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Dear colleague,
You may have received an email today from Rutgers Chief Financial Officer Mike Gower (see below) announcing a pension rate waiver from the state for our postdoc members, which will lower overall fringe rates and benefit our research at Rutgers. While we’re glad that the administration is following the state’s directive—and that Gower credited faculty, staff, and our collective AAUP-AFT and AAUP-BHSNJ union advocacy—they have yet to explain why they disregarded a waiver that the state agreed to 14 years ago and what happened to the money charged to your grants since then.
As we told you in April, we learned during discussions with the governor’s office that the state had waived the collection of postdoc retirement contributions in a 2010 memo (read the memo here), but the administration seems to have been collecting them anyway (for at least the past five years). The final cost of this overcharge is unclear, but it could be in excess of $30 million over those five years alone—and we still don’t know where the money went.
To be clear, those postdocs who are eligible for the ABP retirement benefit will still get it, but our grants at Rutgers will no longer be charged for that portion of the fringe rate.
We asked you to send emails to Gower, President Jonathan Holloway, and Senior Vice President for Research Michael Zwick demanding that they immediately stop collecting the pension portion of the fringe for postdocs. Thanks to everyone who did—you helped get Rutgers to do the right thing! But we also want an explanation for why tens of millions of dollars were wrongly collected.
When we enforce our contracts and other university agreements, like this one from 2010, we can build a sustainable research and learning environment that recognizes and values the contributions of all our members—faculty, postdocs, grad workers, and staff.
This immediate fix will bring some relief and security, but our work on the fringe rate isn’t over. We are seeking a similar fix so that faculty and staff aren’t overcharged for a pension program they aren’t part of. That would mean an 8 percent cap on retirement charges. And all fixes to the fringe rate, current and future, must be applied across all funding sources—federal and nonfederal alike.
But we’re glad our union mobilization won some immediate relief for Principal Investigators overseeing grants, now that Gower has promised to stop overcharging for postdoc positions and return the funds to your research programs.
In solidarity,
Rutgers AAUP-AFT and AAUP-BHSNJ
Administration Message on the Postdoc Fringe Waiver
To: Rutgers Faculty and Staff
Subject: FY 24 and FY 25 Fringe Benefit Rates
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to inform you that exciting progress has been made to help make our fringe rates more competitive with those of our Big Ten and other peers. Thanks to the advocacy efforts of our staff and faculty and that of the AAUP-AFT, the State of New Jersey has agreed to a pension rate waiver for postdoctoral associates employed by Rutgers starting on July 1, 2023. This decision will help reduce overall costs and support our research enterprise.
While we are excited and encouraged by this decision, we know more progress must be made. We will keep advocating for lower fringe rates to ensure Rutgers remains competitive.
We are currently working on steps for reimbursing units for the waived costs they have incurred for postdoctoral employee fringe rates since July 1, 2023. Those plans will be distributed soon.
We hope you are as encouraged by this news as we are.
Sincerely,
J. Michael Gower
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and University Treasurer
Michael E. Zwick
Senior Vice President for Research, Institutional Official