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Rutgers University and its faculty unions are bracing for what could be the first teaching strike in the 256-year-old institution’s history.
The academic work stoppage would virtually shut down New Jersey’s flagship public university across all its campuses in New Brunswick, Newark and Camden, affecting more than 67,000 students. It would mark the first major teacher walkout in New Jersey higher education since professors picketed at Union County College in 1990, union officials say — and comes amid a national rise in labor actions in universities and colleges across the U.S.
“We’re seeing all through the country, both in the public sector and the private sector, a new growth of activism among academic workers like professors, but also student workers and trades people,” said William Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College. He said that, particularly in the post-pandemic period, there has been a rise in the use of strikes and strike threats on campus.
How did we get here?
Rutgers administrators and union leaders have negotiated since May without reaching a deal. That prompted three unions representing professors, part-time lecturers, biomedical researchers and graduate workers to overwhelmingly vote to authorize their leaders to call a strike last month.
Tensions only escalated last week when Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway emailed students and staff calling any potential strike “unlawful.” The move was quickly admonished both by the University Senate — a group representing faculty, student, staff, alumni and administrators that advises the president — and by dozens of prominent academics who described themselves as “scholars of labor, social justice and the Black freedom struggle.” They wrote they know that Holloway, an African American history expert, had “thought deeply about how struggles for racial justice have consistently been aligned with the demands for jobs, labor rights and democracy in the workplace.”
“We’re asking for very reasonable things. And we know Rutgers has the money,” Amy Higer, president of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union that represents part-time lecturers, said in a statement this week. “Yet the administration refuses to take our core demands seriously. Our members are out of patience.”
Union leaders have not said when or if they will call a strike but have been preparing by holding trainings on picketing safely. University leaders, meanwhile, say they are doing what they can to avert a strike.
“We will continue to work together in good faith to negotiate contracts with our unions that are fair, reasonable, and responsible, and to avoid a disruptive strike,” Rutgers spokesperson Dory Devlin said in an email.
What are unions demanding?
Higher pay for the most vulnerable and lowest-paid workers is at the core of the unions’ demands. Graduate assistant salaries currently start at about $30,000 for an academic-year appointment but the union wants to push that to $37,000.
The unions are also asking for more job security for part-time lecturers, who currently have to reapply for their jobs every semester regardless of how long they’ve been with the university. They want lecturers to be hired on yearlong contracts, or multiyear contracts for those who’ve been with the university longer.
They’re also pushing for fractional pay for part-time lecturers, which means they would get paid at the same rate as full-time professors in the same department, prorated for the work they perform. That could mean going from $5,700 a course to $9,900 a course.
Demands also include better campus conditions, including a $15 minimum hourly wage for all university workers, including students.
The unions are asking Rutgers to freeze rents for all housing it manages and forgive outstanding fees for students who can’t get their degrees due to owed fines.
The unions that authorized a strike are the Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents about 5,000 full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral associates and Educational Opportunity Fund counselors; the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, which represents another 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 in Rutgers’ Biomedical and Health Sciences facilities and schools.
Also in negotiations are the Union of Rutgers Administrators-AFT for administrative staff, and the Committee of Interns and Residents-SEIU for resident physicians.
How will the strike affect students?
If a strike is called, the unions will ask teaching staff to cancel all their classes, both in-person and remote. That would halt any pending exams, grading, office hours and preplanned events.
Classes end on May 1 and exams are scheduled for the first two weeks of May. The unions say in case there is a strike, they hope the administration will reach a deal before final grades are due.
Clients will still be provided with health care, essential lab work will continue, and professors will also still write students letters of recommendation, according to the unions. The unions say students can also join them on the picket line.
The university hasn’t yet said what provisions it might make for students during a strike.
How long could a strike last?
Faculty strikes at universities and colleges generally don’t last more than a few days. According to data from the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, from 2012 through 2018, faculty strikes at higher education institutions lasted an average of 2.9 days. A faculty strike in 2019 at Wright State University in Ohio lasted for 20 days, making it one of the longest such strikes in U.S. history.
Will faculty be paid?
Universities generally don’t withhold pay during strike actions, the unions say, as it is hard to track who has or has not crossed the picket line. But the AAUP-AFT says it is prepared to launch a donation campaign should Rutgers decide to stop paying its teachers.
Could Rutgers stop the strike by going to court?
State laws and statutes are silent on whether public sector employees have the right to strike. The unions argue they have the right to withhold their labor. But Holloway, Rutgers’ president, said in an email to faculty and students this month “the courts have ruled that strikes by public employees are unlawful in New Jersey.”
Holloway would need to seek a court injunction to get a judge to order teachers to go back to work. But if that injunction is ignored, the university would need to return to court to secure penalties for failing to follow that order, which could range from union fines to arrests of picketing workers, which would prove tricky in what Gov. Phil Murphy has described as “the quintessential organized-labor state.”
How significant could a strike be for New Jersey?
Rutgers is New Jersey’s flagship university and one of the country’s Big 10 schools. A faculty strike across its three campuses would be the first by teaching staff at the university and the biggest public sector strike since 4,000 Jersey City teachers went on strike in 2018.
The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions analyzed strikes at colleges and universities from 2012 to 2018 and found an average of one to four faculty strikes a year. Counting both faculty and nonfaculty strikes, there were 13 in 2018, compared to three in 2012 – with New Jersey having none in that time period.
But Rutgers’ labor fight mirrors growing discontent across higher education. Temple University President Jason Wingard resigned this week after a 42-day strike by graduate student workers. At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, graduate student workers went on strike this week. More than 60,000 workers at California State University have also suggested they could strike over demands for better pay and working conditions.
Where is Gov. Phil Murphy in all of this?
Murphy has said repeatedly during WNYC’s call-in show “Ask Governor Murphy” that he’s eager to see the issues resolved.
But the governor’s Office of Employee Relations has told administration officials the state isn’t typically party to contract negotiations, a spokesperson for the governor’s office told Gothamist. And he said officials haven’t been able to find any authority in state law that would let the governor intervene.
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