The strike is off, for now. But the efforts to remake Rutgers continues.
As I wrote Saturday, the unions representing striking workers voted to accept a contract framework in exchange for pausing the strike before it entered its second week. We paused to let students get back to classes. To let them finish their semester, their careers at Rutgers.
The framework includes a 14% raise over four years for full-time faculty, a 33% pay increase for grads over four years, a 25.5% bump for post-docs, and a 48% increase for adjuncts; multi-semester contracts for adjuncts, presumptive renewal of contracts, recognition of graduate fellows as grad workers, changes in grievance and evaluations procedures, and five-year funding for grads. The framework also includes elements of the “Bargaining for the Common Good” agenda: a $600,000 recurring Community Fund and the end of the university policy that prevents students from registering for classes or getting transcripts or diplomas due to unpaid fines and fees, and a Union-University-Community table.
Much of this is historic, but it’s still a work in progress. The clinicians, researchers, and professors represented by BHSNJ-AAUP have nothing from administration, and more needs to be done for grads, for students and the community, and for adjuncts.
That was the message Monday afternoon as about 100 picketers gathered and chanted, reminding the community and the press that the battle to end the corporatization on higher ed continues — both here in New Jersey and nationally — continues.
Picketers carried strike signs with the word “suspended” stapled above “On Strike.” We marched intro of Scott Hall on College Avenue chanting, “The strike may be suspended. The struggle hasn’t ended.” We did his despite the cold win blowing own College Avenue as students looked on. We have more actions planned this week, part of a rolling set of protests designed to keep our issues in front of the public and to maintain pressure on an administration that failed to take us seriously until we walked and the governor got involved.
I told NBC New York that we could reinstate the strike if management fails to play ball. A threat? Idle talk? I’ll leave it at that. But we’re not going away. We’re not backing down.