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The union representing faculty in the Connecticut State University System brought an inflatable skunk to the campus of Southern Connecticut State to protest a contract proposal by the board of regents that includes an increase in teaching loads. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
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An English professor at Southern Connecticut State University, Cynthia Stretch is used to meeting after hours with her students, many of whom work full time while in college.
Colleges Are Using COVID as an Excuse for Austerity. Unions Are Pushing Back.
Union workers protest layoffs at Harvard University on January 14, 2021, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Stuart Cahill / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald
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As COVID-19 swept across the U.S. last winter and spring, colleges and universities adapted swiftly to the situation. Though it was swift, it was not without pain: Just as quickly as professors learned to teach through a screen on Zoom, administrations slashed budgets. In the early days of the pandemic, little was certain about the future if students would defer fall enrollment, how states might cut education funding or if the federal government would step in to offset the financial impact of the crises. Nevertheless, public and private higher education institutions across the country put in place austerity measures ahead of what they foresaw as a fiscal emergency.
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After a year of layoffs, cuts and austerity, the faculty and staff of four unions at Rutgers University have voted in support of an unusual and pioneering agreement to protect jobs and guarantee raises after the school declared a fiscal emergency as a result of the pandemic. A key part of the deal is an agreement by the professors to do “work share” and take a slight cut in hours for a few months in order to save the jobs of other lower-paid workers. “The historic nature of this agreement is that it encompasses all four unions,” says Christine O’Connell, president of the union representing Rutgers administrators. “This agreement protects jobs.” We also speak with Todd Wolfson, president of the Rutgers Union of graduate workers, faculty and postdocs, who says the unions’ core demand was stopping further layoffs. “That core demand was met, and there’s no layoffs through the calendar year and into next
Rutgers contract avoids lay-offs; calls for furloughs, pay freezes (updated) April 7, 2021
10:42 am
A new contract between Rutgers University and some of its largest faculty and staff unions means that thousands of workers will avoid lay-offs until at least Jan. 1 next year in exchange for a series of other cuts.
The agreement dated March 24 calls for full-time employees in the union to take 10 furlough days by July 31, or eight days for part-time employees. Members of the AAUP-AFT chapter – which represents 5,000 Rutgers staff – would be furloughed for six days.
This arrangement is known typically as a “shared work program,” and according to a news release dated April 7, “the full income of almost all workers would be protected through state and federal unemployment benefits, thanks to the $300-a-week federal unemployment supplement extended in the COVID relief law.”
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley
When the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers recently launched a campaign to hold the nation’s colleges and universities more accountable for how they treat workers, the groups’ leaders had an ambitious goal in mind.
“It’s time to go big,” said Irene Mulvey, president of the association of professors.
At a time when unions representing faculty and staff are calling out some colleges and universities for laying off workers without dipping more deeply into their budget reserves, or for spending money on things such as renovating a football stadium, the associations are pushing the federal government to impose more strict requirements on colleges and universities that receive federal funds.