In December 2010, the URA's Communications Committee sat down with Christina Towne, a research analyst who has been helping URA assess the university’s fiscal situation vis-à-vis the ongoing wage freeze. Comparing recently released figures for fiscal year 2010 with those from previous years, Christina helped us to interpret whether or not Rutgers can, in fact, pay the wage increases that they have been denying faculty and staff. Out of our conversation came three main points, all of which lead us to conclude that yes, they can.

“Rutgers not only promised URA that the deferred raise would be paid as scheduled in the MOA, it made that same promise to the State in order to receive the 5.25% of its allocation that would have otherwise been withheld. Rutgers is not free to break either of these promises. The URA negotiations unit must, therefore, receive retroactive payment in full of the June 30, 2010 deferred raise promised in the MOA.”
BRIEF ON BEHALF OF URA-AFT Local 1766, Submitted by Bennet Zurofsky, Esq.

The Rutgers One Coalition of students, faculty, staff & alumni care about education at the state university. Join us for our teach-in on Monday, Nov. 15. See information at http://www.aftrutgers.org/node/90

Ask President McCormick and Old Queens: Got Ethics?

The McCormick Administration:

* Ignored Trenton’s 4% cap on tuition and fees by adding a new “capital improvement fee” that raised student fees 12.5%
* Broke the unions’ 2009 concession agreements. Froze salaries for unionized workers, but found money for raises and promotions for executives and top managers
* Exclude academically-qualified, undocumented students who graduated from New Jersey high schools by charging out-of-state tuition
* Eliminated the L bus service after students had selected classes and signed leases in Highland Park
* Won’t open the books for students, staff and faculty to have real input on the RU budget. Transparency should be priority.

We say it’s unethical.

Church vs. Adjunct Union
November 12, 2010

Sign a petition supporting the right of adjuncts to organize at http://www.nyorganizing.org/manhattan/Petition.htm

A 1980 Supreme Court decision largely blocked the unionization of faculty members at private colleges and universities, based on the idea that they had so much power that they effectively were part of management. Adjuncts, however, can't be said to be part of management -- and several unions have scored victories not only organizing adjuncts but winning key contract advances for them at private colleges.

An organizing drive at Manhattan College has run into a different issue: the college, a Roman Catholic institution, is asserting that its religious heritage would be threatened by an adjunct union, which would give federal officials oversight over labor relations at the college, and that federal court rulings give it the right to bar collective bargaining. The union says that its effort to get better pay and benefits for adjuncts will have no impact at all on the college's religious mission -- and that if anyone is ignoring church teachings, it is the college administrators, in not seeing the social justice behind the union drive. The National Labor Relations Board is currently holding hearings on the dispute -- and the outcome (quite likely the subject of court challenges) could either expand or limit the potential for adjunct unions at private colleges.

While the dispute has been building for months now, the union is going public with petition drives. Sign the petition at http://www.nyorganizing.org/manhattan/Petition.htm

Few New Jersey residents probably know that Rutgers University and the American Association of University Professors are involved in a nasty fight with uncertain outcomes for the university.

The immediate backdrop is the economic crisis and the state’s deepening financial difficulties. Rutgers is a state school, and the state’s economic woes have also affected the university.

On July 22, Rutgers’ president, Richard McCormick, and its executive vice president for academic affairs, Philip Furmanski, informed the university that “the Rutgers Board of Governors approved … an austerity budget predicated on drastic cuts in our state appropriation. … One action we took to help bring our budget into balance, minimize damage to our critical programs and services and save jobs, was to freeze all salaries.”

What probably riled the AAUP more than the salary freeze was that McCormick and Furmanski also said that “some of the unions are issuing public statements that are simply not factually correct,” effectively accusing the AAUP of lying.

AAUP President Adrienne Eaton and four of her colleagues fired off a strongly worded response on July 27, in which they accused the university administration of violating memoranda of agreement signed with the AAUP in 2009.

To McCormick and Furmanski’s claim that “the unions are charging us with hiding our great ‘wealth,’ ” Eaton retorted: “Then show us the books.”

Who’s right and who’s wrong?

The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter, since the administration has lost the trust of its own professors, who routinely perceive it as incompetent, venal and corrupt.

The union’s role is to advocate while protecting the institution of Rutgers University. But let us not confuse the institution for its management. It is precisely that distinction which calls upon us to post this response to defend our contract. An attack on the faculty, such as the McCormick/Furmanski July 22 memo, must be corrected, so that we all preserve our system of shared governance and academic freedom itself.

Read the faculty response here.

Citing potential legal fallout from cultivating a controlled substance, Rutgers management backtracked away from a request to be the state's exclusive pot grower, according to Governor Chris Christie. The snafu left Christie questioning the university's decision-making process, but Rutgers President McCormick has hardly been indecisive in attacking university unions.

Governor Christie has dominated headlines by battling with the large public unions, but McCormick has gone several steps further than the Governor in freezing contracted raises while leveraging the ugly threat of layoffs. During last year’s election, candidate Christie promised to quash 2009 state worker deals that deferred raises to save the state money. Once in office, the new Governor quickly reversed his position in March by admitting “I was wrong” and acknowledging that last year’s deferral deals were legally-binding.

The state made good with its unionized workforce paying raises in July while Rutgers management unilaterally decided to negate agreements modeled on the state deals. In this respect Rutgers management stands alone as the only entity in the state to break last year’s deferral agreements.

Read the full article at Disjointed Rutgers Still Bests Governor in Union Bust
Nat Bender, August 2, 2010

A report released today challenges the perception that New Jersey public workers are better paid than their private sector counterparts.

Taking into account hours worked, wages and benefits, Professor Jeffrey H. Keefe of the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations found that total compensation for private and public sector workers in the Garden State is about equal.

“New Jersey public employees, both state and local government employees, are not overpaid, but neither are they under compensated,” wrote Keefe in the report for the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.

New Jersey’s public sector workers, both for state and local governments, make an average of $56,694 annually, while private sector workers make $61,252.

Download the full report at http://aftrutgers.org/downloads/BriefingPaper270_final.pdf
Read full story at Rutgers report finds compensation for N.J. private, public workers is roughly equal

“I think the numbers are considerably lower than they were expecting,” said Adrienne Eaton, president of the Rutgers chapter of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers, the faculty union.

For many professors, a buyout offer of a year’s salary or more wasn’t tempting enough to give up their jobs while the economy is still struggling, said Eaton, a professor of labor studies and employment relations.

“It wasn’t particularly generous,” Eaton said.

-from One-year salary buyout offer is not enough for most eligible Rutgers University professors

Friday, July 09, 2010, 8:45 PM, Kelly Heyboer/ The Star-Ledger