Dear colleague,
As presidents of our three unions representing faculty members throughout Rutgers University, we are writing to declare our unions’ commitment to be ONE FACULTY.
Together, we represent close to 10,000 educators on Rutgers’ Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick campuses, as well as at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences units across New Jersey. We are all dedicated to the Rutgers mission of teaching, research, and service. But that dedication has been repaid with job cuts, increased workloads without support, ever-larger class sizes, increasing precarity, canceled raises, and disrespect. Our students and patients deserve better, our communities deserve better, the people of New Jersey deserve better, and so do we.
Our unions—Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral associates, and counselors; the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union (PTLFC-AAUP-AFT), which represents Part-Time Lecturers; and AAUP-BHSNJ, which represents Biomedical and Health Sciences faculty—refuse to prop up artificial and outdated divisions that diminish our voices and our power and that leave us with different degrees of job security, pay, and benefits depending on campus or title.
We pledge to work together as ONE FACULTY. With your support, we will call on the Rutgers administration to recognize all of us. We do the teaching, clinical care, and research at our university, and we will fight collectively to bring dignity and respect to all faculty, regardless of campus or school or discipline.
In solidarity,
Amy Higer, President, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union
Catherine Monteleone, President, AAUP-BHSNJ
Rebecca Givan, President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT