Rutgers University announced on Thursday that it will cancel scheduled pay raises and freeze salaries across the board to deal with an "extreme fiscal crisis" brought on by state budget cuts, according to news reports.
Faculty members were scheduled to receive a 2.75-percent raise on July 1.
Adrienne Eaton, president of the Rutgers Council of AAUP Chapters-American Federation of Teachers, which represents nearly 4,500 professors, teaching assistants, part-time lecturers, and other employees, said union leaders were outraged by the university's move.
"We entered into that [agreement] with good faith," Ms. Eaton, a professor of labor studies and employment relations, told The Star-Ledger, a local newspaper. "They understood that this coming year was going to be worse."
Philip Furmanski, the university's executive vice president for academic affairs, acknowledged the concerns of the faculty union and other employee bargaining units, but he said that the university was in "a very, very difficult situation, one that is unprecedented."
With the cumulative effect of state budget cuts, the university was facing a deficit of nearly $97-million, he told the newspaper. By freezing salaries, he said, Rutgers may be able to avoid layoffs and class cutbacks.
While the state budget for the new fiscal year is still incomplete, the plan that Gov. Christopher J. Christie sent to the Legislature this spring included a 15-percent cut in state funds to Rutgers, the university's president, Richard L. McCormick, said in a letter to the campus in March. He said that the proposal was $46.6-million less than the university’s appropriation for the current fiscal year and that it provided no funds for salary increases that had been negotiated with employees' bargaining units.
Mr. McCormick noted that it would "be very difficult for Rutgers to absorb these proposed reductions," and added that "preserving the academic core of the institution" would be a priority as university leaders discussed plans for meeting the challenge.
Besides faculty members, other groups that were scheduled to receive raises this summer include administrative assistants, supervisors, and other staff members, who were expecting a 5-percent increase, campus officials said. Clerical workers, laborers, and other blue-collar workers were due to receive a 3.5-percent increase.
In canceling the pay increases, Rutgers invoked a contract provision that says the university does not have to give raises if it doesn't have the money to cover the payroll. Union officials were planning to meet with their lawyers to discuss a legal challenge to the university's action.
Comments
1. mbelvadi - June 11, 2010 at 06:24 am
Preserve the "academic core"? So they'll shut down the athletics department too, for the year, right?
2. patterson - June 11, 2010 at 07:52 am
People still don't seem to understand how athletic programs are funded. If a person buys tickets to attend sporting events, you can't cancel the sporting event and divert those funds to academics. You would be sued. I know I would do so if I bought tickets to a play or concert and the promoter decided to cancel the event and do something else with the funds. Athletic departments also receive significant contributions that restricted to their programs. So again a university would face a law suit if it redirected those restricted gifts to academics. As far as priorities, yes, academics should always take precedence over athletics, but you can't redirect fund sources that are legally restricted. On the other hand if an athletic department receives an allocation from the central university (state funds or tuition funds), then yes, those funds could and should be on the table for reduction to ease the pain of academics. Unfortunately, it's mostly the smaller schools where the central university has to provide additional (State or tuition) support to the athletic programs.
3. 11159995 - June 11, 2010 at 07:53 am
Yes, one wonders if the football coach's salary is being frozen, too, or is he getting yet another generous pay raise for helping move the university further toward bankruptcy? --- Sandy Thatcher
4. grupenhoff - June 11, 2010 at 08:30 am
Patterson above waves a red herring: no one suggested canceling the sporting event and using the money for academics. The point is that if the football season is canceled, for example, the price one paid for admission would be refunded. Simple as that. Then the monies for the support of the athletic program could be diverted to support academics.
5. fbahadurian - June 11, 2010 at 10:03 am
A sad situation all around, but in this economy 3.5 and 5 percent increases sound exhorbitant to me. At Princeton, still a very, very wealthy institution, we staffers get maybe 3-4 percent in a good year (sometime slightly more), and more like about 2-2.5 percent currrently!
6. physicsprof - June 11, 2010 at 10:04 am
"You would be sued. I know I would do so if I bought tickets to a play or concert and the promoter decided to cancel the event and do something else with the funds."
#2, if there is a gross habit in this country which is sinking it is the one of litigating at the earliest opportunity and the existence of the legal system that promotes this kind of behavior. (It would be better to simply return ticket and collect your money.)
