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Negotiations Begin
Full-time faculty, part-time lecturers, and graduate student teaching assistants have selected representatives to serve on the union's bargaining team. The reps are meeting to craft bargaining proposals. For more information, contact the Chief Negotiator, Mike Slott at mslott@hpae.org.
We Won under "Majority Vote" Procedures
We won the right to have union representation for instructors teaching summer and winter sessions under New Jersey's labor law that is a "majority vote" procedure in which employees who support unionization sign the union authorization card.
Employee Free Choice Act
New Jersey labor law embodies the same concept as federal legislation we support called "Employee Free Choice Act." Employee Free Choice Act establishes the right to vote yes for a union by signing a union authorization card. Everyone who is employed in a workplace that is organizing has a right to vote rather than having to go through a second in-person election in which only those who are able to show up on a specific day at a specific time have their votes counted. Historically and right up to the present, the time between filing the union authorization cards and this second in-person union election has been used by employers to run relentless anti-union campaigns that frequently violate law labor and intimidate workers.
Click here to learn more about the Employee Free Choice Act and sign up to show your support
Read the AFL-CIO blog:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/03/10/religious-civil-rights-environmental-groups-support-employee-free-choice/
The Employee Free Choice Act was introduced into both the House and Senate (H.R. 1409 & S. 560) on March 10, 2009.
We are proud that 10 of 13 members of New Jersey's Congressional Delegation are co-sponsors of this legislation. The list of co-sponsors is below:
Senate
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
House
Robert Andrews (D-01)
Frank LoBiondo (R-02)
John Adler (D-03)
Chris Smith (R-04)
Frank Pallone (D-06)
Bill Pascrell (D-08)
Steven Rothman (D-09)
Donald Payne (D-10)
Rush Holt (D-12)
Albio Sires (D-13)
Background on Rutgers AAUP-AFT Summer/Winter Session Unionization
In the summer 2008, Rutgers AAUP-AFT launched an organizing campaign to bring summer and winter session faculty under the contractual rights we enjoy during the other ten months of the year. All instructors who teach summer and/or winter sessions were eligible to vote in this "majority vote" procedure, including full-time faculty, part-time faculty, teaching or graduate assistants, graduate student fellows, or those people who have no employment status with Rutgers Univesity during the regular academic year.
Rutgers AAUP-AFT was certified as the collective bargaining agent (union) by New Jersey's Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) in February 2008. This means we now have the legal authority to begin collective bargaining.
Our union has had collective bargaining rights for full-time faculty since 1970, and since that time we have made tremendous strides in salaries, benefits, and working conditions. We added other categories of academic workers, including teaching and graduate assistants, part-time lecturers, and EOF Counselors. Yet, our right to negotiate on behalf of our members had not been recognized as covering those who teach during summer or winter sessions. One of the issues that drove the desire to have union representation for this time period is that Rutgers University administration was free to set summer and winter pay scales without regard to the union0negotiated salaries in our other contracts that covered the regular academic year. In addition, instructors have no compensation when faced with class cancellations due to low enrollmen, in spite of the fact that they performed academic work to prepare for teaching. Another concern was arbitrary changes in working conditions. Uunfortunately there was little we could do because arbitrations and government rulings have repeatedly declared that our contracts did not extend to this summer/winter work. Now, after the PERC hearings, we have this legal union recognition to negotiate these terms and conditions of employment.
Our goals are:
- Improve salary
- Create transparent and consisten policies on how the salary rate is determined
- Seniority and credit for length of service
- Provide fair procedures for appointment.
We circulated online surveys in order to gather vital information that will help us prepare when we bargain this contract. Membership cards will be determined after we have worked out the specifics of the bargaining unit through the PERC hearings.
Bargaining surveys were made possible by AFT's LeaderNet survey software. We asked questions on appointments, quality education, and compensation.
Read the message we sent after we filed the cards at PERC in Trenton on August 11, 2008.
We followed New Jersey State regulations for union election by the majority voting procedure (also sometimes called "card check"), which means that signing the union authorization card was a YES vote for the union. Read the letter that was sent to summer session instructors, dated May 27, 2008. Click here to view the union authorization card. we used.
Read Frequently Asked Questions about this organizing campaign.
Call Rich Moser at the Rutgers AAUP-AFT office at 732-964-1000 for more information or send an email to rmoser@rutgersaaup.org.
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