Take action: If you haven’t already, send a message to the State Senate President and Assembly Speaker asking them to support legislation to fix the fringe rate.
Dear colleague,
Great news! The Assembly Higher Education Committee voted unanimously to move the Fringe Relief Bill out of committee yesterday in Trenton!
The fringe rate is the percentage that the state of New Jersey takes off the top of grants that come into Rutgers and other public research institutions to pay for the fringe benefits of workers supported on grants—faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate assistants. But the rate doesn’t reflect actual fringe costs; instead, it is skewed upward by the higher costs of the state PERS pension plan, which Rutgers researchers don’t even have access to. Because of this, New Jersey has the highest fringe rate of any public university in the country, putting our researchers at a significant disadvantage for completing projects and competing for future grants.
Our unions have been supporting legislation that would permanently fix this glaring inequity that threatens the future of research at Rutgers. Yesterday’s vote was an important step forward.
We had a great showing for the committee hearing and vote. Some 30 people, including full-time and adjunct faculty, grads, and postdocs, showed up to demonstrate their support for this crucial legislation. A number of esteemed Rutgers professors, including Melissa Rogers, Kim McKim, Scott Diehl, Anand Sarwate, and Xenia Morin, gave strong personal testimony on the impact of the excessive fringe rate on their research programs, after Rutgers AAUP-AFT President Rebecca Givan provided a helpful overview of the issue at the outset.
To put it bluntly, our people hit it out of the park. Their testimony could not have been more on target or clear in underscoring the gravity of the problem. The committee ended up voting UNANIMOUSLY to move this legislation forward.
It will be critical to continue applying pressure to ensure that the bill is taken up by the Senate Budget Committee and Assembly Appropriations Committee or fast-tracked directly to the floor for a vote. It is evident from the vote and the comments made by legislators that there is strong bipartisan support for this bill, so the goal is to ensure it ultimately reaches the floor for a vote.
We’re asking all educators, researchers, librarians, and clinicians at Rutgers to help us pass this legislation. If you haven’t already, write to the Senate President and Assembly Speaker asking them to support legislation to fix the fringe rate. Click here to send a message.
To continue to track the progress of the legislation, you can click here.
In solidarity,
Michael Matise, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Cell Biology, RWJMS
Martha Soto, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, RWJMS
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