Dear colleague,
Welcome back to another semester. We hope you were able to enjoy a well-deserved break.
Last semester, we wrote to you often about how the administration has tried to undermine the historic victories we won last spring—and continue pursuing their agenda of running our university like a corporation, not an institution of teaching, research, patient care, and service. Many of you know the consequences firsthand: lecturers losing their regular classes, class size caps increased, department budgets squeezed, grant funds raided to pay for raises the administration is responsible for, buildings and facilities deteriorating and nothing done about it.
The administration’s justification for all this is that Rutgers is in bad shape financially—but that simply isn’t true. They did run a deficit last year, but the administration is sitting on a huge pile of money in unrestricted reserves—nearly $900 million, according to their own most recent figures, a 75.2 percent increase from two years before. A small fraction of that money would eliminate the need for any cuts.
And let’s not forget the financial black hole of Rutgers Athletics. While you were trying to finish out the semester last month, the Board of Governors met to approve a whopping 56 percent raise for football coach Greg Schiano. His annual salary of $6.25 million this year is equal to the annual pay for 134 adjunct faculty members, each teaching three classes per semester (if they’re lucky enough to not have a class canceled because of budget cuts!).
These aren’t the priorities we fought for with our contract campaign last year. We should make sure everyone—our colleagues and friends here at Rutgers and elsewhere—knows about these outrages.
But the only way we’ll make more progress toward the Rutgers all of us deserve is by building union power. During this semester, we’ll be working on our unions’ organization and communication, so we can better serve everyone we represent. And we’ll continue our effort to get more people to join their union. To win the fights we need to win, we need strong unions, and our unions are only as strong as our united membership.
We’ll be writing to you about these union efforts during the semester, but in the meantime, if your department hired someone new this semester or you know someone who isn’t yet a union member, why not reach out to tell them about their union and why they should join? Then share this link to the union membership form: https://rutgersaaup.org/join. If you’re willing to talk to colleagues but don’t know their membership status, email us at aaup@rutgersaaup.org.
In solidarity,
Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and AAUP-BHSNJ
Rutgers AAUP-AFT Facebook page: https://facebook.com/RUaaup/
Follow us on Twitter @ruaaup and Instagram @rutgersaaup
Freedom School YouTubeChannel: https://rutgersaaup.org/YouTube
Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rutgersptlfc
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @ruaaup_ptl
Visit our website: https://rutgers-ptlfc.org/
AAUP-BHSNJ website: https://aaupbhsnj.org/
AAUP-BHSNJ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RUaaupbhsnj