First Academic Workers’ Strike in the University’s 257-Year History
See below for picket line and rally locations and Monday interview availability.
NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—Three unions representing educators, researchers, and will go on strike today at 9 a.m., after the administration failed to agree to a new contract after nearly a year of bargaining.
Click here for media resources for covering the Rutgers strike.
The three unions are Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral associates, and counselors; the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, which represents so-called part-time lecturers; and AAUP-BHSNJ, which represents health science faculty in Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences facilities. Together, the three unions represent around 9,000 people. Over 6,000 other Rutgers union workers in nine other unions are also seeking new contracts.
Picket lines will go up on Rutgers’ three main campuses (see below), and union leaders expect instruction and non-critical research to come to a halt. Clinicians in AAUP-BHSNJ will continue to perform patient care duties and critical research, while curbing voluntary work. The unions will hold a joint rally on Voorhees Mall on the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus at 1 p.m. on Monday (behind Scott Hall, 43 College Ave.).
Negotiations produced some movement in recent days, but the unions and management remain far apart on many core issues, said Rutgers AAUP-AFT President Rebecca Givan. “We intend for this new contract to be transformative, especially for our lowest-paid and most vulnerable members,” Givan said. “But our proposals to raise graduate workers and adjunct faculty up to a living wage and establish meaningful job security for adjuncts are exactly the ones that the administration has resisted most.”
Amy Higer, president of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, said bargaining has been “incredibly frustrating over the past few months. We want to be teaching our courses and finishing up spring semester, but we need—and deserve—a fair contract. Management says a strike will harm students. You know what really harms students? The high turnover rate that results from paying teachers poorly and making them reapply for their jobs every semester, as adjuncts have to.”
Todd Wolfson, general vice president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, said union members are well prepared for a strike after months of organizing. “I think the administration didn’t think we would come to this point,” Wolfson said. “Maybe they thought they could divide us by giving a better deal to full-time faculty. But they’re going to find out just how wrong they are. Our unions are united, from the best-paid to the lowest-paid, in fighting for our most vulnerable teachers, for our students, and for our communities surrounding Rutgers.”
Important proposals for the unions include: Equal pay for equal work for adjunct faculty; guaranteed funding and a living wage for graduate workers; job security for all faculty; a fair salary increase that keeps up with inflation; affordable housing for students, members, and our communities; forgiveness for students’ overdue fees and fines; equity for Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers Newark; affordable health insurance for all; and workload standards for medical clinical faculty.
To see the unions’ contract proposals and the administration’s responses, see this page for Rutgers AAUP-AFT, this page for the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and this page for AAUP-BHSNJ.
Contracts for all of the dozen unions currently without one expired last summer (almost all on June 30). Bargaining for new agreements began in May, and the unions presented almost all of their proposals by mid-summer. As of two weeks ago, the Rutgers administration had still not responded to some proposals made 10 months earlier. Others were rejected without explanation.
Rutgers AAUP-AFT and the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union began votes on strike authorization on February 28. Some 94 percent of members who cast a ballot voted yes to empower union leadership bodies to call a strike if necessary to achieve the unions’ goals for a fair contract. Turnout for the vote was 80 percent. AAUP-BHSNJ launched a strike authorization vote on March 9—95 percent of members who voted chose to authorize strike action.
This strike is the first by Rutgers educators in the university’s 257-year history. It would also be the first strike to involve tenured and tenure-track faculty at a Big Ten university. There is no statute outlawing public-sector strikes in New Jersey. Click here to read our answers to frequently asked questions about a strike at Rutgers.
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Monday Highlights
9 a.m.–5 p.m.: Picket Lines on Rutgers’ Three Main Campuses
New Brunswick
- College Avenue Campus: 43 College Ave., outside Scott Hall, New Brunswick
- Civic Square Building: Mason Gross/Bloustein, 33 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick
- Cook/Douglass Campus: corner of George and Chapel Drive/Nichol Road, New Brunswick
- Livingston Campus: Livingston Student Center, 84 Joyce Kilmer Ave, Piscataway
- Busch Campus: outside Campus Center, 604 Bartholomew Rd., Piscataway
Newark
- Plaza in front of Robeson Campus Center, 350 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
- Plaza outside Law School, between University Avenue and Washington Street
Camden
- Outside Campus Center, near Third Street, north of Cooper Street.
12 p.m.: Interviews Available on Voorhees Mall
- In back of Scott Hall, 43 College Ave., New Brunswick
1 p.m.: Union Rally on Voorhees Mall
- In back of Scott Hall, 43 College Ave., New Brunswick