We R Strike Ready
Unions Representing Most of Rutgers’ Faculty Have Put a Work Stoppage on the Table
Rutgers is one of the nation’s largest public universities. Depending on the source, its overall enrollment ranks some where between third and 12 among all public institutions. There are nearly 70,000 undergraduate and graduate students and rough,y 8,000 faculty members, plus thousands of other employees. Rutgers is the state’s second largest employer, a driver of major research in the sciences, and a leader in many educational categories.
Rutgers also has not experienced a faculty strike in its 257-year history.
That could change in the next several weeks unless management realizes that the unions are serious about making real change in the way faculty — especially contingent faculty — are treated. The Rutgers chapter of the AAUP-AFT, which represents tenured and tenure-track professors, non-tenure-tract instructors, and graduate student workers, among others, and the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union (PTLFC-AAUP-AFT), which represent part-time faculty, voted overwhelmingly to strike. The 10-day voting period produced a supermajority of members voting yes, which now means union leadership has the threat of a strike in our tool box.
I’m a member of the adjunct union executive board — New Brunswick Campus vice president— and I voted yes to authorize a strike. I did so because it is clear management has been content with a status quo of incremental change at a time when higher Ed is facing a crisis. The crisis is one of contingency and corporate/consumer culture, one that subjected our chief missions — education, research, and the creation of a learning community that includes everyone — to the prerogatives of the finance sector.
This was the subtext of university president Jonathan Holloway’s budget speech this month and the unfortunate email he sent out to the university community. He argued for austerity and conservative budgeting, talked of sacrifice (easy when you’re pulling down six figure or more), dressed up an insulting offer as fair, and ignore the main points of our arguments. Rutgers, he argued, is facing fiscal peril.
This, quite frankly, is bull shit. Rutgers has the money. It just chooses to genuflect to the bond holders, to build its sports franchises, and develop its real estate portfolio.
Rutgers has the money. It just has misplaced priorities. It can lead higher education out of its contingency crisis, but it has deemed our demands — an end to the pay gap, job security for adjuncts, grad workers, and non-tenure faculty, health care for all, and respect for everyone who makes Rutgers work — “complicated,” to use Holloway’s language.
It’s not complicated. Or it shouldn’t be. Fairness should not be a complicated goal, especially if fairness is the stated mission — to create a “beloved community” — of the university president.
Below is the release we sent to news media:
Rutgers Educators Vote 93 Percent to Authorize First-Ever Strike
Rutgers Educators Vote to Authorize First-Ever Strike
Two Unions Vote 93 Percent in Favor of a Strike if Necessary to Win a Fair Contract
NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—Members of the two unions representing Rutgers University faculty, graduate workers, and others voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if the administration fails to negotiate fair contracts to replace ones that expired over eight months ago.
Over 93 percent of Rutgers AAUP-AFT and Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union members voted “yes” in a 10-day email ballot asking if they would empower union leadership bodies to call a strike if they think one is necessary to achieve the unions’ goals for new labor agreements. Eighty percent of the combined memberships participated.
If one is called, this would be the first strike of Rutgers educators in the university’s 257-year history. The authorization vote came after more than nine months of bargaining produced no agreement on contract proposals the unions made last spring. Union leaders say the Rutgers administration has been dragging its feet in negotiations, not even responding to some proposals and making inadequate counter-proposals on others.
Rebecca Givan, president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral associates, and counselors, said a “yes” vote wouldn’t make a work stoppage inevitable, but “the ball is in their court. The administration can decide to keep us in our classrooms, labs, and libraries if they respond with serious offers that meet the urgent needs we’ve identified with our contract proposals. But if they continue to drag their feet, our members are fed up with being disrespected and dismissed.”
Givan said the administration’s latest proposal on salaries last week only sharpened the anger of members. The offer—for a 2.5 to 3 percent raise each year for four years—amounts to a salary cut after accounting for inflation. In keeping with other contract campaigns in higher education, the unions are seeking significant additional pay increases for graduate workers and adjunct faculty, who make less than a living wage in one of the most expensive regions of the country. But the administration has so far ignored proposals to address these inequities.
Amy Higer, president of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, which represents so-called Part-Time Lecturers, said that the administration “relies on adjunct faculty members who teach tens of thousands of students every semester. The fact that Rutgers won't even discuss our key proposal for job security—which would end the practice of making us reapply for our jobs every semester and provide long-serving adjuncts with multi-year appointments—tells us so much about their priorities. We don't want to strike. But after eight months without a contract, that might be the only way to get Rutgers to take our demands seriously.”
Liana Katz, vice president for graduate workers in Rutgers AAUP-AFT, pointed out that President Jonathan Holloway said in a recent university-wide email that he supports “fair, reasonable, and responsible” union contracts. “We think it is fair, reasonable, and responsible to pay grad workers a living wage and provide them with the support they need to successfully perform their jobs,” Katz said. “The vast majority of our members have told us they are willing to take the difficult step of going on strike to win these demands and so much more.”
A dozen unions representing some 15,000 workers at Rutgers have been without contracts since last summer. Members of Rutgers AAUP-AFT and the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union closed their vote on strike authorization today. Another union, AAUP-BHSNJ, which represents medical faculty at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences schools and facilities, began its own strike authorization vote earlier this week. Other Rutgers unions may follow suit.
Heather Pierce, a Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union Executive Board member, has been part of the union’s bargaining team. ”I’ve dedicated my life to being a good educator and mentor to my amazing Rutgers students, so to sit across the table from management week after week for nine months and have them treat us like we have no value here has been a truly demoralizing and insulting experience,” Pierce said.
Howie Swerdloff, the Adjunct Union secretary and also part of the bargaining team, echoed Pierce’s point. "I've been sitting in negotiations for the past nine months, remembering what President Holloway said about ‘building a new relationship with labor’ and wondering why Rutgers is being so obstinate about even acknowledging the legitimacy of our proposals,” Swerdloff said.
K. Sebastian Leon, an assistant professor of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies and member of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT Executive Board, stressed that the unions’ proposals are intended for the “common good” of everyone, including students and the communities that surround the campuses.
“Management would like us to view ourselves as compartmentalized and siloed categories of worker ‘types,’” Leon said. “By centering the common good and the local community, we are better able to see the interdependence and shared needs across Rutgers employees, students, and community members. If the administration is committed to a contract that is ‘fair, reasonable, and responsible,’ then they should look no further than our union proposals.”
Negotiations are expected to continue next week with all unions bargaining contracts, during spring break at Rutgers.
For more background, see these media statements:
Unions Representing Rutgers Educators Launch Vote on Strike Authorization
Rutgers Unions Ask: Millions for Coaches, Nothing for Professors and Staff?
Rutgers Unions to Rally for Fair Contracts: “All We’ve Heard in Negotiations Is No”
To read union contract proposals and the administration’s responses (if any), see this page for Rutgers AAUP-AFT, this page for the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and this page for AAUP-BHSNJ.
Solidarity, my friend.