Adrienne Eaton | American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, AFL-CIO

Tag Archives: Adrienne Eaton

Rutgers thaws pay freeze for selected non-union employees

December 16, 2011

Nic Corbett/The Star-Ledger

NEW BRUNSWICK — Rutgers University is giving raises and holiday bonuses to less than one-fifth of its staff — those that don’t belong to a union.

University officials said they didn’t want non-union employees to be adversely affected by the unions’ negotiating strategy.

The decision upset Rutgers’ unions, some of whose members haven’t raises for about two years. The union raises were deferred in 2009, then all university employees had their salaries frozen and now the unions are in a protracted dispute over contracts.

Speaking in support of the unions, Dorian Grumet, an intellectual property manager at Rutgers, voiced her discontent to the board of governors Wednesday before it approved a resolution establishing another graduate program.

“If you are going to offer a master’s program called peace and conflict studies,” she said, “don’t send out a memo a few weeks before the holidays telling your hardworking employees who haven’t had a raise in years that only a select few are going to get them. Does that really seem like a way to resolve conflict, or put a stick of dynamite in the middle of it?”

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Rutgers One Delivers 6,000-Plus Petition Calling on University to Pay Frozen Wage

October 13, 2011

McCormick Public Statements Ring Hollow as Rutgers Workers Lag Behind Rest of State

NEWARK…Rutgers workers have gone the longest without a raise among state workers, despite President Richard McCormick’s public statements that he intends to pay long withheld raises, according to the Rutgers One faculty, staff, student and alumni coalition. “Rutgers management withheld negotiated raises in 2009, asked for and received an agreement from us to defer then withheld the deferred raises again last year,” said Lucye Millerand, President of the Union of Rutgers Administrators-American Federation of Teachers, which represents approximately 2,000 campus workers. The union is a part of the Rutgers One coalition of faculty, staff, students and alumni which generated more than 6,000 signatures calling for affordable tuition and fair treatment of workers, delivered to the university’s Board of Governors meeting today.

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Rutgers faculty decry spending on athletics

August 19, 2011

BY PATRICIA ALEX
STAFF WRITER
The Record

The faculty union at Rutgers University is crying foul after a report this week that the school’s athletic department got $27 million in annual subsidies while pay for professors and staff was frozen and student fees were hiked.

Rutgers’ drive to build a big-time football program has soaked up considerable resources over the past decade.
Rutgers’ drive to build a big-time football program has soaked up considerable resources over the past decade.

“It’s time to restore a balance to what we do at Rutgers,” said Adrienne Eaton, the faculty union president said in a statement issued Friday. “Classrooms and research first, athletics second … in that order.”

The state university spent more money on athletics than any other public institution in the six biggest football conferences during the 2009-10 fiscal year, according to the report by Bloomberg News, which appeared in The Record on Wednesday. More than 40 percent of sports revenue came from student fees and the university’s general fund, the report found.

The subsidies came as tuition and fees increased – Rutgers is one of the most expensive public universities in the nation – and state support for the university was slashed. The drop in state funding has had an impact university-wide, resulting in cuts to academic programs and staff.

“If the McCormick administration can find $27 million each year to subsidize athletics, then it can surely find smaller amounts of money in its $2 billion budget to respect its employee agreements and maintain the quality of our instruction and research,” said Eaton, the head of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, referring to the university President, Richard McCormick.

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Students, union rally for raises

September 27, 2010

By Joshua Rosenau, Staff Writer
Monday, September 27, 2010 00:09

Students and faculty protested the University’s financial policies Friday on the steps of Brower Commons on the College Avenue campus before the annual address of University President Richard L. McCormick.

The rally served as a platform for speeches by leaders of the University’s labor unions and the Rutgers University Student Assembly. Most of the speakers hit on topics like the faculty wage freeze and the rise in fees and tuition passed to students.