Rutgers teaching force is nearing tentative agreements on a new contract

Faculty, graduate students, and other members of the teaching force at Rutgers University are close to finalizing tentative agreements for new contracts.

The bargaining teams for the three unions representing 9,000 educators, researchers, and clinicians at the public flagship university voted to recommend contract language that would become tentative agreements if they are approved by the unions’ executive councils and board.

Those groups will vote Sunday, and if accepted, the tentative agreements would go before members for ratification.

» READ MORE: Rutgers strike is suspended, sending faculty back to work with a ‘framework’ for new contracts

It would bring an end to monthslong negotiations that included a one-week strike earlier this month that caused widespread disruption for the 67,000 students spread across three primary campuses in New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark. It was the first strike in the unions’ history. The unions agreed to return to work with a general framework for contracts.

“If ratified by the union membership, it would provide substantial salary increases for full-time faculty, graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and others,” Rutgers said in a statement. “It would also provide new compensation programs for our medical school faculty.”

» READ MORE: Rutgers’ faculty and grad student unions will go on strike

Union officials did not provide any details on the tentative agreement, other than to say it included the framework that the unions and university reached when they held bargaining sessions in the state capitol during the strike, at Gov. Phil Murphy’s request.

According to university administration, that framework includes a 43.8% increase in the per-credit salary rate for part-time lecturers over the four years of the contract and improvements to their job security, and a 27.9% increase in the minimum salary for postdoctoral fellows and associates over the same period. Teaching assistants and graduate assistants will see their 10-month salaries increase to $40,000 over the course of the contract, the university said.

Full-time faculty and Educational Opportunity Fund counselors will see salaries increase by at least 14% by July 2025. The contracts are retroactive to July 1, 2022, and will provide retroactive salary payments to the employees.

Many of the outstanding issues that remained post-strike concerned the 1,300 members of the BHSNJ union, which represents doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, and biomedical researchers at Rutgers.

The potential tentative agreement has resolved outstanding issues and includes more changes that were bargained over the last two weeks, the unions said. During that time, union members held pickets outside the homes of members of the boards of governors and at a board of governors’ meeting. Dozens of Rutgers’ resident physicians and fellows also held a demonstration Thursday night in Newark.