After nearly a year of negotiating for what they call a fair contract, unions representing 9,000 professors and staff at Rutgers University plan to walk off the job Monday morning, CBS New York Reports.
The strike would impact full-time and part-time unionized employees and would be the first in the school’s 257-year history and would be one of the largest strikes in higher education history, according to the station.
Gothamist says it will “virtually close the university’s campuses in New Brunswick, Newark and Camden”, affecting some 67,000 students.
Unions negotiated with university officials throughout the weekend, but the parties failed to reach contractual agreements.
Rutgers American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers (AUP-AFT) President Rebecca Givan said in a statement that unions and management remain distant on many fundamental issues.
“We want this new contract to be transformative, especially for our lowest paid and most vulnerable members,” Givan said. “But our proposals to raise graduate workers and adjunct faculty up to a living wage and establish meaningful job security for adjuncts are exactly the ones the administration has resisted the most.”
An online town hall was to be held on Sunday evening to announce the strike.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy tweeted a statement calling on the parties to meet at his office on Monday “to have a productive dialogue.”
The university said it had brought in a mediator to help the two sides reach an agreement.
Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway sent a letter to the community expressing his frustration with the situation and provided a link to guidelines for students, as well as faculty and staff, on what to know during a strike.
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