Spring is here, you can smell the stress of finals budding on the flowers. Classes are coming to an end and every second counts at this point.
Rutgers professors and other faculty were very close to canceling all classes and halting all research in the New-Brunswick Piscataway, Camden, and Newark campuses if the strike were to happen this week. They also would have asked part-time adjunct professors, who are not in their bargaining unit, to honor picket lines and not teach classes in protest for key union demands such as including pay equity, hiring more full-time faculty to improve the faculty-to-student ratio, and a $15 minimum wage for student workers,
The thought of a strike interfering for days of education made many students shudder but many understand the importance of Rutgers faculty reasoning and what was at stake.
"Camden and Newark faculty get paid less than New Brunswick — that is unconscionable," Hughes said. "Pay people the same. Equal pay for equal work for women, for men, for faculty of color, for white faculty and for faculty in Camden, New Brunswick, and Newark."
The faculty union was not asking for bizarre change, but demanding equality and attempting to cease the gender and race wage gap.
The threat of a strike was thick in Rutgers air over the past year, there have been more than 35 negotiating sessions since March, but they were able to come to a conclusion last night without the need of a strike.
While the threat of a strike was very apparent to make change, "Rutgers University averted what would have been the first strike by professors in the school's nearly 253 -year history by reaching a last-minute deal late Tuesday with the faculty union in a series of marathon negotiating sessions."
"We made history today," Rutgers AAUP-AFT president Deepa Kumar said in a statement. "For the first time in the union's nearly 50-year history, we won equal pay for equal work for female faculty, faculty of color and for faculty in the Newark and Camden campuses. We won significant pay raises for our lowest paid members, our graduate employees who will see their pay increase from $25,969 to $30,162 over the course of the contract."
Yesterday the gender gap wage, and racial gap wage along with campus gap wage was closed.
Deepa Kumar said in a statement, "For the first time in the union's nearly 50-year history, we won equal pay for equal work for female faculty, faculty of color and for faculty in the Newark and Camden campuses. We won significant pay raises for our lowest paid members, our graduate employees who will see their pay increase from $25,969 to $30,162 over the course of the contract."
I'm proud of Rutgers for standing their ground and demanding equality. Yesterday did make history.
