2019 STATEWIDE NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE

WHERE WE ARE

This Fall, members at our nine institutions are mobilizing across the State to let their administrations know that the time for the State and College/University Presidents to negotiate a fair contract has come and gone.

After engaging in many negotiations sessions with the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations and the College/University Presidents since March 2019, the Council's more than 10,000 full-time/part-time faculty, professional staff, librarians and adjunct faculty are still working without a contract. 

It is time for the State and the College/University Presidents to agree to our just and reasonable demands at the table and to stop chipping away at the rights and benefits that our contracts provide.

Two upcoming negotiation dates are scheduled for the Council’s two bargaining units on November 15th and November 22nd, while the main challenges facing our statewide units are still unsettled.   

THE MAIN ISSUES: QUALITY HIGHER EDUCATION, JOB SECURITY, and PAY EQUITY

The Council has always been a staunch advocate for quality higher education for our students. There is no one way to achieve quality higher education, but we leverage our strength to achieve this goal in two areas: at the bargaining table and in the halls of the State legislature.

In Trenton, we get there by reversing the State's divestment from our institutions and likewise ending the unfair, decades-long debt burden placed on our students.

At the bargaining table, we fight to improve the working conditions, salaries and benefits of our members. After all, excellent working conditions, benefits and salaries help attract and retain our exemplary faculty, professional staff, librarian and adjunct faculty.

In combined efforts to save money and to exert control over an exploited workforce, many of our institution's Presidents want to hire faculty into a greater number of contingent positions, commonly known across our campuses as Lecturers or Specialists.

While our institutions have the legal right to create precarious, non-tenured track teaching positions, we have the legal right and moral obligation to demand that the pay, benefits and working conditions for these positions be incorporated into the master contract. PERIOD.  

For example, the College/University Presidents obstinately refuse to agree to multi-year appointment contracts and yearly salary increases for non-tenure track faculty positions that include Lecturers and Specialists. When the Council's team asks for a rationale the only reply we get is that it works better for them.

Equal pay for equal work is a tenet of our bargaining philosophy. We are demanding a rationalization of overload rates with the adjunct faculty teaching credit hour rates. Shockingly, the State and the College/University Presidents believe that adjunct labor is fundamentally worth less than the work performed by full-time faculty when teaching overload.

Our adjunct faculty, many of whom have provided decades of service to our students and institutions, continue to be exploited, much to the financial benefit of our schools. This begs the question: if the work that adjunct faculty perform is worth-less than the classroom labor of full-time, tenured faculty, then why do adjunct faculty occupy a majority presence in so many of our classrooms across so many campuses?

SOME MAJOR OUTSTANDING ISSUES

Salary and Increments- the State and College/University Presidents, so far, have refused to sign off on contractual protections for continued increments at the expiration of future contracts, even though the State agreed to guarantee ongoing increments for the other public sector unions! We are demanding contract language to protect future increments.

The College/University Presidents have also instructed the State’s team to reject our proposal for binding arbitration over local agreements that involve compensation-for example, presently, New Jersey City University has declared that it will not honor advisory arbitration awards for compensation that is guaranteed by locally negotiated agreements.

Don’t forget, the Presidents’ designees have affixed their signatures to these Local agreements and our rights must be protected from the capricious whim of contemptuous administrations!

TAKE ACTION - NOVEMBER 20 DAY OF ACTION

The 11 AFT Locals comprising the Council have called for a unified Day of Action on Wednesday, November 20, 2019.

We encourage all of our members to take part in their Local membership meetings, campus actions and other protest activities leading up to and including the November 20 Day of Action.

Follow, like and share the posts from your AFT Local's social media and let your friends, family and community know what we're fighting for: Quality Higher Education, Job Security & Pay Equity.

 

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