Dear colleague,
This fall, the university launched the “Caregiver Support Pilot Program for Rutgers Employees,” which offers five days of subsidized backup care from Care.com. If you have an emergency or a disruption in your care arrangements, you can choose a Care.com provider for backup care—or arrange for subsidized care from your personal network of family, friends, and sitters.
This year is a trial period to see if faculty and staff use the program’s benefits and supports. Simply put: if we don’t use it, we risk losing it.
Care.com is offering info sessions for our Coalition of Rutgers Unions on how to use their backup care system on Thursday, September 29, at 12 noon and 6 p.m. (click here to register for the 12 noon session and click here to register for the 6 p.m. session). For an FAQ from the administration, click here.
This proposal was brought to the administration over a year ago by the Rutgers-Newark Faculty Parent Task Force, and our union has been working since then to persuade management to adopt it. The pilot program only provides five days of backup care; we are calling for a total of 10 days in our proposals for our new contract. Thanks go to Patricia Akhimie, Catherine Clepper, Takashi Amano, Anastasia Bailey, Naomi Jackson, Courtney Sobers, Kristina Keating, and Elena Lahr-Vivaz for pressing the administration to act on this valuable proposal.
If you’d like to attend an info session on Care.com on Thursday, September 29, click here to register for the 12 noon session and click here to register for the 6 p.m. session.
In solidarity,
Catherine and Becky
Catherine Clepper, Member, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Rebecca Givan, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
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