March 25, 2026
TL;DR
Our united bargaining team presented management with a summary of our major contract goals and formally put “across the table” our Article 3, Recognition.
Highlights of the Session
The summary we presented to management on March 25 highlighted some of the proposals the Unions will advance in bargaining.
Briefly:
- One Union – All persons performing unit work should be in the same unit and enjoy comparable compensation, benefits, and security.
- The unions seek to represent in a single bargaining unit: full-time faculty, librarians, part-time faculty, counselors, post-doctoral fellows, teaching assistants, graduate assistants, and other doctoral students, i.e., all employees, whose primary responsibilities are teaching and student support, research/scholarship, clinical care, and counseling EOF students.
- This aim was formally proposed to management in our Recognition Article 3.
- Promoting and Stabilizing the Research Mission of the University
- Central funding; bridge funding
- Waiver of doctoral student tuition for 5 years
- Extending Job Security to All Bargaining Unit Members
- End the precarity of lecturers and clinicians by including them in the NTT article 27
- Reframe “presumptively renewable” appointments as “continuous appointments.”
- Extend AAUP-AFT legacy tenured faculty tenure protections to BHSNJ tenure faculty
- Improve the rigor of grievance processes for non- reappointments
- Supporting Doctoral Students/Grad Workers
- Throughout their doctoral program, graduate students shall be represented by the AAUP-AFT.
- Provide five years of funding
- Artificial Intelligence and Educational Technology– Guardrails and Protections
- Establish a joint union-administration Education Technology Committee (ETC)
- Ed-technology shall not be used by the University to reduce the need for full-time or part-time faculty
- Enhancing Equality and Diversity
- Add caste as a protected category.
- Strengthen protections for trans and gender non-conforming members
- ADA-compliant process for requesting reasonable accommodations
- Increased support for caregivers.
- Patent Policy and Intellectual Property
- Expand protections for the intellectual property of faculty
- Finances and Budget
- Joint union-administration committee to study alternative budget models
- Transparency
- Compensation and Pay Equity
- Annual salary increases that at least keep pace with inflation.
- TA/GA salaries to at least $52,000
- Uninterrupted health benefits for TAs and GAs
- RBHS faculty compensation is competitive with national salary benchmarks
- Additional increases to the salaries of the lowest-paid
- Provide lecturers with pay parity based on full-time NTT salaries (Fractional Appointments)
- Academic Freedom
- Union Rights and Contract Enforcement
- Expand the binding arbitration of grievances
- Expand the right to be accompanied by a union representative
- Expand challenges to decisions involving tenure track non-reappointments and promotion denials.
- Include legacy BHSNJ NTTs in the process for challenging negative personnel decisions
- International Members
- RU to pay all filing fees for visas and green cards
- Grant international faculty and doctoral students leaves of absence for immigration issues
- Health and Safety and Infrastructure
- Establish a Joint Union-Administration Committee (GSHC) to evaluate the condition of graduate student housing and other infrastructure
Mark your calendar!
The next session is scheduled for Thursday, April 9, from 10 am to 2 pm
Other Upcoming Events
Click here for a full calendar: https://rutgersaaup.org/events/
Our Bargaining Team
| Austin | Rooney | Camden | Philosophy & Religion |
| Beth | Adubato | Newark | School of Criminal Justice |
| Bryan | Sacks | Camden | Philosophy & Religion |
| David | Letwin | College Ave-NB | Rutgers Arts Online |
| Howie | Swerdloff | Cook-NB | Labor Studies & Employee Relat |
| Boris | Paskhover | Newark | Otolaryngology (NJMS) |
| Catherine | Monteleone | RWJMS-NB | Medicine |
| Claire | O’Connell | Busch-Nb | School Of Health Professions |
| Cynthia | Sutton | RSDM-Newark | RSDM Diagnostic |
| Jeff | Levine | College Ave-NB | Family Medicine (RWJ) |
| Josh | Bucher | College Ave-NB | Emergency Medicine (RWJ) |
| Kathleen | Beebe | Newark | Orthopaedics (NJMS) |
| Melissa | Rogers | Newark | Microbiology (NJMS) |
| Pankaj | Agarwalla | Newark | Neurosurgery (NJMS) |
| Rula | Btoush | Newark | School of Nursing |
| Stephan | Schwander | NB Piscataway | SPH |
| Tessa | Bergsbaken | Newark | Immunity & Inflammation (NJMS) |
| LaToya | Gibbons | Camden | Enrollment & Student Success |
| Miguel | Rodriguez | College Ave-NB | School of Arts and Sciences |
| Adrian | Liu | College Ave-NB | Philosophy |
| Alexander | Steiner | RCI | Radiation Oncology |
| Annika | Barber | Busch-NB | Microbiology |
| Becky | Givan | Cook-NB | Labor Studies & Employee Relat |
| Britt | Paris | College Ave-NB | Library & Information Science |
| Bryan | Oller | Newark | Physics |
| Carlos | Decena | Livingston-NB | Latino & Hispanic Caribbean St |
| Chidera | Ntiwunka-Ifeanyi | Busch-NB | Biomedical Engineering |
| Emily | Marker | Camden | History |
| Ian | Oiler | Newark | Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine/Earth and Environmental Sciences |
| Kathy | Lopez | Camden | Public Policy |
| Kyle | Riismandel | Newark | History |
| Lee | Carpenter | Camden | Law School |
| Lily | Todorinova | Douglass-NB | New Brunswick Library |
| Paul | O’Keefe | Livingston-NB | Geography |
| Season | Qiu | Newark | Molecular And Behavioral Neuroscience |
| Tara | Matise | Busch-NB | Genetics |
| Heather | Pierce | College Ave-NB | Political Science |
| Luis | Soto | Livingston-NB | Criminal Justice |