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.

1. Every year RU’s audited financial statements show that the university is making money, but every year its budgetary statements claim to be losing money. In net auxiliary income alone (brought in from housing, dining, and sports), RU’s revenue in FY 2009 was $11.106 million, and by FY 2010, that figure had increased to $14.793 million. Thus, even as university officials claimed to be losing money in auxiliary, they were showing a surplus.
2. At the end of fiscal year 2010, RU had more money in cash, or assets that could be converted to cash in 90 days, than ever before. At the end of fiscal year 2008, RU held $73.946 million as cash in banks and money market accounts; in 2009, that figure had increased to $100.132 million; and by June 30, 2010, as Rutgers was implementing the wage freeze, that figure had increased to $173.546 million.
3. Ultimately, the numbers show that the money is there. In the public sector, the bottom line is the difference between net assets at the beginning of the year and net assets at the end of the year. On June 30, 2009, RU’s net assets were $2.309 billion. By a year later, they had grown $2.426 billion. So, at the end of the day, when the wage freeze went into effect, RU had more money and assets—whether in cash, investments, or buildings—than a year before, by $117 million. And yet, it would have cost less than $23-25 million to pay raises to the entire university, including faculty, AFSCME workers, URA staff, and police. To pay just URA members last year’s raises would have cost only $3 million.

In light of RU’s gains in net assets and the large liquidity of those assets, the wage freeze emerges as a policy rooted not in need but opportunism, not responsible austerity but blatant greed. By using the recession as a boogeyman to exploit workers’ fears of a devastated economy and bleak job market, the administration has shirked its contractual obligations under false pretenses and has in this way shown itself to be morally, not financially, bankrupt.