After we finally got management’s pay counter-offer—a 2.25 percent raise in the first year and 2 percent in the next three years, with raises deferred by six months each year and no extra boost for graduate workers to bring them closer to a living wage—we asked you what you thought of their proposal. Here are some excerpts from your comments.
“This is an outrage! Time for a strike to show them we’re serious.”
“This is simply an insulting proposal and makes abundantly clear that Rutgers treats its workers like the corporate overlords at Walmart or Amazon treat their workers. The next time I get recruited by another institution, I will seriously consider leaving Rutgers, where I had expected to spend my entire career. How should we respond? Go out on strike and shut down the entire university. Based on this proposal, I can’t see any other way.”
“The administration should be embarrassed to have submitted this proposal. It would be one of the stingiest contracts in recent memory and, as noted, would amount to a pay cut in real terms. A career at Rutgers should not mean a downward progression in purchasing power. And we know Rutgers can afford it!”
“I never ever want to hear a member of the Rutgers administration use the term ‘beloved community’ again. Talk about ‘conduct unbecoming’!”
“My husband and I are both faculty members at Rutgers New Brunswick. We have two young children, ages one and three. I know that many people are fully aware of the expenses associated with young children. However the pandemic has exacerbated this in ways that I do not think anyone without young children truly understands. Over the past three years, childcare costs at our daycare have increased by over $300 per month per child. This is consistent with all childcare centers in our area. We are now paying over $35,600 per year for PART-TIME childcare. This is over one-third of my husband’s and my combined post-tax income…My husband and I love our jobs so much, but we are currently looking for jobs in the private sector. We do not make enough money at Rutgers as assistant professors to raise a family. This is so disheartening to hear that the administration does not care to retain its faculty members by giving a fair raise.”
“Strikes around the country are leading the way for significant change. Rutgers needs to follow those examples of struggle.”
“The notion of a ‘beloved community’ is being thrown around by the administration, but deeds speak louder than words. Management’s offer is insulting and uncaring. We should organize and pressure. Nothing else—rational argument, good faith explanations—seems to work.”
“The proposed salary increases are insulting, and I’m sure many of the other tenured and tenure-track faculty agree with me that if they are not revised upwards, the best course of action will be to leave Rutgers for universities that understand how to adequately compensate their employees.”
“This is extremely disrespectful to all the workers who truly run the university! As a faculty member in Camden, this is yet another insult to all our hard work in an untenable situation. Deep budget cuts and added workload (let’s not mention the increasing layers of management that populate our campuses) will NEVER be the answer. SHAME on you. We see you. This will not stand.”
“Anything less than matching the rate of inflation represents a pay cut. We stepped up when COVID-19 hit our school, making sure our students were able to learn and graduate under even those difficult circumstances. It is disappointing to see that such efforts are going unrecognized in any substantive way by the administration.”
“This salary offer is insulting, both to me as faculty and looking at it as a parent of a prospective Rutgers student. I am a full professor on the Newark campus and am the only adult in my household. I find it hard to make ends meet at the moment with inflation running high, increased health care costs, and vastly increased expenditures as a result of pandemic fallout. But I am also concerned for our students. The fact that our contingent colleagues find it increasingly difficult to survive in this region will not only create existential problems for them but in the long run will mean that it will be so much harder to find engaged and highly qualified instructors. The quality of education suffers as a result, and management are shooting themselves in the foot with this lack of professionalism.
“As a graduate student, I quite literally CANNOT live on the salary provided for a TA/GA. Rutgers runs on TAs/GAs. How do you expect us to provide superb instruction to our students and high-level work in our GAships when we cannot afford to put food on our tables? When we regularly have to choose between paying rent or purchasing for our daily needs? This is shameful. You are forcing us to work in POVERTY CONDITIONS.”
“Laughable. Re-examine the cost-sharing pool. Stop hiring so many middle managers. Stop pouring money into failing athletics. Stop giving raises to chancellor office staff. The administration lacks any semblance of legitimacy—they don’t deserve to govern. They do not conduct themselves in a procedurally fair manner. Good luck getting tuition money for “special projects” when we are on strike.”
