President
Rebecca Givan
Associate Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations
As union vice-president for the past two years, I have partnered with Todd Wolfson to build on and implement the gains from our last collective bargaining agreement, when our union centered equity, security and dignity. When the pandemic hit in 2020, we immediately turned to protecting the health and safety of our members and protecting the most vulnerable among us from the university’s cruel and unnecessary layoffs and cuts. We worked with the Coalition of Rutgers Unions to build a Rutgers that works for all of us. We’re proud to have achieved the recent agreement that suspends layoffs, allows programs to hire part-time lecturers according to their needs, and provides funding extensions for grads. But these provisions are not sufficient. We must continue to fight to improve on this agreement and ensure that we return to a safe campus. We’ll also continue to demand that our pay equity program is implemented in a way that finally achieves equity for all who have been underpaid, whether because of their campus or their identity. We have much work to do, and we are ready to organize in solidarity and build a strong union as we fight for our next contract.
General Vice President
Todd Wolfson
Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Media Studies
Over the last two years it has been my honor to serve as president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT. I have worked closely with union VP Becky Givan and a host of amazing leaders from our faculty and grads to our postdocs and EOF counselors. Our goals in the last two years were to build on our recent contract victory. To do that we aimed to strengthen our department rep infrastructure, deepen our collaboration with the Coalition of Rutgers Unions, grow our leadership, build in the communities where we work, and fight for a people-centered response to the pandemic. On each of these fronts we made critical progress. Most recently we reached agreement with the university and forced them to shift from a punitive approach to the pandemic to our people-centered approach. In this agreement we secured an end to staff layoffs through the beginning of 2022, a process to hire back part-time lecturers, a funded extension program for TA/GAs and other doctoral students and we won back our raises, which the university was intent on cancelling. We have more work to do, and a critical contract fight in the near future, and I would be honored to continue this work.
Secretary-Treasurer
Katherine Lloyd
Graduate Worker, Chemistry
My name is Katherine Alexandria Lloyd. I am a second year Ph.D. student in the Chemistry department on the Newark Campus. I started to get involved in the union when the University unofficially stopped research back in March. At that time, students felt isolated and alone because information about what was going on was not reaching them, their daily lives doing research was halted, and their social and personal lives were deeply affected. I found a community in the Union at that time. For over a year now, I have worked with the union on several committees, such as Media and Narrative Committee and in elected positions such as the elected member of the Graduate Steering Committee and the Executive Council of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT. During that year, I learned how to be an organizer and work towards increasing the membership density for graduate students on the Newark campus while tackling with many issues and concerns faced by the graduate student workers and faculty. During the fiscal emergency period, we have been fighting for graduate students’ extension, no layoffs for the wider university workers and part-time faculty as well as health and safety measures for all workers in the university with our faculty colleagues. Outside of the union, I was also the secretary of the Graduate Student Governing Association before I became president last November. I want to continue being a voice for graduate student workers in this new position, represent faculty and graduate student workers in this union with a social justice unionism approach more proactively and to be more involved in the community that I love.
Vice President for Tenure Track Faculty
Carlos Decena
Associate Professor, Latino and Caribbean Studies/Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
As Vice President for Tenure Track Faculty, I will be a strong advocate for the needs and concerns of my colleagues, with special consideration of the challenges faced by junior colleagues as they navigate their early years in the professoriate with the intricacies of our institutional life. I have a record of demonstrated commitment to push for conditions that allow us to excel in our scholarship as well as to our students and to the communities we serve, but this newly-minted position will also be an opportunity for me to listen, be in dialogue, and formulate proposals to leadership that are attuned to your needs. I am eager to listen and learn from your questions, critiques, and suggestions. I will be a champion for all though with special eagerness to learn from and support women and scholars of color at all ranks and by paying special attention to the differentiated challenges and needs that characterize tenure-track faculty work in Newark, New Brunswick, and Camden. It will be an honor to serve, and I thank you in advance for your vote.
