Our union represents more than 3,000 full-time faculty, both tenured/tenure track and non-tenure-track, along with graduate workers, postdoctoral associates, and EOF counselors. Rutgers full-time faculty were among the first in the country to unionize in 1970, soon after public-sector workers won the right to collective bargaining.
Contract
You can read the full text of the 2022–26 full-time faculty and graduate worker contract that our union ratified in Spring 2023. Click here to read highlights of the new contracts for all of our academic unions at Rutgers.
Know Your Contract, Know Your Rights
Our Contract Enforcement/Grievance team has compiled answers to the questions they hear most often about major provisions in our contract and university policies that may affect you. These questions and answers are your first stop if you want to know about your rights under our contract. Note: this FAQ does not yet reflect all the changes in our new contract, but you are still likely to find the answer to many of your questions here.
Grievance Procedures
Find out how our union helps faculty members find solutions to problems they face in the workplace—informal solutions if possible, but also through one of two negotiated grievance procedures.
Nine Reasons Full-Time Faculty Join Our Union
Our union is one of the strongest in US higher education, with a long history of accomplishments, including:
- Fair Salaries: A record of achieving strong salary increases for all, including lifting up lower-paid faculty members. The minimum salary for Non-Tenure Track faculty members has more than doubled in the past 10 years.
- Job Security: Contract provisions to protect NTT faculty, including presumptive renewal of appointments for veteran NTTs. Experienced support for tenure, promotion, and reappointment applications, and a strong grievance procedure to defend faculty.
- Control over Teaching and Working Conditions: Measures to ensure faculty role in university governance, including a revision of Infosilem/CourseAtlas to bring back faculty participation in scheduling.
- Strong Benefits: From access to the state health insurance program to caregiver support and protections against unsafe working conditions.
- Equity and Non-discrimination: Landmark Salary Equity Program to address pay inequities based on race, gender, campus, and other categories.
- Support for Research: Advocacy for university and New Jersey state policies that protect and promote research at Rutgers, including efforts to lower the inflated state fringe rate.
- United for Rutgers Educators: One of the few higher ed unions that unites full-time faculty, graduate workers, and postdocs, giving Rutgers AAUP-AFT more power to fight for all. Close coordination with adjunct and biomedical faculty unions and other unions representing workers at Rutgers.
- Member-Led Unionism: Commitment to member leadership in all aspects of the union and democratic decision-making.
- Social Justice and Support for Our Students: Actively building solidarity with our students and the communities around our campuses to achieve a better Rutgers for everyone.
We represent all full-time faculty, members or not, but we’re more effective fighting for everyone’s benefit and a better Rutgers when we organize together. If you haven’t joined your union yet, you can do so by clicking here.