Editors note: The Higher Education Inquirer thanks Hank Kalet for allowing us to reprint his substack Channel Surfing as a record of the Rutgers strike. Hank is a . We encourage you to subscribe to his substack and visit the Rutgers AAUP-AFT and Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union twitter pages.
You can donate to the strike fund at https://rafup.betterworld.org/donate
Post-Strike Diary: A Step Back and Some History
The Fight Here at Rutgers Is Not Over, Nor Is It an Isolated Battle
I want to get back to first principles. Put the strike at Rutgers into the broader context of higher ed and contingent worker right. Connect it to the larger currents in the labor movement.
The 40 years starting with Ronald Reagan’s election were awful ones for labor unions. Union activity had already peaked when Reagan fired striking air-traffic controllers and signaled to business that the era of labor peace on the employer side was over.
I worked in a factory in Trenton that summer. There were whispers that union organizing was taking place, but it wasn’t gaining much traction. Factory jobs were leaving the state and the Northeast and there was fear that management would close shop and move to Georgia, Alabama, or another anti-union state. Reagan’s action was the final straw, dooming the efforts, and setting in motion a frenzy of union busting we are still struggling to understand. (I’m working on a play about this moment.)
The 40 years that followed were mostly dark for the union movement, with some victories. Some of this darkness was brought on by the unions themselves, many of which had calcified and were either corrupt or overly cozy with management and politicians. Grassroots energy was dismissed and reform efforts short-lived.
The Covid pandemic shifted the terrain. Donna Murch, a union colleague and associate professor of history at Rutgers, has been making the case that Covid laid bare the vulnerabilities of all faculty members and all workers at Rutgers. Covid forced classes online with little assistance and no compensation for the work needed to make that happen. It put clinicians and lab workers in peril, requiring them to work through the pandemic often without proper PPE. It disrupted grad students’ research, even as their funding clock continued to tick.
This precarity was evident throughout society, a realization that led to union drives at Amazon, Starbucks, and other companies that relied on short-term and/or low-paid workers. Warehouse workers — many immigrants, some undocumented— often faced the worst conditions.
Those of us with a level of economic privilege were able to pay folks in the gig economy to do our grocery shopping and provide needed services, allowing Im us to stay home.
Unemployment shot up, wages stagnated with the economy, and the fascistic wing of the Republican Party — those most aligned with then-President Trump and opposed to vaccines, masks, and those who violently responded to the Black Lives Matter protests that spread after the state murder of George Floyd — cracked down and continue to crackdown on efforts to expand opportunity and inclusion.
This is the backdrop against which we have to judge the current wave of organizing and strikes — a movement that is gaining traction in ways we have not seen in a long time.
Gallup reports:
Seventy-one percent of Americans now approve of labor unions. Although statistically similar to last year's 68%, it is up from 64% before the pandemic and is the highest Gallup has recorded on this measure since 1965.
Union density remains an issue, though this is likely because of the legal impediments erected over 40-plus years of aggressive anti-union activity from both parties, abetted by a media infrastructure that has lost its connections to workers.
News coverage of labor is lagging badly behind this surge of organizing. The loss of labor as a beat has created a structural coverage deficit that, in practical terms, means reporters are reporting and writing stories with at best a limited background on labor issues and dynamics, including how labor law works and just how much power the bosses have accumulated over the years. The upshot is a series of stories throughout the press that boils nearly every labor dispute down to money, or that filters these disputes through an earlier lens in which each dispute is a singular event unrelated to the larger American economy.
The reality, as we discussed in my class today, is that the current wave of organizing is about more than money. It is about life conditions, workplace conditions, about safety and scheduling, and long-term job security. Starbucks workers want more control of their schedules, more regularity, so they can plan their lives. Amazon workers and others working in the new mostly unregulated warehouse industry want safety rules, regular breaks, sick time. The rail workers, who were thrown onto the tracks by President Joe Biden, want an end to the kind of scheduling that results in exhaustion and dangerous conditions — one of the many factors that resulted in the deadly East Palestine crash.
Adjuncts and grads at Rutgers and other institutions of higher education want raises. But we also want respect. We want job security — big raises mean little if we can be fired or laid off easily. We want a shift in values in higher ed away from the current model, which is more focused on creating a profit (big reserve accounts and endowments that can be invested to generate bigger reserves and endowments), on building sports empires, on turning faculty into grant chasers or replaceable cogs.
The framework in place at Rutgers is a start, but this contract fight is far from over. And even when this one ends, we know there will be more work to be done. This is the beginning of the transformation of higher ed, not the conclusion.
Post-Strike Diary: Rutgers Unions Fight On Historic Gains But Work To Be Done.
As I wrote Saturday, the unions representing striking workers voted to accept a contract framework in exchange for pausing the strike before it entered its second week. We paused to let students get back to classes. To let them finish their semester, their careers at Rutgers.
