Rutgers University faculty union members are preparing to participate in a potential strike to fight for salary raises, among other things. This would be the first faculty strike in Rutgers’ history.
The union, Rutgers AAUP-AFT, has been in negotiations with university administrators for over a year on a new contract to create an agreement on the union’s proposals for things such as gender and campus pay equity and increased salaries for teaching assistants. The administrators and union have not yet been able to settle on an agreement.
As a result, Rutgers AAUP-AFT, the largest faculty union have been registering for picket duty and leaders of the union have scheduled an emergency town hall meeting to address any concerns members may have regarding the strike, according to North Jersey Record.
The union will soon decide if it will go through with a strike, union vice president Dr. David Hughes said.
“If we do strike, it will be because we consider the short-term disruption of classes to be worth the long-term investment in quality higher education we’re bargaining for,” Hughes said. “We’re preparing and we’re taking the matter extremely seriously, because no one is eager to strike but we do it for the sake of higher education and for the sake of our students.”
Since March 2018, there have been 35 negotiating sessions, said Rutgers spokeswoman Dory Devlin.
University president Dr. Robert Barchi has already committed $21.7 million in strategic funds to promote diversity among faculty members through 2021, Devlin said.
