Progress of Negotiations with AAUP

February 25, 2004

Members of the Rutgers Community:

I am writing to update you on the university's negotiations with the Rutgers Council of AAUP (American Association of University Professors) Chapters, which represents our faculty and teaching and graduate assistants.

Rutgers' academic achievements rest fundamentally on faculty and graduate students, and we are working toward a contract that recognizes and rewards them. Our negotiations have been in good faith and continue to bring positive developments such as our agreement to pay this year's promotion increases even before we have a final contract. We are committed to moving these negotiations forward expeditiously in order to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

As we negotiate, we are mindful of the current financial reality facing the university. Governor McGreevey recently announced level base funding for Rutgers and the other senior public colleges and universities for next year, which is certainly an improvement over prior years. But this does nothing to restore the $61 million shortfall (including the under-funding of our salary packages) that we have suffered because of state budget cuts over the past three years. Given these cuts, the university must consider the potential impact of our decisions on a range of tangible issues, including tuition, facilities maintenance, and services we provide to students, faculty, and the greater community. My administration is committed to providing an excellent and affordable academic experience for our students and to providing our faculty with quality libraries, classrooms, and laboratories. These are important responsibilities that we must factor into the negotiating positions that we take.

Despite continuing fiscal constraints, the university has offered the faculty, TAs, and GAs a contract worth about $38 million, including salary raises for individual faculty and TA/GAs well beyond current inflation, which is below 2 percent.

Our offer to the faculty - which is equivalent to the state colleges' contract - calls for a compounded 16.9 percent overall increase in faculty pay, phased in over a four-year contract. The offer is broken down as follows: Fiscal Year 2003-04: 10% promotion raises, already paid even though we have not come to agreement on the overall contract. Fiscal Year 2004-05: 3.8%, plus 10% promotion raises. Fiscal Year 2005-06: 2% July 1 and 2% January 1, plus 10% promotion raises. Fiscal Year 2006-07: 3.6% July 1 and 3.6% January 1, plus 10% promotion raises. Half of the increase will come in the form of across-the-board raises, and half in merit-based salary increases in each of the next three years.

Responding to the union's emphasis on increased compensation for graduate and teaching assistants, a goal we share, the university has offered 6-percent across-the-board increases to TAs and GAs for each of the next three years, plus, effective spring 2004, full remission of fees, which currently are about $1,100 per year per student. In addition, we have offered a 10 percent increase per year in the competitiveness pool for TAs and GAs for the next three years. This pool was created in the last contract and is used by deans and graduate program directors to boost salary offers in highly competitive areas, including engineering and the sciences. Our TAs and GAs already receive tuition remission and full employee health benefits. This offer would increase the TA/GA salary base over four years by 19.59 percent. If fee remissions are included, the overall benefit to our TAs and GAs over the length of the contract would be more than 28 percent.

The university has achieved agreement with the union in a number of key areas, including release time for union representatives, family and medical leave issues, and grievance procedures for teaching and graduate assistants. Our negotiations with the unions that represent non-faculty employees have also moved forward. Rutgers has settled a three-year contract with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)-Primary unit and has a tentative three-year agreement with the FOP-Superior Officers Association. We have also made progress in our negotiations with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents many of our staff members. While a contract has not yet been signed, AFSCME has accepted our offer of the state four-year salary package.

I applaud the hard work and good will displayed on both sides of the table in our negotiations with the AAUP and look forward to the resolution of our remaining differences as quickly as possible.

Sincerely yours,

Richard L. McCormick
President
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey