NJ University Faculty Strike Disrupts 67K Students' Classes

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - Thousands of faculty and academic union members at Rutgers University are set to take part in an unprecedented strike on Monday as a result of unresolved contract negotiations with the university.

The strike, consisting of thousands of part-time and full-time professors, graduate student workers, postdoctoral associates, counselors and biomedical faculty, marks the first strike in Rutgers' 257-year history. It also means some Rutgers students would not have professors teaching class or giving exams.

“Our boards voted unanimously that we will be going on strike tomorrow,” Rutgers AAUP-AFT President Rebecca Givan said during an online town hall meeting with faculty on Sunday evening. “We take this very seriously. We have bargained and bargained … and we’re not getting anywhere, and we need to do something more.”

For the first time in the history of Rutgers University, all three faculty, grad, EOF, and postdoc unions have voted to go on strike. Monday morning, we are ON STRIKE. See you on the picket line. #RUOnStrike pic.twitter.com/APMdFHgpvs
— Rutgers AAUP-AFT Academic Worker Union (@ruaaup) April 10, 2023

Though Rutgers will be operating on a normal schedule, the union action may affect more than 67,000 students, many who are mere “weeks away from graduation,” across the university’s campuses, Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway said in a Sunday statement.

Students are encouraged to review Canvas and consult with instructors for questions related to specific classes.

The unions are striking due to back-and-forth bargaining attempts for months, Kathy Monteleone, president of AAUP-BHSNJ, which represents medical faculty at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences schools, said during the town hall. AAUP began its own strike authorization vote earlier this week.

“It’s not for lack of trying that we now have to have a strike,” Monteleone said. “We’ve done everything to try to get them to negotiate in good faith with us and it’s just not happening, so we find ourselves here.”

Rutgers' unionized faculty say they have been working for the past nine months without a contract, and there has been no agreement to proposals the unions made last spring.

Strike demands include higher pay, job security and rent freezes, AAUP-AFT member Todd Wolfson said during the town hall.

"There is no deadline for a contract to be signed," a union spokesperson previously told Patch. "But we obviously want a contract negotiated before the end of the semester — well before the end of the semester so exams aren't disrupted."

In the Sunday night statement, Holloway said that the university has offered compensation programs that would increase salaries for full-time faculty by 12 percent by 2025 and increases of about 20 percent in the per-credit salary rate for part-time lecturers and for winter/summer instructors over the four years of the new contract, as well as 3 percent increases in lump-sum payments to all the faculty unions to be doled out over the first two years.

A Q&A posted to the university’s website Sunday night called the union action illegal, noting that Rugters may seek an injunction in court to “compel a return to normal activities.”

“New Jersey courts consistently and expressly have held that strikes by New Jersey public employees are illegal,” the Q&A reads. “Any assertion that this principle does not apply to Rutgers employees, or that it is any less significant because it is established by the judiciary as the common law in the State of New Jersey, and not by the legislature as statutory law, is simply wrong.”

Gov. Phil Murphy called on the university and union bargaining committees Sunday to meet at the statehouse on Monday for a “productive dialogue” and reach an agreement that is “fair for all parties.”

Nightly town halls will be held by the faculty and academic unions during the strike, Givan said.

You can watch the full video of Sunday’s town hall here.