Odds of Rutgers faculty strike resuming dims as talks continue and final exams loom

The odds of a second walkout and resumption of a suspended strike by Rutgers University faculty members has dimmed, even as university administrators and three unions continued hammering out resolutions to open issues in New Brunswick late Friday, with medical faculty winning a key demand for 14 weeks of parental leave at the end of the afternoon.

Securing the 14 weeks of leave for new parents to "bond and recuperate" at the end of day Friday was a win for medical faculty and the coalition of three unions who had expressed discouragement Thursday with the pace of negotiations after faculty paused the strike and returned to their classes. It was encouraging, said Diomedes Tsitouras, executive director of the medical faculty union, AAUP-BHSNJ, when asked about when negotiations could be wrapped up. "We hope for progress so we can move forward," said Tsitouras.

Considerations to call on members to resume the strike, before Friday's win for the medical faculty, ran the risk of jeopardizing a deal crafted in Trenton a week ago that had secured breakthrough concessions for key groups, leaving some union leaders frustrated, they said. And they said that no one wants to disrupt an already upset university schedule just weeks before the semester ends. Final exams are scheduled to begin May 4.

"It's the last week of school and we wouldn't want to disrupt our students' final exams or ability to graduate and start their summers," said Howie Swerdloff, secretary of the adjunct faculty union and a writing instructor in New Brunswick. "So, resuming the strike at this point is not really an option."

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Opportunities to express dissatisfaction

However, commencement, Rutgers Day and similar events in the next few weeks “present opportunities for us to express our dissatisfaction with the slow pace of bargaining that we are once again enduring," he said, referring to outstanding issues that needed addressing. Both sides entered formal bargaining 10 months ago.

Gov. Phil Murphy’s office has refused to provide any preliminary indication of how much money the state will provide to cover the framework deal that was fast-tracked by mediators and Murphy’s staff. A spokesperson for Murphy’s office would not comment on repeated requests for an estimate of the total cost of the deal struck in Trenton last Saturday between the state, the university and the unions.

Key elements to framework deal

Key elements of the deal, according to Rutgers spokesperson Dory Devlin, include across-the-board salary raises of at least 14% by July of 2025 for full-time faculty and Economic Opportunity Fund counselors, a 43.8% increase in the per-credit salary rate for part-time lecturers over the four years of the contract, salary increases for postdoctoral fellows and associates of at least 27.9% over the same contract period, multi-year financial support for teaching assistants and graduate assistants, and a total salary raise to $40,000 from $30,000 for graduate workers over the length of their contract.

Murphy said publicly last week during WNYC’s public radio show “Ask Governor Murphy” that he will provide substantive support to a finished deal between the unions and the university but was not more specific.

“As with every year, our administration looks forward to continuing to work with Rutgers and other institutions of higher education in our state during the budget process,” said Christi Peace, a spokesperson for Murphy.

$800 million in cash reserves

Rutgers has in excess of $800 million in its “rainy day fund,” or cash reserves and can afford to pay for the deal, said John Castella, an adjunct professor at the Rutgers School of Management & Labor Relations and a business agent for United Service Workers Unions, a national labor union.

Castella, said he was an adjunct union vice president between 2015 and 2017 and bargained for the same demands that resulted in the strike last week. He said that he expects union members have enough faith in their leadership to follow through on any request to resume a walkout. “Here we are five or six years later, still fighting for equal pay for equal work and health benefits,” he said.

Leaders were hopeful of being closer to a final deal after the medical faculty union made some progress on demands Friday when they secured parental leave in their contracts. Medical faculty, whose contracts are merged with non-medical tenured faculty, have asked for longer contracts with tenure-like job guarantees. They have also demanded family leave provisions, which they do not currently have, modeled on what legacy tenured faculty in non-medical departments are entitled to.

The medical faculty union representing clinicians and researchers in Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences had more open issues remaining compared to part-time professors and graduate workers during a week of fast-tracked negotiations in Trenton that ended Saturday with the strike being called off temporarily.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Rutgers strike resuming unlikely as final exams loom