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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