TL;DR
Our unified bargaining team met with management in Newark on August 3 to discuss Article 30B (School of Nursing Workload). At the start of the session, management sent back a counter that not only struck the majority of the union’s proposal, just as they did to the School of Health Professions (SHP) proposal at the bargaining session on July 30, but also rolled back the class-size protections for asynchronous courses already in the contract. We pushed back and spent most of the session sharing member testimonials about the necessity for reasonable workloads and a faculty-led workload committee.
Highlights of the Session
Management’s counterproposal:
During the prior School of Nursing session, the administration rejected all of Article 30b without offering any productive or substantive suggestions for addressing faculty concerns. After we pressed for a real counter and refused to meet until they provided something that addressed our members’ workload concerns, management sent us a counterproposal at the beginning of this session that continued to strike out most of the substantive elements of our proposal. Not only that, but management struck language that was already in place, removing current class-size limits for asynchronous courses. In other words, management’s proposal is regressive – it would be worse than the current contract language.
Member Testimonials on School of Nursing Workload Concerns
Nine faculty members from the School of Nursing shared testimonials. In their testimonials, faculty spoke to many issues, including the following concerns that the Union’s proposal seeks to address:
- The need for class size limits to protect the quality of education for students and address workload and burnout concerns for faculty
- The need for a workload committee to develop clear definitions and metrics for workload and address emerging workload issues.
Lisa Easley (Clinical Assistant Professor) explained the value of having a reasonable size for in-person undergraduate courses when preparing nursing students for future clinical success:
“(Smaller class size is) not simply a faculty issue, it’s a student success issue, it’s a workforce issue, and ultimately a patient safety issue. The students sitting in our classrooms today will soon be caring for patients, families, and communities. They will be making critical decisions during some of life’s most vulnerable moments.
The quality of their preparation matters. Smaller class sizes are not a luxury, it’s an essential component of preparing the next generation of professional nurses. As we negotiate the number of students in a didactic classroom, class size must be recognized as a quality of education issue, a workload issue, and again, a patient safety issue.”
Margaret Quinn (Clinical Professor) spoke on the need for a faculty-led workload committee:
“Faculty must remain the primary drivers of curriculum and academic standards. Workload decisions cannot be based solely on classroom contact hours, enrollment targets, or financial considerations. They must account for the full scope of teaching, clinical competency evaluation, online instruction, course and program leadership, curriculum development, student support, and the increasing complexity of professional nursing education.
This is not only a faculty workload issue. It is an issue of educational quality, student success, professional standards, and patient safety. The union must advocate for enforceable workload protections and a transparent, faculty-led process that recognizes the actual work required to educate safe, competent nurses and advanced practice nurses.”
Suzan Ahmad (Assistant Clinical Professor) described why online asynchronous courses benefited from class size caps:
“Capping graduate online courses at 20 students is not about faculty convenience. It is an evidence-based quality threshold required across all our graduate courses to protect students’ comprehension, maintain academic standards, and keep faculty workload sustainable. Finally, we have intelligent students and great programs. Our students deserve a great education, so we need to create a learning experience that fits our intelligent students and reflects the excellence of our programs.”
Next steps:
Our unified bargaining team will meet to plan a strong response to management’s regressive and aggressive counterproposal. The School of Nursing’s fight is everybody’s fight! We will need to organize and fight to protect what we won in the past at the School of Nursing, let alone win stronger workload protections across the university.
Mark your calendar!
Our next scheduled session is on Friday, August 7, from 9a.m-1p.m.
Other Upcoming Events
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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 Relations |
| 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 Relations |
| 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 |