By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – Members of three teacher unions here and on Rutgers University’s New Brunswick and Camden campuses – after a year of negotiations and an unprecedented five-day strike – may be getting their new contracts during their students’ May 15-18 commencement week.
Rank and file members of American Association of University Professors-AFT, Rutgers Faculty Union and AAUP-Biomedical and Health Sciences of New Jersey have been voting on the new collective bargaining agreement since May 1 and through Noon May 8. Their voting follows scheduled May 2-4 “town meetings” about the tentative agreement.
The tentative CBAs – should a majority of 9,000 professors, adjunct professors, graduate and post-graduate students, counselors, librarians and medical and public teachers approve – will then go to the Rutgers Board of Governors for their nod.
RU Governors’ next scheduled meeting is set for Noon June 22 at Rutgers New Brunswick’s Winant’s Hall. The Governors, however, may want to end the 12-month saga by scheduling an earlier special ratification meeting here or in New Brunswick or Camden.
The union members had been running on contracts that had expired on June 30, 2022. They were paid on the expired but honored CBA while respective union and administration attorneys bargained for a new pact.
The talks dragged on until the three unions went on strike April 12-17. It was the first time the said members stopped work and walked on picket lines in Rutgers’ 253-year history.
Gov. Phil Murphy had meanwhile “invited” both sides to the State House on April 10. Both sides worked with state-supplied mediators until a framework agreement was reached at 1 a.m. April 15. The framework, which allowed union members to put aside their picket signs and return to work, led to April 28’s tentative CBA.
The tentative agreement both sides are or will be voting on will give pay increases and more job security to part-time or adjunct teachers and graduate/post-graduate students.
Part time and adjunct instructors will get a $10,000 pay increase on their $30,000 annual salary over the contract’s four years. This will be done in percentages over the contract’s four years. Adjuncts and part-time instructors may now apply for teaching classes by the school year instead of by the semester.
Postdoctoral students will get a 27.9 percent increase over four years, boosting their minimum annual pay to $63,968 by June 30, 2026.
Graduate students whose work was interrupted by the 2020-21 CVID pandemic will get at least $25,000 for a fifth year of funding. That minimum, however, may vary by the Rutgers college or department.
Biomedical faculty – doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists and researchers – will get parental leave.
The CBA includes clauses addressing equity issues among the Newark, Camden and New Brunswick campuses.
Gov. Murphy (D-Rumson), while congratulating the parties in reaching a CBA, did not say whether the salary increases will be reflected in the to-be-ratified state budget. State Legislators have until June 30 to being a balanced 2023-24 state budget for Murphy to sign.
The four-year pact retroactively takes effect from July 1, 2022.
The Rutgers community here or elsewhere, however, is not completely free of the picket sign’s shadow.
Members of the University of Rutgers Administrators-AFT Local 1766 were scheduled to hold “No Staff No Rutgers” rallies and picket lines 2-3 p.m. May 3 before the Paul Robeson Campus Center here and in New Brunswick.
The URA local, like colleagues in the three other unions, had been working without a CBA. They have expressed their negotiating frustration to Gov. Murphy’s office staff and, as of May 3, demonstrated their dissatisfaction.
URA-AFT Local 1799, however, have not authorized a strike.
