Slovak immigrant, and her father, a World War II combat veteran, both of whom worked at General Motors.
Ms. Hodermarska, who teaches graduate students in the drama therapy program at the N.Y.U. Steinhardt School, said that she hoped the strike might yield better living conditions.
To support herself, she said, “I’ve had to work at least two jobs, and I’ve taught at N.Y.U. for 30 years.”
Mr. Norvell, the university spokesman, said that N.Y.U. had offered pay increases that would lift starting salaries for assistant professors above $90,000 a year, the highest at any private university in the country.
N.Y.U. estimates that the total cost of attendance exceeds $100,000 a year for undergraduate students.
The school’s administrators had been planning for the strike and had asked other instructors to cover classes taught by those who were striking.
Some of the faculty members on strike questioned whether the university would be able to provide the instruction that the students required, especially those expecting to graduate this spring, without the union’s members. Some faculty members have students who are writing senior theses that will be due in mid-April.
David Markus, who teaches expository writing, walked out of his class Monday morning and was joined by several students. He said that there was “no possible way this university can continue business as normal.”
“It is a complete and utter illusion,” he said. “They are jeopardizing the academic mission of this university through their actions.”
Patrick McGeehan is a Times reporter who covers the economy of New York City and its airports and other transportation hubs.
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