The framework includes a 14% raise over four years for full-time faculty, a 33% pay increase for grads over four years, a 25.5% bump for post-docs, and a 48% increase for adjuncts; multi-semester contracts for adjuncts, presumptive renewal of contracts, recognition of graduate fellows as grad workers, changes in grievance and evaluations procedures, and five-year funding for grads. The framework also includes elements of the “Bargaining for the Common Good” agenda: a $600,000 recurring Community Fund and the end of the university policy that prevents students from registering for classes or getting transcripts or diplomas due to unpaid fines and fees, and a Union-University-Community table.
Much of this is historic, but it’s still a work in progress. The clinicians, researchers, and professors represented by BHSNJ-AAUP have nothing from administration, and more needs to be done for grads, for students and the community, and for adjuncts.
That was the message Monday afternoon as about 100 picketers gathered and chanted, reminding the community and the press that the battle to end the corporatization on higher ed continues — both here in New Jersey and nationally — continues.
Picketers carried strike signs with the word “suspended” stapled above “On Strike.” We marched intro of Scott Hall on College Avenue chanting, “The strike may be suspended. The struggle hasn’t ended.” We did his despite the cold win blowing own College Avenue as students looked on. We have more actions planned this week, part of a rolling set of protests designed to keep our issues in front of the public and to maintain pressure on an administration that failed to take us seriously until we walked and the governor got involved.
I told NBC New York that we could reinstate the strike if management fails to play ball. A threat? Idle talk? I’ll leave it at that. But we’re not going away. We’re not backing down.
RU Strike Diary, Day 5 Ends With a 'Framework'
Cliches. Platitudes. Bromides.
But still accurate.
I think the deal is good for the workers and students involved, but I can’t say much about the details. The journalist in me bristles at this, but my role as a member of the adjunct faculty union executive board prohibits me from saying much more. This is in line with the week for me, a week in which I found myself on the other side of the reporter’s notebook. I’ve talked with more reporters this week than in my entire adult life.
I teach journalism at Rutgers as an adjunct. I became involved in the union effort in 2021 and have become more and more active. The more active I became, the more I learned about the inequities of higher ed. The more I learned about these inequities, the more I became involved.
This was the same for just about everyone I talked with all week. I spent five days on the lines in New Brunswick. It was hot. It was exhausting. It was thrilling. Turnout fluctuated and the size of the pickets on College Avenue varied from day to day. We probably hit 1,000 picketers on Tuesday afternoon, when the folks from Cook/Douglass and Livingston and Busch joined in a march up George Street to the administration building on the Old Queens campus (a small subsection of the College Avenue campus) and joined the College Avenue contingent in an emotional and forceful show of solidarity. Wednesday featured a wake-up tour of campus, while Friday offered a festive feel, even as talks were heating up in Trenton.
The larger experience was one of joy and unity. That does not mean everyone is happy, but we made massive gains and I think we need to acknowledge that.
The message I would offer to the public at this point is that academic workers are tired of being pushed around. We are tired of the corporate bent of higher ed, angry that universities have been coopted by big-time athletics, corporate-style governance and funding models, and that what should be their primary missions — education and research — have been sold off to funders who only care about how they can monetize their scientific discoveries.
We have watched as more and more teaching and research jobs have been remade as contingent, easily replaceable labor. We have watched as the humanities are decimated in favor of incredibly important STEM courses and programs, not because of academic need, but because STEM generates grant revenue.
Rutgers, like most American universities, operates as a corporation. Senior administrators, who often have a Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) with little or no experience in higher education, along with sports coaches who have the potential to earn the university money, are highly compensated while thousands of poorly paid educators and staff are denied job security and benefits. Adjunct faculty and graduate workers are often forced to apply for Medicaid. They frequently take second jobs teaching at other colleges, driving for Uber or Lyft, working as cashiers, delivering food for Grubhub or DoorDash, walking dogs, house sitting, waiting on tables, bartending and living four or six to an apartment or camping out on a friend’s sofa. This inversion of values is destroying the nation’s educational system.
This is why we have seen academic workers strike across the country, from California to Illinois to New York. The strike at Rutgers is part of this movement and, because of the university’s size and the fact that all three of its faculty unions walked out of class, might be the most important of these efforts. The University of California strike was larger, but as with all other walkouts it only featured mainly graduate students. The strike at The New School was about adjunct wages. At Temple, it was just grads. At Rutgers, I walked along side non-tenure-track professors, full professors, graduate students, undergraduates and allies from the area.
The framework — again, not a tentative agreement or a contract — goes some of the way toward addressing these issues at Rutgers and, if it is ratified, could stand as a model and the largest victory so far in the battle for the soul of the American university system.
RU Strike Diary, Day 4
Day four was a tougher haul. The heat had a draining effect on many of us, but we were out on the lines and we are committed to remaining out for as long as it takes to win the transformation we are demanding.
There are three unions on strike — AAUP-AFT, the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, and BHSNJ-AFT. We are negotiating together. Fighting together.
