Thousands of instructors at Rutgers University joined a national surge in union activity on Monday, becoming the fifth currently active strike on a college campus.
Three unions representing roughly 9,000 educators, researchers, and clinicians announced the strike on Sunday after nearly a year of contract negotiations. The strike will disrupt classes for Rutgers’ nearly 70,000 students across three campuses.
Union leadership is asking its members to join the picket line and refuse to conduct teaching, research, and other business at Rutgers, according to the largest of the three unions on strike. Strikers are still permitted to complete certain responsibilities, like writing letters of recommendation for students.
“By exercising our right to withhold our labor, we will prove to the administration that WE are the university,” the union, Rutgers American Association of University Professionals-American Federation of Teachers, wrote in a letter to its members.
The standoff has put a harsh spotlight on Jonathan Holloway, the Rutgers president. Holloway drew pushback for initially suggesting that his administration would seek a court order to stop the strike and force a “return to normal activities.”
The Rutgers administration walked back that threat on Monday after a meeting with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, according to Rutgers spokesperson Dory Devlin.
Murphy “asked us to delay taking legal action asking the courts to order strikers back to work so that no further irreparable harm is caused to our students and to their continued academic progress,” Devlin wrote in an email. “We agreed to his request to refrain from seeking an injunction while it appears that progress can be made.”
A labor expert said turning to the courts amid a strike might make the situation worse. “One thing that injunctions can cause is it can actually exacerbate the conflict as opposed to hoping to resolve the conflict,” said William A. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College in the City University of New York.
Holloway is a scholar of African American studies and history. An open letter from over 40 prominent historians of labor and African American history — including Ibram X. Kendi, a professor at Boston University and the founder of the Center for Antiracist Research — had called on Holloway to rescind his threat of an injunction. The letter also voiced support for the striking workers.
“We know that as an expert in African American history, you have thought deeply about how struggles for racial justice have consistently been aligned with the demands for jobs, labor rights, and democracy in the workplace,” the letter stated.
Holloway expressed his frustration with the strike in a letter to the campus community on Sunday. “To say that this is deeply disappointing would be an understatement, especially given that just two days ago, both sides agreed in good faith to the appointment of a mediator to help us reach agreements,” Holloway wrote.
Rutgers is facing financial woes, and Holloway said in February that the university would have to remedy a $125-million shortfall over the next three years.
In a message to students and faculty about the strike, Rutgers wrote that it was “committed to ensuring that our more than 67,000 students are unaffected by the strike and may continue their academic progress.” Rutgers plans to continue classes and distribute grades and expects employees to report to work. The issue is a pressing one as the end of the semester looms, with finals and grades coming soon.
Rutgers officials wrote that employees who engage in the strike “are subject to a loss of pay and/or benefits, and other sanctions as they may apply or as the court deems appropriate.”
There is no state law that prohibits public-sector workers from striking in New Jersey, Herbert said, adding that Holloway’s argument relied on common law, or legal precedent from the courts, which have intervened in strikes from public workers in the past.
“Although there is no state statute that bars strikes, in some instances, courts in New Jersey have issued injunctions against walkouts by public employees,” the Rutgers AAUP-AFT wrote on its website. “An injunction may require public employees to end a strike and return to work. The University administration would have to petition a court for an injunction.”
The strike comes after 94 percent of members of two of the unions — representing primarily full- and part-time faculty and graduate workers — voted to authorize a strike in March.
We’ve been bargaining for 10, 11 months — got virtually no response to any of our proposals, and when we did, they were paltry. They were insulting.
The unions’ bargaining demands include increased pay to keep up with inflation for graduate workers, better job security for part-time lecturers, and more affordable housing for university community members.
Rutgers officials have offered salary increases for faculty, postdocs, and graduate employees, but union leaders say the raises aren’t good enough.
The university’s proposal would provide across-the-board 12-percent pay increases for full-time faculty by July 1, 2025; 3 percent in lump-sum payments to all the faculty unions to be paid out over the first two years of the new contract; a 20-percent increase in the per-credit salary rate for part-time lecturers over the four years of the contract; a 20-percent increase in the minimum salary for postdocs in four years; and higher wages for graduate assistants and teaching assistants.
“The offers that they’re presenting still aren’t enough to guarantee a living wage for the people who are most essential, one could argue, to the successful operation of the university,” said Manu Chander, an associate professor of English at Rutgers’ Newark campus and the president of the Newark chapter of Rutgers AAUP-AFT.
Chander said he’s on strike to improve conditions for adjunct faculty and graduate employees, whom he described as the most vulnerable workers.
Kyle Riismandel, an associate professor of history and American studies at Rutgers and the vice president of the Newark chapter of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, said the picket line drew a large crowd on Monday.
“We’ve been bargaining for 10, 11 months — got virtually no response to any of our proposals, and when we did, they were paltry,” Riismandel said. “They were insulting.”
Julian Roberts-Grmela
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