“This is what is meant by ‘beloved community’?!?! Clearly, President Holloway, you don’t care about us. All you care about is your image and brand, so that you can move on to a better job perhaps at an Ivy League school. Why have you appointed people like David Cohen to run bargaining otherwise?! He is a Chris Christie person. I was appalled to see his behavior at a bargaining session I observed. He has no respect for faculty and graduate students, and you know that.”
“Management’s proposal is outrageous. This year, for example, my parking permit cost increased 20 percent, and my health insurance cost is rising more than 20 percent. How is such a proposal not insulting?”
“I’m a full-time faculty member, and I’m already living like I did when I was a student because I can barely afford to live in this expensive area of the country on the salary that I have. My rent goes up every year, as do my utilities, insurance, food, gas, and, I might add, the many things that I buy out of my own pocket in order to do my job. Under this proposal, I will quickly go from ‘making ends meet’ to ‘in trouble.’”
“We should already be on strike. I’m completely disillusioned with the process, and I do not understand why the union is tolerating management’s outright disrespect for the people who do the teaching and research here. The severe real-dollars pay cut proposed by management would force me to find new employment elsewhere, so I have nothing to lose by going on strike at the earliest opportunity.”
“I am a female faculty member at Rutgers. I have worked here for almost 10 years. I am poignantly aware of the salary gap between myself and colleagues who were hired before me, as well as the very narrow gap between myself and brand new hires. Based on this proposal, these inequities will continue because RU believes that they should exist. This is a university that thrives in inequity. I’ve seen people my age leave, while top level administrators are cemented in their positions, making outrageous salaries. I am expecting a baby this year and will be actively looking for a new job because my education, expertise, and years of service at this institution are totally meaningless. I also, frankly, can’t afford to stay.”
“It is demoralizing to see this salary proposal–and also know, by the way, that our departments and units will be asked to pay for salary increases. We’ll be blamed for the little we get and told we are too ‘negative’ and complain too much. This is the Rutgers way: punish people for staying at this institution, repeat cycles of austerity and the same platitudes over and over, and mistreat workers, especially grad students and PTLs. I am embarrassed that I’ve stayed here for this long.”
“This proposal is insulting. Faculty responsibilities like research and teaching are at the core of our mission as a university. We are on the ground, day after day, working with students and pushing forward our research agendas in increasingly contested public terrain. At the same time, we are continually asked to do more with less. Yet this occurs alongside historic increases in administrative costs. We have more highly paid administrators than ever before. A quick look at my campus’ public pay data shows that the majority of the highest-paid individuals are administrators.”
“I have worked for the university as a faculty member for more than a decade, and I truly love what I do. At the same time, I recognize that I’m already ‘underpaid’ as an academic, and the notion that with inflation at 8 percent-plus, the university would offer a raise of 2.25 percent is simply insulting. I don’t even see how this can be good-faith negotiating, because I don’t think the university will ever offer a reasonable cost-of-living increase. I’m deeply disappointed in President Holloway and expected more of our leadership. Shame on Rutgers.”
“This salary increase is laughable. Especially for TAs, it’s barely an adjustment to an already unlivable wage. I have to rely on the extra income of a roommate to afford housing that’s 45 minutes outside of New Brunswick. I pay about $30 in gas a week to teach and attend classes. Everything has gone up in price, including my rent, and our wage was already tricky to budget.”
“This ‘offer’ is a disgrace. We cannot afford to live and work under these conditions. With current inflation levels, our pay has decreased massively in real terms. We will not sit back and accept massive pay cuts. We are already experiencing pay cuts every single day we go without a contract. It’s a huge struggle. We need and deserve a resolution.”
“The numbers suggested by the university are just noncompetitive; they would incentivize me and others to look for jobs elsewhere. I am fully expecting a raise at least proportional to inflation. Hiring new faculty is much, much harder and more expensive than retaining existing faculty–the university is only negotiating against its own interests here.”
“Management’s proposal is heartbreaking to me. Educational institutions are so important to our society and should be places of learning, wonder, and equality/tolerance. Instead, we are seeing yet another instance of those at the top doing everything in their power to oppress those at the bottom. Faculty and graduate students work so, so hard. They deserve so much more. No matter how hard management tries to oppress us, they will lose in the end. Their hoarding of wealth for themselves and their shareholders at the expense of students and teachers has not gone unnoticed, and we will never stop fighting for a more equitable and just distribution of resources.”