Our demands:
*Equal pay for equal work and job security for adjuncts like me;
*A living wage and longer guaranteed funding for grad workers;
*Recognition of grad fellows as workers who should be part of the union;
*Job security for non-tenure-track professors;
*Protections for academic freedom;
*Control of schedules;
*Wages that keep up with inflation;
*An end to onerous fines on students and the practices of withholding class registration and transcripts and the sale of student debt to collection agencies;
*A rent freeze on Rutgers-owned properties;
*A community hardship fund;
*Health care for all workers;
*And numerous other changes in the way Rutgers operates.
Thursday featured numerous targeted pickets, which may have left the impression on College Ave that there were fewer people out. But we made joyful noise on Voorhees Mall and in front of Scott Hall, marched through the streets of the city to show solidarity with the community, marched on President Jonathan Holloway’s mansion in Piscataway, and on the homes of several members of the university Board of Governors.
Our pressure has had an effect. As our bargaining team has reported, the administration has been pushed significantly — by us and because of pressure for Gov. Phil Murphy. I’ve been critical of his public statements, but it’s clear he has contributed to at least some of the progress.
Make no mistake, however. We are winning this because we’ve out organized management, showed our commitment, and made the public case that we are engaged in a moral cause to bring equity to high ed, a message that is resonating beyond our campuses.
Bernie Sanders issued this video this week:
And I’ve talked to state and National reporters, including small labor and lefty print and video sites and a student TV station at James Madison in Virginia.
Power of the People Evident on the Pickets
Day 3 went much like Day 2, with massive pickets and a powerful rally in front of Winants Hall — home to Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway offices. There were drag queens, music, and a festive atmosphere — but hanging over it all was the specter of negotiations.
On Sunday night, Gov. Phil Murphy summoned both sides to Trenton, using his office to try to avert the strike — didn’t happened — and possibly get the dispute settled quickly. We walked, knowing this was the backdrop and brought hundreds upon hundreds of people into the streets — faculty, staff, community members, and students.
The rest of this post will be filled with photos, which should remind everyone how much energy and unity there is and to help keep our spirits high as this stretches into the fourth day.
More than a thousand strikers across the campuses is not something you ignore. And we’re planning to grow our already robust pickets every day until this strike ends.
Several images stood out for me from Day 2:
The massive picket that marched up College Avenue and circled the campus, led by students and faculty carrying a banner declaring “Equal Pay for Equal Work” — which has been the central fight of the adjunct union. Our demands were centered in this amazing march, as was a push for equity — for adjuncts, grad workers, students, and the community.
Rutgers functions like a corporation in too many ways, chewing up and spitting out vulnerable workers and the community in which it’s situated. It’s real estate practices — buying up properties across the city and either raising rents or gentrifying— are making New Brunswick unaffordable. It’s why we’re calling for a rent freeze on Rutgers’ properties, an end to predatory student fees and punitive actions when those fees and fines go unpaid, and a community fund to help our neighbors.
We’ve been saying that this strike is about faculty and students and the university’s largely poor and immigrant neighbors, and we mean it.
Later in the day came the mass convergence, when all of the New Brunswick picketing marched to the entrance gates of Old Queens, the origin point of Rutgers. Picketers from Cook and Douglass were joined by their colleagues from Busch and Livingston and marched down George Street through the center of town. They were joined by the Mason Gross School of the Arts and Edward Bloustein school and marched to meet the College Ave crew, creating a sea of picketers as we marched to Voorhees Mall and a not-quite impromptu party/rally.
I’m not one for hyperbole or sentimentality, so when I say it gave me chills the reader should understand I mean it.
More important, though, was the impact on the bargaining table. Our colleagues there were buoyed by our show of strength, our joy, outer commitment. And they are using it to their advantage. Management appears to be buckling, and we plan to keep this up until we win a better Rutgers, a kinder less corporate Rutgers.
RU Strike Diary, Day 1: The Inevitable Happens
This is where it’s been leading since the beginning. A historic strike at my alma mater. A school where I’ve taught journalism for 10 years. That I think is one of the best and most underrated institutions of higher learning in the country. From the beginning.
This is not what anyone wanted, but it’s what had to happen. Higher ed is in crisis. Rutgers is in crisis. We’ve been taken over by the corporate power structure. Had a change in mission crammed down our throats. Higher ed has become just another cog in the American oligarchy and Rutgers, despite its proclamations to the contrary, has been doing its part.
I was at UBS Arena last night watching Bruce Springsteen when we — our union’s executive boards — voted. I voted by proxy. It was unanimous. I listened and shouted and sang as the man known as The Boss tore through a catalogue of songs about working people. And the irony was not lost on me. Springsteen singing of working class dreams as he allowed Ticketmaster to drive up prices and BMW to offer exclusive parking.
Still, as my phone was blowing up with texts about the now very real strike, he broke into “Wrecking Ball” and the lines “So hold tight on your anger, you hold tight on your anger / Hold tight to your anger, don't fall to your fears” hit me like a truck.
We are angry. Tired of being disrespected. Tired of the neoliberal model of higher ed reducing everything to profit.
We’ll hold tight and fight. We’re going to win this.
