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Three unions representing Rutgers University professors, clinicians and graduate workers overwhelmingly approved new contracts, labor leaders announced Monday, three weeks after ending the first strike in the school’s 257-year history.
The contracts were ratified by 93% of membership in the three unions, which represent 9,000 workers at Rutgers’ campuses in Newark, Camden and New Brunswick-Piscataway. The unions touted the agreements for securing new raises and unprecedented wins in job security for part-time professors, medical faculty and graduate students.
Monday’s vote ends more than 10 months of negotiations that shut down most classes on the university’s three campuses during a weeklong strike in April.
“This vote is the culmination of months of intense efforts by so many people who walked the picket lines and organized with their colleagues,” said Rebecca Givan, president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents full-time faculty, graduate workers and postdoctoral associates, in a joint statement from the unions.
“Because of this commitment by our members, we made major gains in these contracts, especially for the most vulnerable and lowest-paid of the people we represent,” the statement said. “We didn’t win everything we wanted. But what we did achieve is a testament to all of us, and we’re proud of it.”
“We are pleased that the university and our faculty union members have agreed to four-year contracts that provide substantial salary increases for full-time faculty, graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and others,” Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway said in a statement. “With the union members’ ratification announced today, the approved contracts also include new compensation programs for our medical school faculty and provide both salary increases and job security for our part-time lecturers, who will now be referred to as ‘lecturers.’ “
Members of three faculty unions began voting Thursday on the proposed four-year agreements, which were drawn up by the university and union leaders with the help of Gov. Phil Murphy’s office. After keeping his distance from the dispute for nearly a year, Murphy intervened in April once the strike began on April 10 and called both sides to Trenton to work with mediators in April. That was instrumental in breaking the impasse between unions and the university, both sides have said.
Though Murphy signaled the state’s willingness to provide financial support to back the new contracts, his office has refused to disclose to the media how much the new agreements will cost state taxpayers. Rutgers, which receives the largest amount of higher-education funding from the state as its flagship university, was facing a deficit of around $125 million for a $5.1 billion budget in the 2023 budget due to the end of one-time pandemic relief funds, a 24% rise in costs of health benefits, and declining enrollment and inflation, President Jonathan Holloway informed students in February.
More:Rutgers deal could be ‘game-changer’ across U.S. as part-time faculty win protections
Leaders of the AAUP-AFT, which represents tenured professors and graduate workers; the adjunct faculty union, which represents part-time lecturers; and the AAUP-BHSNJ, which represents medical faculty, voted April 30, to approve contract terms, triggering the next step of a vote by their full memberships.
What the new contracts include
Union leaders cited several victories in the proposed contracts:
- The lowest-paid faculty won raises amounting to nearly 14% over four years for part-time or adjunct lecturers, and nearly 33% for graduate workers.
- Graduate workers won raises bringing their salary up from around $30,000 in the first year to $40,000 in the fourth year of their contracts. Graduate workers starting Ph.D.s in 2024 won a commitment from the university to fund them through five years of research.
- Contracts for non-tenure-track part-time faculty will be “presumptively” renewed and for longer terms, meaning the educators no longer have to renew contracts every semester.
- Medical faculty won parental leave and tenure-like contracts, which the unions said will give them more time with their students and research, as opposed to focusing primarily on patient care.
- Graduate fellows will be reclassified as teaching and graduate assistants and are eligible for benefits included in those positions.
- Researchers whose work was disrupted by the COVID-19 health emergency get an extension year to complete.
A total of 15,000 workers at Rutgers are represented by unions, some of which are still negotiating their contracts with the administration. The three faculty unions announced the results of the vote at a news conference Monday in New Brunswick.
Dio Tsitouras, who heads the medical faculty union, hailed the “historic wins” at the news conference.
“This university is unfortunately very anti-union,” he said. “People said we weren’t going to be able to do it. But in this contract, when our doctors weren’t treating patients, they were at the picket lines.”
Faculty union members also approved a proposal asking for a voluntary contribution to the new Rutgers Beloved Community Fund, named for a phrase invoked by Holloway during his inauguration two years ago referring to Rutgers as a “beloved community.” The fund was “one of several social justice initiatives proposed by the unions to center and benefit Rutgers students and the communities surrounding the university’s campuses,” the unions said in Monday’s statement.
Rent freezes on campus student housing, a common good initiative pushed by the unions, did not make the final contract. The rising housing costs on campus were driving up rents in New Brunswick, said Germania Hernandez, a member of New Labor, a labor advocacy group that represents large numbers of hourly-wage and undocumented workers in the area.
“The rent is so high, people are getting evicted. And Rutgers keeps raising their rent which impacts the community as well, so people have to work more than one job,” even if its paying $14 to $15 an hour to keep living there, Hernandez said.
Union leaders earlier criticized Holloway for “shamefully” withdrawing support for the fund when the final contract was negotiated. Murphy’s office has committed $600,000 to the initiative.
The university has “strengthened its commitment to financially help students in need in recent years and will continue to build on a robust program to aid students in need,” said spokesperson Dory Devlin, responding to a request for comment on why Rutgers pulled out of contributing to the fund. Union leaders said Monday that the university “reneged” on committing $250,000 to the community fund.
Additional new contracts sought
Other unions that are still negotiating their contracts with Rutgers urged the university Monday to settle on an agreement with them.
“Our demands are not unreasonable and many are not economic,” said Christine O’Connell, president of the URA-AFT, Union of Rutgers Administrators, which represents employees in administrative positions who work in non-teaching jobs. The union is asking for a permanent telework policy and opportunities for career advancement for long term employees as well as economic demands.
“Rutgers grew its unrestricted funds by hundreds of dollars during the pandemic. They received additional millions in federal relief. Instead of paying their workers, they hoard … Rutgers should not want continued labor strikes,” O’Connell said.
URA-AFT announced in April that it initiated a formal process to gauge interest in a strike from its members during the week long faculty walk-out.
Union membership in the Adjunct Faculty union increased from 43% to 54%, with 97% of the group’s members voting to approve the contract, said union leader Amy Higer.
“Its the highest we’ve ever had,” she said, referring to the bump in the number of adjunct union members in recent weeks.
As many as 6,000 workers from at least five other university unions, including medical residents, were still waiting for progress on their contracts, AAUP-AFT general president Todd Wolfson said Monday, noting that their work was still not over.
“We need to keep two things in balance here,” he said, against what he called the university’s “corporate model” and the faculty unions’ “step forward” in fighting and winning a contract “on the offensive.”
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