3 unions representing about 9,000 Rutgers University faculty and staff to begin historic strike over contract negotiations | CNN

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Three unions representing about 9,000 Rutgers University faculty and staff will go on strike Monday morning after nearly a year of gridlocked contract negotiations, marking the first educator strike in the university’s nearly 257-year history, according to the unions.

Members of the unions will form picket lines on Rutgers’s three main campuses in New Brunswick, Newark and Camden, New Jersey, to demand salary increases, improved job security for adjunct faculty and guaranteed funding for graduate students, among other requests, union representatives said in a joint release.

“Those closest to our learning and to the university’s mission to teaching, research and service deserve more than to merely be surviving and scraping by,” Rutgers masters student Michelle O’Malley said during a virtual town hall Sunday night.

The three unions are Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral researchers and counselors; the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, which represents part-time lecturers; and AAUP-BHSNJ, which represents faculty who teach at the university’s medical and public health facilities.

While union leaders expect the action to halt instruction and “non-critical research,” the university is insisting most classes will continue. Clinicians at the university’s health facilities “will continue to perform patient care duties and critical research, while curbing voluntary work,” the unions’ release said.

In guidelines posted in the case of a strike, the university advised students to continue to attend classes and complete assignments as normal.

“To say that this is deeply disappointing would be an understatement,” Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway said in a letter to the community. According to Holloway, the two sides agreed to appoint a mediator just two days before the strike was announced.

“For the past several weeks, negotiations have been constant and continuous,” the president said. “Significant and substantial progress has been made, as I have noted, and I believe that there are only a few outstanding issues. We will, of course, negotiate for as long as it takes to reach agreements and will not engage in personal attacks or misinformation.”

Union representatives, however, insist that the university has refused to meet their central demands.

“After sitting at the bargaining table for 10 months trying to win what we believe to be fair and reasonable things, like fair pay, job security, and access to affordable health care, and getting virtually nowhere on these core demands, we had no choice but to vote to strike,” Amy Higer, a part-time lecturer at Rutgers and president of the Adjunct Faculty Union, said in a statement.

She continued, “We’ve heard management say that a strike will harm students. But you know what really harms students? The high turnover that results from paying teachers poorly and making them reapply for their jobs every semester.”

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy in a statement implored university and union bargaining committee representatives to meet in his office Monday “to have a productive dialogue.”

In addition to the three groups that announced the strike, there are nine other unions seeking new contracts with the university, according to the unions’ release.