The Rutgers University faculty, one of the largest in the country, authorized its union leaders to call a strike — with a 94% supermajority voting for the authorization.
If the leaders ultimately call the strike, it’ll be the first faculty walkout in the school’s 256-year history.
The 10-day online vote closed Friday for the 8,000 members of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT and the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union. About 80% of their members participated in an online vote, according to the unions.
The high turnout and overwhelming support for a strike show the frustration among the faculty, according to Rebecca Givan, president of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents full-time faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral associates.
“They’ve lost patience, they feel disrespected and they know their demands are reasonable,” Givan said. “Asking for a living wage and equal pay for equal work and the Rutgers that our students need is pretty reasonable, and we want respect at the bargaining table — and if we don’t get it, we’re willing to take further action.”
The two unions now plan to return to the bargaining table with the state university.
“We will make every effort to bargain a contract without a strike. But the leadership of our unions are empowered to call a strike if we’re no longer making progress at the bargaining table,” said Givan, who is an associate professor in the School of Management.
The Rutgers AAUP-AFT represents about 5,000 full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral associates and Educational Opportunity Fund counselors. The adjunct union represents another 2,700 part-time lecturers.
The two unions have been negotiating since last May. Their current contract expired in June 2022.
The faculty unions are asking for increased pay, better job security and health benefits for part-time lecturers and graduate assistants. They’re also asking Rutgers to freeze rents on housing for students and staff, and extend graduate research funding for one year for students affected by the pandemic.
Gov. Phil Murphy has previously said he is engaged with discussions on both sides.
“For me, we are the quintessential organized labor state, and in many respects, the – or one of the – quintessential higher education states,” Murphy said in February on “Ask Governor Murphy,” WNYC’s monthly call-in show.
He described being frustrated a deal hadn’t yet been reached, but optimistic “sooner than later that they find resolution and get this to the place it should be.”
If a strike were to happen, it would affect all three Rutgers campuses in New Brunswick, Newark and Camden, which serve more than 67,000 students.
In 2019, Rutgers AAUP-AFT members also authorized their leadership to call a strike, but one was averted when the union reached a last-minute deal with the university.
University spokesperson Dory Devlin noted authorization votes have occurred before — without ultimately resulting in a strike.
"No one wants to disrupt students’ academic progress and we are committed to working as hard as we possibly can to negotiate contracts with our unions that are fair, reasonable, and responsible," she said by email. "We have already held more than 100 bargaining sessions with our faculty and staff unions and will continue to meet in good faith with them until we reach comprehensive agreements on mandatorily negotiable issues, including compensation."
Devlin said she's hopeful agreements can be reached "as quickly as possible while we continue to plan for our commencement celebrations in May."
UPDATE: This story has been revised with an updated figure for the vote tally from Rutgers' faculty unions.
