Dave Hutchinson, NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
RARITAN — The Raritan Valley Community College faculty and staff announced a new four-year contract with 2 percent raises per year and significant decreases in health insurance costs in two of the four years, said Donna Gero, Laboratory Assistant at RVCC and negotiations chair for the staff bargaining team in a news release Thursday.
Negotiations for a new contract between professors at RVCC and school representatives had reached an impasse over healthcare costs.
“The increasing costs of health insurance has been a primary problem for workers,” said Gero, who has worked at the college for 28 years.
The new contract reduces health insurance costs and establishes college-funded health reimbursement accounts (HRAs), which can be used to pay for certain medical expenses, such as deductibles and other qualified out-of-pocket expenses, the release stated.
In years three and four of the contracts, the employee contribution to health insurance is significantly lower than the ‘tier four’ highest rates set in 2011 by statewide legislation for public workers, the release stated. That legislation sunset last year, making is possible to negotiate lower costs, the release stated.
The average salary of a full-time faculty member will increase from $77,400 annually as of July 1, 2015 to $83,800 by the end of the contract, said Nat Bender, spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers New Jersey.
The faculty and staff had been working under contracts that expired last July, the release stated. The new contract runs from July 1, 2015 through June 30, 2019.
The college has an enrollment of more than 8,500 full-time and part-time students and approximately 500 full-time and part-time professors and teachers.
The Raritan Valley Community College Staff Federation-AFT represents approximately 200 full and part-time faculty members and roughly 75 staff members.
During the negotiations, faculty members and students had organized campus rallies calling on the school’s Trustees to bargain a fair contract in negotiations which at times had become contentious.
“We reminded our Board of Trustees that RVCC faculty are ‘Educated, Dedicated and Effective’ and that we deserve to be respected and fairly compensated for the work we do,” said faculty union president Maria DeFilippis.
“While we did not get everything we wanted in this contract, the two-year reduction in health care contributions to ‘tier three’ levels, along with the establishment of employer-funded HRAs for all, offers significant relief to our members.”
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