Dear Colleague,
Last week, President Tate announced a university-wide hiring freeze as part of Rutgers’ FY27 budget, along with a 3% tuition increase for all students. In his announcement, Tate claimed it demonstrates his commitment “to disciplined stewardship and thoughtful planning,” with an aim towards achieving a 5% ($200M) revenue surplus.
Who will bear the burden of these measures? The very workers who have kept Rutgers enrollment strong despite national declines. This hiring freeze will most likely result in layoffs of hundreds of adjunct faculty, increased class sizes, and reduced course offerings. Full-time faculty and graduate workers will be expected to absorb the additional teaching load, leaving less time for research, mentoring, and service—the work that sustains the University’s mission and is required for professional advancement.
The serious negative impact that this hiring freeze will have on the University’s core mission is the consequence of deliberate budget decisions made by the Tate administration. Budgets reflect values and priorities. This budget is part of an agenda of austerity and manufactured scarcity that seems to prioritize the pursuit of investment income by appealing to bond rating agencies over that of education and research—it will result in effective layoffs for hundreds of dedicated educators and make cutting-edge research more difficult to sustain.
The Coalition of Rutgers Unions (CRU) has sent a letter to President Tate calling on him to rescind the hiring freeze and work with the unions to find a budgetary solution that works for the people who make Rutgers run. In the letter, union presidents representing more than 15,000 workers made it clear that “punishing the workforce that serves our students, patients, and community at large—and that makes Rutgers a successful public institution—is not the answer.”
Tate’s budget statement also referenced ongoing “very productive […] good faith negotiations […] leading to a fair and sustainable resolution” with our unions. But management has not presented meaningful counterproposals on most of our core bargaining demands—the central one being increased job security for all faculty, which this hiring freeze directly weakens. To announce a hiring freeze in the middle of our contract campaign undermines “good faith” negotiations with the administration claiming unfair leverage midway through bargaining, especially after all of our proposals are on the table.
We cannot allow management to use manufactured scarcity to divide Lecturer faculty from NTT and tenure-track faculty, or to sow division between our bargaining units—an injury to one is an injury to all. This is precisely why our fight for a unified faculty and stronger job security protections across all job categories matters. We demand that the Tate Administration reverse this hiring freeze and commit to bargaining a contract that protects every member of our Rutgers community. Winning stronger job security, fair workloads, and a more secure future for all workers will require the active engagement of all of us. Now is the time to stand together.
- If you are not a union member: Join today.
- If you are already a member: Sign onto our contract demands.
- Talk to your colleagues and get more involved—it is important that we continue to build our power over the summer: Join our summer organizing trainings to prepare our unions for the fight ahead.
In solidarity,
HP, Becky, and Cathy Heather Pierce, President, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union
Rebecca Givan, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Dr. Catherine Monteleone, President, AAUP-BHSNJ