NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—The bargaining teams of three unions representing 9,000 educators, researchers, and clinicians at Rutgers University voted to recommend contract language that would become Tentative Agreements if they are approved by the unions’ elected representatives.
Rutgers AAUP-AFT’s Executive Council, the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union’s Executive Board, and AAUP-BHSNJ’s Council will read the recommended language over the weekend and vote on Sunday whether to approve them as Tentative Agreements. If they pass, the TAs would then be sent to members for ratification votes.
The recommended language incorporates a tentative framework for negotiations reached during the unions’ five-day strike, during which bargaining was held in the statehouse in Trenton. Further negotiations in the two weeks since resolved a host of issues that were left open. The framework represented major gains for those represented by the unions, especially the most vulnerable and lowest-paid among them, who will receive significant salary increases and greater measures of job security, among other improvements.
It will now be up to the union representative bodies, elected by members to represent them, to decide on approving the contract language as Tentative Agreements and sending them to members for a ratification vote.
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