Rutgers University and its faculty unions agreed to contract language on Friday that could finally end the nearly yearlong negotiations that led to a strike earlier this month.
The unions’ executive committees will vote on the language on Sunday. If that language is approved, it becomes a tentative agreement that will then go to the full membership for a ratification vote.
“If ratified by the union membership, it would provide substantial salary increases for full-time faculty, graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and others,” said Dory Devlin, spokesperson for Rutgers University. “It would also provide new compensation programs for our medical school faculty.”
The higher wages for adjunct teachers and graduate students, as well as new job protections, could become a national example for labor organizing across other colleges and universities, labor experts have said.
The deal follows a historic five-day strike that led to the near stoppage of New Jersey’s flagship public university on its campuses in New Brunswick, Camden and Newark — and prompted intervention by Gov. Phil Murphy. The unions suspended the strike early April 15 after they reached a framework deal with the university while bargaining with administrators, with the assistance of Murphy’s staff. If language is approved by the executive committees on Sunday, it becomes a tentative agreement that formally ends the strike entirely.
“We’ve been working really hard and we feel really good that we’re at this stage,” said Rebecca Givan, president of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT Academic Worker Union. “It’s been 11 months of bargaining and six weeks of full-time bargaining to get us to this point.”
The three negotiating unions represent about 9,000 professors, part-time lecturers, postdoc associates, graduate workers, biomedical faculty and physicians.
Union representatives say everything in the framework is in the final language, and further gains were also obtained.
“We have job security…
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