Takeaway: We’re asking you to raise your voice with us and tell management they can’t get away with not paying our raises on time. Please add your name to this petition to President Holloway asking him to make sure our signed agreement with the administration will be honored and we’ll get our deferred raises on time.
Dear colleague,
Last week, we were told by Vivian Fernández, Senior Vice President for Human Resources and “Organizational Effectiveness,” that our raises won’t be in our first paycheck in July, like they’re supposed to be. These are the raises that management tried to cancel by declaring a fiscal emergency last summer, but that we won back in our fiscal emergency negotiations. Our signed Memorandum of Agreement requires those raises to be implemented one year late, on July 1, 2021, but management says they won’t show up in our paychecks until some time in August, with the late payments coming retroactively.
This is completely unacceptable. We agreed to a work-sharing program for full-time faculty, some of whom are still waiting for unemployment payments from the chaotic New Jersey Department of Labor system. We’ve more than held up our end of the bargain—management needs to hold up theirs. We negotiated in good faith, and we expected Rutgers administrators to do the same.
SVP Fernández’s excuse is that University Human Resources (UHR) has been too busy with the work-sharing program for faculty and staff to deal with our raises. Frankly, we find this excuse insulting. You know who else was busy over the past few months? Faculty, grad workers, and staff! And we didn’t decide to turn in grades a month and a half late.
Good thing SVP Fernández isn’t getting a grade from you on “organizational effectiveness.”
If this is gross incompetence, it’s still pretty lucrative for Rutgers. Delaying our stolen raises from 2020 by another month amounts to an interest-free loan of about $1 million from faculty, grad workers, and staff. Meanwhile UHR got an extra $4 million during the past school year—an incredible 16.4 percent increase in its budget at the same time the administration inflicted layoffs, cuts, and austerity. For that kind of money, you’d think they could figure out how to pay us on time.
Our Coalition of Rutgers Unions is asking for expedited arbitration to require that management pay our raises as scheduled, but we want to make sure the administration hears about our anger. Please sign our petition to President Holloway—and tell management: pay our raises on time!
In solidarity,
Todd and Becky
Todd Wolfson, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Rebecca Givan, Vice President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Rutgers AAUP-AFT Facebook page: https://facebook.com/RUaaup/
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @ruaaup
Freedom School YouTubeChannel: https://rutgersaaup.org/YouTube
Union merch is available at our web store.
Find the latest messages to members and union statements here.