R.U. administration continues to assault workers' rights

“We are all Wisconsin” is not a mere symbolic gesture. Their struggle is indeed our struggle at Rutgers. Rutgers University faculty, staff, and students stood with thousands in the pouring rain in Trenton, listening to Wisconsin workers and responding, “We are all Wisconsin!” on Friday, February 25.

At a time when states like Wisconsin are stripping their state employees of collective bargaining rights and Governor Christie is attacking the same middle-class workers in New Jersey, Rutgers University continues its own assault on collective bargaining rights by imposing an illegal salary freeze.

President Richard McCormick and Executive Vice President Philip Furmanski imposed a salary freeze on June 10, 2010 in violation of negotiated agreements. This anti-union action undermines a significant segment of the middle class who are needed to grow the economy through research and service, while also teaching the future employees and leaders of New Jersey.

With far less publicity than Wisconsin, McCormick and Furmanski are attacking our faculty and staff by imposing this illegal salary freeze. That’s why hundreds of faculty and staff from Rutgers and the other state colleges and universities joined thousands of middle-class union members in Trenton to protest these attacks.

Just like in Wisconsin, the issue at Rutgers is not the state budget. The issue is power.

When McCormick and Furmanski imposed a salary freeze, groups of unionized employees were hit like dominoes one after another. First hit were the Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) counselors, then full-time faculty, including grant-funded researchers whose money comes from federal and state grants, not Rutgers. Also impacted were teaching assistants and graduate assistants, administrative staff and other employees at Rutgers.

Rutgers AAUP-AFT is seeking a remedy through binding arbitration before a third-party neutral. In an effort to settle the salary freeze issue and avoid having to go all the way to arbitration, Rutgers AAUP-AFT has proposed various ways to move forward, but McCormick and Furmanski refuse to reach a settlement.

The lack of a timely solution is forcing us to keep moving towards arbitration. The salary freeze is interfering with the administration of research grants and contracts as well as hiring of new faculty and staff. McCormick and Furmanski have repeatedly postponed the date to begin arbitration with the AAUP-AFT faculty.

They seem intent on delay. This ends up wasting valuable time and resources. It feels as if the union is dragging the administration to arbitration; they could easily sit down to negotiate for the common good of the Rutgers community. The most recent delay pushes the start date for arbitration with the faculty and TA/GAs from March 18 to March 28.

And it’s not a matter of not having the money. Rutgers added $39,844,000 to its unrestricted net assets over the past year, an increase of 7.5% from the year before.

If the State of New Jersey and all of our other public colleges and universities have honored their negotiated agreements, we should expect no less from Rutgers, our flagship university. We are seeing strong public support across the country for the right to collective bargaining and we call on Rutgers to respect its agreements now.

Catherine Stanford is the staff representative for the Rutgers American Association of University Professor-American Federation of Teachers, representing over 6,000 teaching employees on all R.U. campuses.