Ready to Strike at Rutgers! Interview with Rutgers University union leaders
Faculty at Rutgers University in New Jersey, one of the oldest public universities in the United States, are preparing to strike. Last week two faculty bargaining units, one comprised of full-time faculty and one of part-time, both voted by overwhelming majority in favor of a strike to create a living wage across campus for all teachers; to bring all faculty into the same bargaining unit; to undermine racism and sexism in the university labor hierarchy; and to push back against the university’s corporate, neoliberal agenda.
The two Rutgers Unions, AAUP-AFT, and the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, are also practicing what the Union calls “fighting for the common good“. Their demands against the University include a call for a freeze on housing rates on all Rutgers-owned properties, a call for student debt forgiveness, and attention to creation of a “beloved community” in and around Rutgers campuses in the multiracial, working-class cities of New Brunswick, Camden and Newark.
Puntorojo spoke to three leading members of the Rutgers strike campaign to learn more about the campaign and the potential for a strike: Erin Santana, a doctoral candidate in American Studies who serves on the union's Executive Committee, Graduate Steering Committee, and Political Education Committee; K. Sebastian León, a 5th year assistant professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University – New Brunswick, where he also serves as an elective member of the AAUP-AFT Executive Council; and Amy Higer, President of the Rutgers Part-Time Faculty Union PTLFC-AAUP-AFT. It was Amy who summarized the struggle for Puntorojo this way:
The most important part of this entire campaign is that we really do see us all in this fight together: full- and part-time faculty and grad students. We are at the same table, we're supporting each other's demands, and we're acting as one unit, despite the fact that President Holloway [Rutgers President] refused to accept the results of our successful merger campaign last spring. Over 1100 Rutgers adjuncts signed cards supporting a merger with the full-time/graduate worker union. In reality, our work at Rutgers is fluid and we should be represented in the same union: grad students become adjuncts, adjuncts teach the same courses as non-tenure track faculty (and some of us have been non-tenure track faculty), tenure-stream faculty rely on part-time teaching faculty to do their research.
I know all of us in the adjunct faculty union are really tired of getting run over. And we know getting run over means our students are getting less than they need and less than they deserve. When Rutgers makes adjuncts reapply for their jobs each and every semester, our students pay the price. We are not able to be the faculty they need.
In the video interview below, Santana and Leon talk about creating faculty solidarity against Rutgers University’s efforts to divide faculty workers against each other.
After viewing the video Puntorojo readers are encouraged to support the Rutgers faculty strike by clicking and donating here.
Bill V. Mullen is a member of the DSA and of the organizing collective for the US Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
