Strikers march in front of the Rutgers building in New Brunswick, NJ, last Monday.
Seth Wenig/AP
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Seth Wenig/AP
Strikers march in front of the Rutgers building in New Brunswick, NJ, last Monday.
Seth Wenig/AP
Faculty at Rutgers University are ending a week-long strike, effective immediately, after agreeing to a tentative contract with the school. The 67,000 students in the New Jersey school system can return to classes on Monday.
The three striking unions and the Rutgers administration announced early Saturday that they had reached a “framework” agreement for new faculty contracts.
According to the university, the agreement includes substantial salary increases for graduate workers and part-time lecturers, and significantly enhances job security for part-time faculty, Rutgers President said Jonathan Holloway in school news release.
The labor organizations — referring to the status of the strike as not cancellation but “suspension” — said that while they had achieved “profound victories for our unions,” some issues remain unresolved, leaving open the option of returning to the picket line if they cannot reach a resolution during the negotiation.
The three unions are: the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, which represents part-time lecturers; the AAUP-AFT, which represents full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral associates and counselors; and the AAUP-BHSNJ, which represents faculty in the health and sciences departments.
“There are open issues that need to be resolved, especially for AAUP-BHSNJ, and we will not leave our colleagues at RBHS behind. They have been with us all the way. However, the framework demonstrates the vital progress we have made on the main issues we prioritized during this contract campaign,” the unions he said in the announcement.
The unions, which represent about 9,000 staff and faculty workers, called for the strike on April 9 in what they said was a fight to ensure equal pay, a living wage, race and gender equity. gender and salary increases.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy hailed the deal after days of demonstrations by staff and students across Rutgers campuses in New Brunswick, Camden and Newark.
“After five days of intensive dialogue and negotiations in my office, I am pleased to share that Rutgers University and the union bargaining committees have reached an agreement,” Governor Murphy he said in a statement.
