Takeaway: If you haven’t yet filled out the union’s Issues and Actions Survey, please don’t wait. Click here to do it now. We need to hear from more of you, and the deadline is coming up Friday, November 20, at 5 p.m.
Dear colleague,
We wrote to you last week with some great news: we won our lawsuit to make management turn over the information we requested about the financial black hole known as Rutgers Athletics. Hopefully, we’ll be getting more answers later this week about how much money has been drained out of academics to pay for a losing investment on big-time college sports.
It’s nice to win one in this moment of crisis and uncertainty. The in-depth financial information we’ll get about the athletics program will help us to show that management’s layoffs, pay freezes, and damaging cuts are not necessary. Like we’ve said before: #RUHasTheMoney. But our power as a union doesn’t lie only—or even mostly—in speaking truth to management’s power. We need to act collectively.
How? What actions are we willing to take as a union? What do we think will work? This is why we sent you an Issues and Actions Survey earlier this month—so we can hear what each other thinks. Individually, we’ve heard a lot of anger about the layoffs, cuts, and intensifying workloads, but also uncertainty about what we can do about it. The only way to start answering that question is to talk to each other.
Todd made a video about what’s ahead for the union (watch it here if you haven’t seen it already and please share it with colleagues and friends). In it, he says, “I want to argue to all the amazing leaders and members of this union that there is no more important place to be right now and no more important work to do right now than the work within Rutgers AAUP-AFT.” We need you to fill out our survey to plan that work (responses are for internal use ONLY and will not be made public). Please take a minute right now to click here and take the survey.
In solidarity,
Todd and Becky
Todd Wolfson, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Rebecca Givan, Vice President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Rutgers AAUP-AFT Facebook page: https://facebook.com/RUaaup/
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Find the latest messages to members and union statements here.
Read how Rutgers AAUP-AFT is confronting the crisis here.