Union members say Rutgers is reneging on promises made last year when employees agreed to defer raises to this year
A 2009 Star-Ledger file photo of Rutgers University's Newark campus.NEW BRUNSWICK — Even if last-minute budget negotiations in Trenton lead to additional higher education funding, Rutgers University’s employees are not going to get their salary increases, campus officials said today as labor unions staged a noisy protest outside the school’s board of governors meeting.
Several hundred Rutgers professors, administrative staff and maintenance workers rallied on the New Brunswick campus to protest the university’s recent announcement that all scheduled raises will be canceled. The salary freeze, announced earlier this month, will help the university deal with a proposed 15 percent cut in state funding.
Union members said Rutgers is reneging on promises made last year when employees agreed to defer their raises to this year. University employees used their lunch hours to protest outside the Rutgers Board of Governors meeting, holding signs reading "A contract is a contract" and "RU broke? ... I am."
"We are calling on the Board of Governors to overturn this short-sighted decision and show a little respect for the people who do the work of the university," said Lucye Millerand, president of the Union of Rutgers Administrators-American Federation of Teachers, which represents nearly 2,000 campus employees.
Inside the meeting, Rutgers officials said the financial situation is dire as the university looks for ways to fill a $96.6 million budget hole.
"This university is going to face perhaps the most difficult budget year it ever has," Rutgers President Richard McCormick said.
McCormick said university officials are continuing to lobby in Trenton for last-minute funding. But any additional money is unlikely to be enough to cover raises for Rutgers’ 13,000 employees, said Philip Furmanski, Rutgers’ executive vice president for academic affairs.
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"Practically, there isn’t going to be enough relief," Furmanski said.
The Board of Governors will vote on the university budget and a tuition increase next month.
At today’s meeting, the board unanimously elected Ralph Izzo, head of PSE&G’s parent company, as its new chairman. Izzo takes over for the Rev. M. William Howard Jr., who stepped down after three years as chairman but will remain on the board. Gerald Harvey, a Roseland attorney, was elected vice chairman.
The meeting was complicated by confusion over whether the Board of Governors violated the state Open Public Meeting Act when a campus police officer blocked the doors of Winants Hall at the start of the noon public session, keeping out union protesters and members of the public. Inside, the board convened and quickly voted to go into a previously-scheduled closed session behind closed doors.
Union members, who were eventually admitted into the building, protested. They wanted to fill the meeting room to capacity at the start of the public session to voice their displeasure about the salary freeze before the board went into its closed session.
Rutgers officials eventually admitted they made a mistake and the board returned to the meeting room about 45 minutes later to start the meeting over. But by then most of the union members had left. Leslie Fehrenbach, secretary of the university, said it was unclear if the board had violated open public meetings laws.
"We always take great pains to do it right. It’s upsetting to me that it happened," Fehrenbach said.