Bargain A Fair Contract With Rutgers Workers
Rutgers Board of Governors
Sponsored by
To:
Rutgers Board of Governors
From:
[Your Name]
Dear Rutgers Board of Governors,
We are addressing you as the body with the highest level of leadership and accountability for the management of the University. That leadership must take into account the entire University community.
As of December 6, the day of this meeting, URA members have been working for 161 days without a contract.
Rutgers would collapse without us.
The faculty are the brains of the University, and the students are the blood, but the staff are the backbone, without our work, Rutgers would soon collapse. We ensure that our students are admitted, housed, fed, counseled, and guided towards graduation. We support our research and teaching to further the University's mission, and we serve and collaborate with farmers, K-12 students, the marine sciences, and more. We make purchases, payments, and safeguard operations across Rutgers—to clean, cook, fix, pay, process, schedule, write, file, plant, plow, and much more.
At the same time, we are experiencing high inflation, rising health insurance costs, and staffing shortages. Jobs at Rutgers are harder to fill and employees are harder to retain. We are overworked and demonstrably underpaid when compared to other industries, yet we are still expected to “do more with less.”
At the bargaining table, the administration has unnecessarily lengthened negotiations and rejected or ignored proposals on our core issues of compensation, career pathways, telework, and healthcare. A skilled, motivated and fairly-compensated staff is needed to take Rutgers into the future.
We demand that you direct management to bargain meaningfully and to address our needs as crucial parts of what President Holloway calls our "beloved community."