7. livefreeordie2 - June 11, 2010 at 10:44 am
Me first. That's the union motto. Me first. Faculty at Rutgers have JOBS! Shut up! The state is in a terrible fiscal crisis brought about by sleazy government officials in cahoots with unions. There are lots of people not getting raises in the dreaded private sector - and that includes private colleges and universities. I will guarantee you that the AAUP would prefer that layoffs be instituted for employees not in their union, rather than make any sacrifices for the instituion. 'Somebody else sacrifice! Gouge the taxpayer (a solution that has failed miserably in New Jersey)! Do whatever you want, but nothing can affect the AAUP members!'
Here's a better plan for the faculty at Rutgers and the AAUP. Thank God you have jobs and just SHUT UP!
8. pontanus - June 11, 2010 at 11:33 am
To
9. pontanus - June 11, 2010 at 11:36 am
Sorry. Finger slipped. To see a response to the story over there at Rutgers go to
http://www.ru1000.org
They seem to have lots of statistical background.
10. rightwingprofessor - June 11, 2010 at 02:35 pm
Seriously why does noone respect the sanctity of a contract negotiated in good faith. If Rutgers is having financial problems then its highly paid administrators need to earn their salaries by choosing whom to lay off. Violating contracts is the easy way out.
11. davi2665 - June 11, 2010 at 03:12 pm
Ah, yes. The usual knee jerk response that all budget woes, even $100 million range deficits, can easily be made up through cutting administrative salaries. But, of course, we NEVER want to touch the precious unions in any way. Perhaps the best course of action would be for Rutgers to go ahead and pay the previously negotiated raises, even in the face of huge budget recisions, and then start laying off faculty in droves to make up for the financial disaster that will ensue. There is no university system that cannot lay off faculty or cut salaries in the face of a true financial exigency. Once again, academy shows how out of touch with reality its faculty are.
12. rightwingprofessor - June 11, 2010 at 03:34 pm
Noone said anything about cutting administrative salaries. What I said was the high-paid administrators should earn their salaries by deciding whom to lay off. Layoffs do not violate the contract, and they are the appropriate measure to take in these circumstances, not trying to bust the union by reneging on a fairly negotiated contract.
13. 22280998 - June 11, 2010 at 05:28 pm
When did administrators agree to this contract?
Why no discussion with unions prior to invoking the "no pay" clause?
14. shiksha - June 11, 2010 at 08:07 pm
It would appear that the contract is NOT being violated. It apparently contains a clause allowing the university to backout of the raises if there is no money and there is no money. Any contract of this type would have such an "out."
15. always1999 - June 16, 2010 at 02:31 pm
As a university employee I can honestly say that I'd rather not get a piddly raise than have my job cut. My salary is still paying the bills; no paycheck won't help.
As for Princeton....they laid off employees last fall, remember? A whopping 50 people. Yeah, that helped balance the budget. But laying off those people must have helped somehow, the admin and faculty there ARE still getting raises.
16. inconvenienced - June 16, 2010 at 02:37 pm
*sigh* Lots of people love to talk about situations they're not informed about.
1) livefreeordie2 and davi2665----The union that should really be upset is the admin union, NOT faculty union. Faculty got their raises last year. Admin union deferred their 2009 raises to 2010---now cancelled. I haven't heard one faculty member here at Rutgers complain about the cancelled raise.
2) rightwingprofessor ----Actually lay-offs DO violate the admin contract, and obviously you cannot lay off tenured faculty (an entirely different problem). Here's why: In 2009 when Rutgers admin opted to defer their raises, it was in an effort to save jobs. Thus the promise: defer raises and NO ONE WILL BE LAID OFF. That pledge ends in January 2011. If Rutgers violated that pledge, back raises would be awarded. This agreement, again, doesn't apply to faculty.
3) fbahadurian-----A 5% admin "raise" is not quite right. Admin were scheduled to get a 2.5% raise. Salary schedules were also to be raised 2.5% across the board for inflation rates. *gasp!* Yes, some places still account for inflation. Faculty are given merit raises. Since I handled my faculty's (faux) award letters for 2010, most were between 2-3%, depending on their research.
4) Was it a fairly negotiated admin and faculty contract? Yes. Does the loophole seem plausible? Also yes. What is not clear is which union signed the loophole--faculty or admin? There is no way either Union should have signed with a clause like that. The fiscal outlook was not a surprise.
A more effective strategy would have been for Rutgers officials to re-negotiate the admin contract once more and start negotiations with the faculty union. Seeing that the admin union compromised last time, I believe a similar response would occur. Instead, everyone got an e-mail "announcement"..........
Source: First year Rutgers admin employee who was NOT expecting a raise anyway. Eight years of work experience. Masters degree. Salary: $40,000.