Rutgers unions picket as medical faculty remain frustrated at lack of contract progress

A small crowd of Rutgers educators and clinicians were back on the picket line Thursday, protesting the continued lack of a new contract outside the university’s board of governors’ monthly meeting.

The protest came five days after Rutgers faculty unions suspended a weeklong strike that brought classes nearly to a halt at the state university's three campuses.

The strike, called after union frustration over 10 months of talks that had still not produced a new deal, prompted Gov. Phil Murphy to step in and bring the negotiations to Trenton, where enough progress was made for union leaders to suspend the strike Monday.

But medical faculty members from Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences say the administration is dragging its feet on their demands for a contract that is on par with terms long available to legacy tenured faculty at the university’s non-medical schools.

Graduate workers are also waiting for progress on a big issue: guaranteed funding for five years for doctoral students and a one-year extension for researchers whose work was put on hold or delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That was a moment that transformed all of our lives, and our research severely suffered,” said Liana Katz, a fourth-year graduate student in geography, referring to the pandemic. The framework deal outlined Saturday offered access to stable funding for five years to incoming doctoral students, but the graduate student workers do not want that deal unless it also includes current students, such as Katz.

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Currently, academic departments vary unpredictably in terms of how long doctoral students can expect to be funded, she said.

The medical sciences faculty union has been slowed down because it negotiates with its chancellor, Dr. Brian Strom, and not with Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway, said Diomedes Tsitouras, executive director of AAUP-BHSNJ. That union’s dealings were sidelined during the fast-tracked negotiations that led union leaders to suspend the strike.

Negotiations are now back in New Brunswick at Rutgers’ offices, and the medical faculty only received a counterproposal Thursday morning, Tsitouras said. Clinicians are represented by the AAUP-BHSNJ union, one of three that called the strike, representing a total of 9,000 educators.

Strike is only suspended

The striking unions’ position since Saturday — when Murphy announced a tentative agreement between the two sides — is that the strike is only suspended and could be resumed if a full contract is not finalized.

If talks stall again and the union leaders call to resume the strike, it could put the final weeks of the academic calendar into chaos. Students are currently scheduled to begin final exams on May 4. Graduation is set for May 14.

Holloway made a brief introductory comment at the public session of the Rutgers board of governors meeting Thursday, saying only that labor negotiations were continuing and that he was thankful to Murphy for intervening to return campus to normal.

There was no mention of the strike on the meeting agenda or by board members.

Holloway said the university is running a deficit, and that increasing revenue streams is critical.

Medical faculty not close to a deal

The union that represents about 1,300 medical faculty members and clinicians in nursing, medical, dental and public health is not close to a contract deal, and it was the most dissatisfied group last week when a framework deal was made, since it still has the most issues unresolved.

Clinical faculty members are asking for tenure-like status that they say would provide them family leave and contracts that would guarantee them the time they need to spend teaching medical students.

Rutgers’ position is that these faculty members should focus on patients, which brings in revenue to the university, instead of setting aside time to teach their resident medical students, said Dr. James Prister, an associate program director for medical residency at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, whose job is to help future doctors finish their training.

“Most of our teaching is done on the job, and we collaborate on patient care with them, but that is impossible to do when we have high patient loads and are focused on churning patients in and out of the hospital,” he said.

Demanding family leave

The clinicians are also asking for family leave instead of having to use their sick time for the purpose. Currently, even new parents have to use their sick time to stay home with their newborn children, Prister said. "When you’re working at an educational center like this, taking lower pay in exchange for the gratification of teaching and providing charitable care, I think that generally comes with a little more job security rather than just being essentially a temporary employee,” he said.

Current three-year contracts for medical faculty, for example, guarantee employment only for the first year, Prister said.

“There’s not enough pressure on Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences" to fulfill its faculty’s demands, said Tsitouras. “If Rutgers and Biomedical can sort of avoid the spotlight a little bit, then they can maybe drag things out and not deal with all these things that are important to us.”

“We’re not just health workers, we are faculty, and the frustration has been twofold," he said. "One, the university refuses to treat us like other full-time faculty, and now that we have the opportunity to do that, they’re trying to sideline us so that we don’t have the same parental leave, the same tenure. Remember, we aren’t asking for something better or new, we are just asking to be treated fairly, and they just don’t want to do it. They don’t have a rational reason unless there is an animus to collective bargaining and unions.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Rutgers unions strike: Picket continues over lack of new contract