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Striking Rutgers faculty vows to ramp up pressure Thursday, worries an injunction is coming
By
Karen Yi
and
Louis C. Hochman
Published Apr 12, 2023
Modified Apr 13, 2023
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Karen Yi/Gothamist
By
Karen Yi
and
Louis C. Hochman
Published Apr 12, 2023
Modified Apr 13, 2023
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Members of striking Rutgers’ faculty unions said they feel the threat of an injunction to stop their historic walkout bearing down, even as they continue to make progress in talks with university negotiations.
“Yes, I would expect that we’ll be facing some kind of legal challenge shortly,” Howie Swerdloff, secretary of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, told members in a Zoom update Wednesday night. He said there was “kind of an implied threat here that if we don’t finish the job [soon], the injunctions are coming.”
But union demonstrators planned to ratchet up pressure of their own. Sherry Wolf, a senior organizer for the Rutgers AAUP-AFT that represents about 5,000 faculty members, said picketers would be outside two university Board of Governors members’ homes early Thursday morning.
She said they’d already been outside a home in Maplewood Wednesday. Mark E. Manigan, a board member as well as the president of RWJBarnabas Health, lives in that town. Protesters would be back there and outside the New York City home of board Vice Chairman Mark A. Angelson, Wolf said.
“We’re hearing that it’s the board of governors putting pressure on the president, so we need to put more pressure on the Board of Governors,” she said.
Maplewood police said Wednesday afternoon they hadn’t been aware of any picketers or disruption caused by them at the time.
Gothamist has reached out to a university spokesperson to ask if the school is considering filing for an injunction soon, and is awaiting a response.
Three unions representing 9,000 faculty members have been on strike since Monday, after working without a contract since last summer. The unions have been in marathon negotiations with Rutgers representatives at the State House in Trenton this week, after Gov. Phil Murphy called both sides to his offices to work out a deal. Their core demands include more pay and job security for adjunct faculty members, who get paid far less than their full-time peers for each class taught, and who must reapply for their jobs each semester.
Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway has threatened to seek an injunction to stop the strike, warning in letters to the university community over the last few weeks any public worker walkout would be “unlawful” or "illegal” — which the unions dispute. The university points to court cases describing public workers strikes as illegal under common law; union members stress no New Jersey statute bars them.
But Holloway also said this week he was putting aside a threat to take the unions to court, at Murphy’s request, so long as progress was being made in negotiations.
“Obviously, if there is no movement towards an agreement, we will have no choice but to take legal action to assure the continued academic progress of our students and prevent irreparable harm," Holloway said in an email Monday.
"Hey! Holloway" — to the tune of "Hey! Baby," but addressed to Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway — has become an unofficial anthem of the ongoing Rutgers faculty strike.
Karen Yi/Gothamist
Amy Higer, president of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, seemed to acknowledge the possibility Murphy’s administration might offer Rutgers more financial support to meet union demands. The state already supplies about one-fifth of Rutgers’ $5 billion budget. Union leaders estimate pay parity for part-time lecturers with full-time faculty would cost the school another $20 million.
Biomedical engineering professor Troy Shinbrot asked if there would be any constraints on funds offered to Rutgers as part of the negotiations — warning “we know that the Rutgers administration is very good at pissing money away,” Higer told him. “That’s what the math [we’re doing today] is about.”
On WNYC’s “Ask Governor Murphy” call-in show Tuesday night, Murphy was asked if the state might consider allocating more money to Rutgers. “As a general matter, yes,” he said, but didn’t offer more details.
The unions said adjuncts are paid an average of $6,500 for a three-credit class — or about $4,500 for seven courses over the course of a year. Their proposal would boost that to nearly $10,000. By contrast: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average professor at Rutgers made about $161,000 in 2021, the average assistant professor made about $84,000 and the average associate professor made $106,000.
The unions are also asking for affordable health coverage for adjuncts and longer contracts. They additionally want graduate worker pay to increase to $37,000, up from $30,000.
Picketing, an unofficial anthem … and drag
Professors, adjunct faculty and their students picketed across New Brunswick, Newark and Camden campuses again on Wednesday, canceling classes and virtually shutting down many university functions as students vowed to stay out of classrooms until a fair deal is reached.
“People in my position are finding that there's nothing to do, but they're still working. It's a complicated situation,” said Arly Rubens, 25, an administrative assistant for the Writing Centers, which provide tutoring to Rutgers students.
She said there are no teachers to staff the centers and “students are on the picket lines in a lot of cases.”
Rubens’ union, URA-AFT, which represents 2,5000 administrative workers, is also considering going on strike over contract negotiations. Union members voted on Tuesday to launch a strike pledge to poll members on their willingness to walk out.
Each day of the strike has been marked by rallies — and festivities. On Wednesday, those included a drag show at the College Avenue Campus's Scott Hall.
