Dear colleague,
The leadership bodies of our three unions have voted to accept a framework for new contracts and to suspend our strike and return to work immediately. Ratification of a full Tentative Agreement, once reached, will be decided by a membership secret ballot.
We believe we have secured profound victories for our unions in this framework: significant pay increases for adjuncts; substantial raises for grad workers, moving them toward a living wage; major job security improvements for adjunct and non-tenure-track faculty; union representation for graduate fellows; pay increases for postdocs; our first common good demands to center our students and communities; greater faculty control over teaching conditions, including scheduling; a common contract including academic and medical faculty; and more.
We have not reached a Tentative Agreement for members to vote on. There are open issues that need to be resolved, especially for AAUP-BHSNJ, and we won’t leave our colleagues at RBHS behind. They have been with us all the way. However, the framework shows the vital progress we have made on the core issues we prioritized during this contract campaign.
Our historic strike got us to this point. And let us be clear, a suspension of our strike is not a cancellation. If we do not secure the gains we need on the open issues through bargaining in the coming days, we can and will resume our work stoppage. We also will continue putting significant pressure on the Rutgers administration to meet our needs, starting with informational pickets next week.
We wanted to notify you quickly about the suspension of the strike, but we know you will have many questions about what we won. We will start answering them tomorrow at a 12 p.m. “Update from the Table and the Picket Line” on Zoom. Click here to register for this Zoom link. We will likely exceed Zoom capacity, so if you can’t get into the Zoom, click here to watch a livestream.
The agreements we secured in this framework are a testament to all the workers, students, and community members who organized, talked to colleagues and friends, walked the picket lines, and marched in New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden. Our coalition’s commitment, energy, and values powered our unprecedented work stoppage—the largest in New Jersey public-sector history.
We will have much more to say about this framework and room for discussion about it in the coming days. But for now, we are immensely proud of what all of us achieved—together and strong.
In solidarity,
Rutgers AAUP-AFT, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and AAUP-BHSNJ
Rutgers AAUP-AFT Facebook page: https://facebook.com/RUaaup/
Follow us on Twitter @ruaaup and Instagram @rutgersaaup
Freedom School YouTubeChannel: https://rutgersaaup.org/YouTube
Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rutgersptlfc
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @ruaaup_ptl
Visit our redesigned website: https://rutgers-ptlfc.org/
AAUP-BHSNJ website: https://onerutgersfaculty.org/
AAUP-BHSNJ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RUaaupbhsnj
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