Rutgers Unions Suspend Strike after Big Gains

The weeklong triple-union strike at Rutgers University is pausing today after bargainers reached “framework” deals containing significant raises Friday night.

More negotiating must be done before these frameworks become tentative agreements, and union members then must vote on those. And the health-care faculty union doesn’t even have a framework deal—Dr. Catherine Monteleone, that organization’s president, said it’s continuing to negotiate but suspending striking Monday “in solidarity with the other unions.”

“We’re not settling until they get their core issues addressed,” said Amy Higer, president of the separate part-time lecturers’ union.

But the university system, the lecturers’ union and the full-time faculty union—which also represents graduate student workers, postdoctoral associates and counselors—have said the frameworks include significant gains for workers. And the contracts would be retroactive to July 1, providing “substantial retroactive salary payments,” the university said.

“For our union,” Higer said, “we got much more than we thought we could.”

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, had called representatives of the unions and the Rutgers administration to Trenton when the strike began last Monday.