Then, hundreds of picketers — led mostly by students — marched toward Holloway’s office, which was locked. A union member stuck a red “On Strike'' sticker on the door as student musicians played a song to the tune of “Bruce Channel’s “Hey! Baby” that’s become an unofficial anthem of sorts at the picket lines: “Hey Holloway, I wanna know if you’ll raise my wage.”
Staff members and the front door security guard, meanwhile, peered through the window.
Undergraduate students said they planned to support the strike until their teachers, many of whom are adjuncts, receive better wages and health care.
Students at the picket lines remained steadfast and said they weren’t too concerned about canceled classes, because some of their professors had promised them end-of-the-year grades.
“I think I’ll probably be panicked if it lasts for two weeks. Like, at that point I’m definitely going to be a little bit worried because it feels very reminiscent of what happened during COVID,” when her high school shut down and she never returned, junior Cassandra Vega said.
Izzy Deflice, 19, a freshman studying costume tech, said she’s not worried about her academics yet, but did have a class canceled where she was looking forward to learning about tailoring and building historical jackets used in the Broadway show “Hamilton.”
“It’s my first year I would love to learn as much as possible to be able to learn more hands on in my costuming trade, but if I have to sacrifice that for the good of the university and for the good of my professors so they can actually teach and be able to live, then so be it,” she said. “It's more than worth not being able to sew something to be able to support the people that I learn under.”
Rutgers faculty members are returning to work Monday, but negotiations are still underway.
Karen Yi/Gothamist
Political support for protesters
More politicians also spoke out in favor of the strike on Wednesday, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who criticized Rutgers for letting its teachers work without a contract since June.
“Teaching and graduate assistants need adequate pay raises so that they can do their work, finish their scholarship for their Ph. D.s, be able to pay rent, and their student loans,” Baraka said. “They earn less than $32,000 a year. This is a university that has paid more than $1 million to an assistant coach. I stand with the faculty unions. Do better, Rutgers.”
State Sen. Andrew Zwicker, D-South Brunswick, was also in the marching crowd in New Brunswick and said contributing more state dollars to Rutgers was part of the solution being considered, but that negotiations were ongoing.
“As Rutgers goes, so goes the rest of higher education, and what we’re seeing here isn’t going to stop with coming to a resolution here at Rutgers,” he said. “We have to look very carefully now at the overall holistic view of higher education in New Jersey because we see other universities and colleges are having financial difficulties.”
There are three unions striking: AAUP-AFT represents 5,000 full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral associates and Educational Opportunity Fund counselors. The Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, which represents 2,700 part-time lecturers, and the Rutgers AAUP-Biomedical and Health Sciences of New Jersey, which represents about 1,300 physicians, researchers and health science faculty, are also on strike.
The unions are additionally seeking a campus-wide minimum wage of $15 that would also apply to students, for Rutgers to end a practice of withholding transcripts when students owe certain fees and for Rutgers to freeze rent on all the housing it manages.
Holloway said last weekend the school had offered 20% increases in per-credit salaries for part-time lecturers and winter or summer instructors, and an increase of more than 20% in the minimum salary for postdoctoral fellows and associates in the faculty union. Rutgers was offering “similar enhancements” and “multi-year university support” for teaching assistant and graduate assistants, he said.
He also said the school had offered to increase salaries across-the-board for full-time faculty by 12% by July 1, 2025, and for 3% lump-sum payments to be paid out to all the faculty unions over the first two years of a new contract.
But the University hasn't publicly described any offers made since then, as negotiations in Trenton continued.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Amy Higer's name.
Rutgers strike at a glance
- Unions representing 9,000 faculty are striking
- The strike affects a university serving 67,000 students across three campuses
- Some classes are continuing, but it's not clear how many
- School officials haven't yet said what the long-term plans are for students' grades and graduation if the strike continues.
- Both sides are in marathon negotiating sessions in the State House, after being summoned by Gov. Phil Murphy
Tagged
education
new jersey
Politics
Karen Yi
Karen Yi covers homelessness and poverty. She joined the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom in 2020. Before that, Karen covered Newark for the Star-Ledger and spent almost a decade working for newspapers in New Jersey and Florida. She grew up in Miami and has a dog named Cashew. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-589-1460.
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Louis C. Hochman
After about two decades in (mostly) New Jersey-focused commercial print, digital and digital-but-radio-adjacent news, Lou stumbled into member-supported news in early 2021, as the editor and CEO of Montclair Local. There, he (hopes he) expanded enterprise, brought more sophistication to digital storytelling and moved the nonprofit newsroom closer to long-term financial sustainability. He helped lead the Local to its fourth consecutive General Excellence award from the New Jersey Press Association — the NJPA's highest honor with judges noting the paper's work to strip away layers of government opacity, to hold power to account, to make news accessible for more members of the community, to share the stories and concerns of more facets of the community and to tell compelling stories across multiple media. He's excited to continue the same ethic — news as a public service — at NYPR as the New Jersey and suburbs editor, drawing on the extraordinary talents of reporters including Karen Yi and Nancy Solomon. Lou lives in Philly (that commute!) with his partner and their two cats, about whom and about which he speaks incessantly.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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