Dear colleague,
We are writing to let you know that the Holloway administration has once again undermined the Salary Equity Program we won in our 2018–22 contract—another in a growing list of outrages this summer.
Despite committing earlier this year to a renegotiated process, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Prabhas Moghe and other top administration officials failed to follow the new procedures, resulting in a majority of appeals being rejected. Once again, our Camden colleagues fared worse—even though the program we agreed to was explicitly designed to achieve equity across campuses. Whatever their rhetoric to the contrary, the Holloway administration has shown zero commitment to salary equity.
We have had to fight every step of the way to get the administration to abide by the equity program. Many of you will remember that the decisions on the first round of applicants in September 2021 shortchanged over 100 faculty members by as much as $1 million. Decisions for a second group of applicants announced in May 2022 similarly failed to fully raise applicants to equity with their peers.
Under the process the administration agreed to late last year—negotiated after five of our colleagues filed suit against the administration over violations of New Jersey’s Equal Pay Act—appeals of previous flawed decisions were assessed by a new faculty advisory committee before going to EVPAA Moghe as the final stage of review. Though Moghe remanded most of the appeals that reached this stage back to chancellors to review their previous denials, he failed to abide by his obligation to state whether he was upholding the appeals, and he offered no instruction to the chancellors.
It appears that Camden Chancellor Antonio Tillis took this as a signal to dismiss each and every case remanded back to him, on the same flawed reasoning that Camden faculty couldn’t expect equity adjustments for salary disparities with their peers in New Brunswick. Again, this is an explicit violation of our negotiated agreement that requires the administration to award equity increases on the basis of discrimination by campus. (It is notable that decisions on equity applications involving Newark Chancellor Nancy Cantor, who President Holloway is trying to force out, have been fairer and generally free of errors and misinformation.)
We wanted you to know that our union has filed one grievance around these contractual violations, and we intend to take more action this semester. Salary equity is not an optional extra, to be celebrated as a university value in speeches but ignored in practice. Our union is committed to confronting inequities throughout the Rutgers system.
In solidarity,
Todd, Becky, and Miguel
Todd Wolfson, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Rebecca Givan, General Vice President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Miguel Rodriguez, Secretary-Treasurer, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
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