After 10 days of online voting ended Friday, 94% of union members voted to authorize a strike at Rutgers University. This comes as negotiations between the university and the two unions representing the school’s 7,500 professors, graduate students and adjunct professors have failed; they have been working for eight months without a contract.
In response to the strike authorization, Rutgers University said in a statement, “No one wants to disrupt students’ academic progress and we are committed to working as hard as we possibly can to negotiate contracts with our unions that are fair, reasonable, and responsible. We have already held more than 100 bargaining sessions … and will continue to meet in good faith with them…”
If there’s a strike, it would be the first in the university’s 256-year history.
Rebecca Givan, president of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT union and an associate professor at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, discusses what the authorization means and the prospects of a strike.
