RUTGERS

Rutgers agrees to some furloughs as unions fight layoffs

Bob Makin
Bridgewater Courier News

NEW BRUNSWICK – A furlough program for 450 employees has been tentatively agreed to by one of 19 unions that formed a coalition to defend jobs lost and threatened at Rutgers University, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) locals 888 and 1761 announced.

The tentative agreement will protect about 450 jobs within the Division of Institutional Planning and Operations and the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center. That accounts for about half of the jobs that were threatened, according to coalition reports. More than 600 dining service employees were laid off earlier in the week, as were 300 part-time lecturers in April, as previously reported.

The tentative agreement must still be ratified by union membership, and the shared work program is subject to state approval, the locals said in a statement.

“We have been working to explore ways in which to collaborate constructively to mitigate the financial impact of COVID-19 on our campus community while avoiding layoffs,” leadership of the locals said in a joint statement. “The tentative agreement … is the result of that hard work and is a credit to what can be accomplished when we focus on our important shared goals.”

EARLIER: Rutgers 'choosing to fire the most vulnerable campus workers'

Furloughs for 450 Rutgers University employees have been agreed upon, but unions want more, as well as nearly 1,000 lay offs to be rescinded.

AFSCME Local 888 represents employees in maintenance, dining, housing, facilities, grounds, agricultural, security officers, and emergency management positions. AFSCME Local 1761 represents employees in clerical, office, laboratory, technical, and dispatcher positions.

If approved, the agreement would save the university money, according to union representatives. The university lost $200 million last quarter, according to President Robert Barchi.

For all union jobs lost or threatened, furloughs would save the university $100 million versus $33 million from layoffs, the coalition estimated. When originally introduced by the coalition, furloughs would have saved $140 million, leaders said. Each week, those savings decrease by about $10 million, they said.

Jobs still are threatened throughout many of the three university campuses’ 19 unions, according to the collation, which is hoping Rutgers rescinds the layoffs of dining service workers and part-time lecturers.

“We’re happy that AFSCME avoided the 400-plus layoffs, and we appreciate the leadership of … AFSCME leaders in achieving this,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the Rutgers American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT), the union representing full-time faculty and graduate employees in a statement.

Shining a light

Throughout the pandemic, Rutgers has promoted itself as a beacon of hope, coalition leaders said during a Zoom press conference on Thursday, while also shining a light on itself as a beacon of justice during recent civil unrest and Black Lives Matter protests. University administration and faculty denounced the May 25 police slaying of George Floyd, which has erupted into nationwide protests and, at times, violent clashes with law enforcement. The university also has promoted a variety of books written by black authors that chronicle the impacts of racism.   

The coalition said the university has laid off a disproportionate number of black and Latino dining service workers who also have lost their health care benefits during a pandemic that disproportionately impacts their populations. 

This is in the face of $600 million in unrestricted reserve funds, as well as millions in salaries for non-essential administrators whose pay cuts have been much smaller than other universities, the coalition said.

“It’s time to break open the piggy bank,” said Christine O’Connell, president of Union of Rutgers Administrators-American Federation of Teachers Local 1766.

Earlier in the year, Rutgers announced that top university administrators would take a four-month 10-percent pay cut, but that pales in comparison to Harvard University’s year-long 20-percent cut, Wolfson said.

“It’s disgraceful,” he said.

Pointing during the Zoom press conference to a portrait of Paul Robeson on her office wall, internationally renowned Rutgers black historian Donna Murch called the university hypocritical for continually utilizing Robeson’s to promote itself.

Robeson was a civil rights activist, actor, singer, All-American athlete and scholar and is Rutgers most famous graduate, according to the university.

“At a moment of national and international mourning about the death of black, brown, and indigenous people, our university has chosen to balance its budget on the backs of precisely those people in New Jersey,” said Munch, an executive council member of Rutgers AAUP-AFT and a member of its People of Color Caucus.

EARLIER: Rutgers announces tuition freeze, pay cuts among cost-cutting measures

Tears and fears

According to the coalition, the university pays $1.8 million annually to a labor law firm described as a “union buster.”

White Plains, New York-based Jackson Lewis also has represented Ikea, University of New Mexico, Boeing and the New York Daily News in labor disputes.

“It seems that they are afraid of a coalition of 19 unions that represents 20,000 of their employees,” said O’Connell, who moderated the virtual panel of about 10 speakers, most of whom were union reps. 

O’Connell said that all union coalition employees have been instructed to contact their state legislators regarding the remaining university labor issues.

During the press conference, two first-generation American students spoke about how they will not be able to continue to attend Rutgers because their mothers, Mexican immigrants and former dining service employees, were laid off. They said they and hundreds of other students no longer will have access to their parents’ employee tuition remission.

“At this time, it’s even scarier to not have health care,” said Luz Sandoval between tears.

“Despite what they’ve done to her and our family, my mother still loves Rutgers and would love to go back to work there,” Melissa Aldave added.

A graduate student also spoke on behalf of research and teaching assistants who may lose their positions and the opportunity to finish their degrees. Those who are international students could be deported, said Alexandra Adams, a Rutgers doctoral candidate, teaching assistant and AAUP-AFT representative.

As for university health care workers who have been without a contract for two years, Rutgers spokeswoman Dory Devlin said negotiations are ongoing with their union, the American Association of University Professors Biomedical and Health Sciences of New Jersey (AAUP-BHSNJ).

Email: bmakin@gannettnj.com

Bob Makin covers Rutgers for MyCentralJersey.com and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey. To get unlimited access to his informative and entertaining work, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.