Vice President for Non-Tenure Track Faculty
Carla Katz
Assistant Teaching Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations
Fighting for the rights of working people and building strong, effective unions that truly serve all members has been my life’s work. I became involved with our faculty union at Rutgers on my very first day in 2011 and have served our union since. I am presently the incumbent Chapter President, and I am proud of the work of our union and all our devoted members. I was on the team at the bargaining table during our last several contract negotiations and we made groundbreaking improvements for NTT faculty. We have much more work to do. Centering NTT issues and continuing the progress we’ve made in the fight to achieve teaching tenure and establish equal status with all of our colleagues will continue to be my passion. I started my career as a labor union organizer for CWA, and ultimately became the President of a CWA local representing 16,000 public and private sector workers. I am also a labor attorney representing workers and unions. Before becoming full-time faculty in 2011, I taught at Rutgers as a PTL for 12 years. I presently teach Collective Bargaining and Negotiations, and Labor and Employment Law. As you know, we have much more organizing to do and many fights underway. I hope to continue to serve the membership of our union as Vice President for Non-Tenure Track faculty.
Vice President for Graduate Workers
Alexandra Adams (updated candidate’s statement below)
Graduate Worker, Biological Sciences
If you’re someone that’s been very connected to our union in recent years, you may know me as one of the Executive Council members, one of the first elected grad steering committee members, one of the founders and chairs of Rutgers Grads United and the International Student Working Group, or the co-chair of the bargaining team during our recent negotiations with Rutgers management over the (retracted) fiscal emergency, which won an agreement that saved jobs and opened up an avenue for grads to receive an extension of their funding to cover time lost during the pandemic. If you’re from Newark, you may know me as a strike captain during the last contract campaign, department representative to the union, facilitator of the biology student leadership, or GSGA’s union rep. Working with grads, for grads has been a passion of mine for my entire tenure at Rutgers. It’s also been my pleasure to represent the needs of grads with clarity to the greater union so that we can most effectively fight for them. It would be an honor to continue this work in the highest level position that existed within our union, as the Vice President for Graduate Workers.
Danyel Ferrari
Graduate Worker, School of Journalism and Media Studies
My name is Danyel Ferrari, I am a grad worker in Media Studies at New Brunswick. I am running for this position because I believe in our unions ability to demand Rutgers live up to its mission as a public university to support its students, provide living wages to its workers, and contribute to the common good. In 2018 I started as department rep for MS Grads and then ran as EC Grad representative in 2019. As an active Executive Council member and current Co-Chair of our union’s Media Committee I have worked with faculty, graduate students, postdocs, librarians, and counselors, the many kinds of workers who form our union and have seen how powerful this kind of shared work is. Working collaboratively in the midst of the pandemic to address the threats facing international students, the challenges of transitioning online, and the immense pressures facing the students we teach, has showed me the best of Rutgers and also the immense work we have ahead. This new role of Vice President for Graduate Workers will liaise between union leadership, elected grad officials, and rank-and-file members to help bring grad worker concerns to leadership. I hope to continue this work as VP in the coming year, I will advance graduate interests in contract negotiations, like expanding Covid relief extensions, and unionizing the growing rank of unaligned Co-ad or Instructional Assistant workers. Please vote for me when polls open, and feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
Vice President for Postdoctoral Associates
Althea Pestine-Stevens
Postdoctoral Associate, School of Social Work
I am running for the position of Vice President for Postdoctoral Associates and Fellows to be a voice for postdocs among the community of Rutgers unions. As a postdoctoral associate in the School of Social Work, my research on community collaborations for aging in place has solidified my perspective that working together across diverse levels of experience and expertise benefits all. I have been an Executive Committee member for the New Brunswick chapter since last fall, and a member of the postdoc bargaining committee since arriving in September 2019. I am thrilled that this position has been created; as short-term employees spread throughout the University, I want to empower postdocs to connect with the greater Rutgers community and advocate for the well-being of all employees. Representation is a first step towards achieving these goals. I will work to build solidarity across all job classifications and address the concerns of all Rutgers workers and community members. It is particularly important to organize and build power together as we all prepare for the upcoming bargaining year. Though we may be here for only a few years, as early careers scholars, postdocs bring fresh energy that can be harnessed towards the collective good.
Vice President for EOF Counselors
Shornna Berkeley
Senior Counselor, SAS EOF
Mrs. Berkeley earned a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. While working at Rutgers as counselor for the New Jersey Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) Program, she has dedicated her career to the service of students as well as ensuring that her fellow EOF counselors are treated fairly and with respect of the position they uphold serving the EOF population. With this in mind, she has continued to work with the union as a member of EC as well as on negotiation teams and labor management meetings. She has assisted in advocating for the EOF program with both university management and NJ state representatives and has done so for over 10 years.