Rutgers University and its largest faculty union have
reached a tentative four-year agreement that would raise its members' pay by an
average of 8.25 percent and require the university to declare a fiscal
emergency before freezing salaries.
Rutgers and the American Association of University
Professors-American Federation of Teachers announced what they called an
"imaginative and innovative agreement" Thursday in a joint statement
sent to faculty. It would cover nearly 4,700 of the union's members.
For months, Rutgers has been negotiating with unions that
represent 20,000 of its more than 24,400 faculty and staff.
Two other unions, Communications Workers of America Local
1040 and International Union of Operating Engineers Local 68, announced
Thursday that they had ratified new four-year contracts through June 30, 2018.
The Rutgers AAUP-AFT contract is to be retroactive to
Sept. 1, 2014, and run through June 30, 2018. The previous contract expired
Aug. 31, 2014.
A series of merit and across-the-board raises would add
up to the average of 8.25 percent increase for members, said Patrick Nowlan,
executive director of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT.
Every faculty member covered by the contract - including
tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track professors and graduate and
teaching assistants - would see an immediate raise of $2,345, retroactive to
September. In the 2015-16 fiscal year, some would receive merit raises
averaging 2 percent.
An across-the-board hike of 2.125 percent would take
effect next year and another merit raise, averaging 2.125 percent, would take
effect July 1, 2017.
"It's not a perfect agreement, but I think we've
gotten a lot of the things that we wanted, and especially for people who are on
the lower end of the salary scale; those are people who had really been
hurting," said Julie Still, a Rutgers-Camden librarian and president of
the campus' union chapter.
Also under the contract, minimum annual pay for a
full-time, non-tenure-track faculty member on every campus will increase to
$56,169 from $39,058 - a 43.8 percent increase.
Assistant professors - entry-level tenure-track faculty -
will see their minimum pay increase to $61,786 from $44,839, a 37.8 percent
increase.
"Rutgers strives to compensate its employees fairly;
we have always placed a high value on faculty and staff excellence, and we have
provided our employees with salary and benefit packages that are among the most
competitive in the nation for public research universities," Rutgers
spokesman Greg Trevor wrote in a statement.
Rutgers unions have been in negotiations with the
university for months.
A coalition calling itself Rutgers One had held a series
of "Reclaim Rutgers" events across the campuses, including one
Tuesday with AFT president Randi Weingarten and State Senate President Stephen
Sweeney (D., Gloucester).
One of the major sticking points for the AAUP-AFT was a
"subject to" clause that tied raises to university funding.
"We needed to do something with the 'subject to'
language," Nowlan said. "It couldn't sit there and not have any
definition to it."
In 2010, Rutgers cited that provision in imposing a
unilateral salary freeze.
Under the tentative deal, Rutgers can only invoke the
"subject to" provision after declaring a fiscal emergency and
providing financial documents and explanation to the union. Rutgers and the
union would then negotiate how to address the financial situation.
"This is a good step in the right direction,"
Still said. "They can't just say that 'oh, it's a fiscal emergency,' they
have to actually show us some reason why it's a fiscal emergency."
The Rutgers AAUP-AFT will begin mailing ballots Friday, a
spokesman said.
Negotiations remain open for more than 13,000 other
Rutgers employees who remain without contracts, including more than 2,300
members of the Union of Rutgers Administrators (which is affiliated with the AFT),
and 1,400 members of the American Association of University
Professors-Biomedical and Health Sciences New Jersey.
Source: Philly.com
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