The Rutgers Strike

I’ve long believed that the challenges to some sort of complete strike for all versions of academic teaching labor was well nigh impossible because, to be frank, the interests of permanent faculty, per-course faculty, and graduate students are simply quite different and are often in conflict with each other. At my school, which is a wall-to-wall union campus, all three groups are in separate unions, though the per-course faculty union is corrupt and terrible and basically worthless for its members.

But the recent Rutgers strike, which has come after a couple of years of some intense internal organizing around broad-based issues, has succeeded in squaring this circle.

Progress was in bits and pieces — not leaps and bounds — a visibly tired group of faculty union leaders told their constituents at a nightly public meeting as the first-ever academic strike on all three campuses of Rutgers University dragged into its fifth day Friday.

“The going is grueling,” said Bryan Sacks, vice president of the Adjunct Faculty Union. A deal could be possible over the weekend, or it could all “blow up,” another union member told NorthJersey.com.

Still, the striking unions’ core position — which is that tenured professors will not accept a deal until the university reasonably addresses lowest-paid academic workers’ demands — is “unusual and admirable,” said Julie Wollman, professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

What’s distinctive about these contract talks is that higher-paid tenured professors are refusing to go home with a deal that just serves their needs and say they will dig in their heels until part-time professors and graduate workers’ demands are met in a reasonable way.

As a result, the strike could set precedents for labor disputes in higher education across the country, coming at a time when colleges nationwide are already constrained from inflationary costs and changing enrollment trends. What’s more, strikes at other universities have become more common.

The university and the three striking unions were holding marathon negotiation sessions that run past midnight, Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway wrote in an email Thursday to students, staff and faculty, as bargaining continues in Trenton in Gov. Phil Murphy’s offices with two mediators.

This whole situation needs more study and analysis. And since this was written, the final deal has been struck. Even as a confirmed faculty unionist, I’m not completely sure what to make of it all.