Rutgers Won’t Interfere with Workers’ Freedom to Join a Union

by James Parks, Jan 29, 2007

When workers at Rutgers University began to exercise their freedom to join a union, they picked up strong support from elected officials—including the governor, a U.S. senator and key state legislators—and community, religious and union groups.

But one key group didn’t support them: Rutgers top management. So, supporters wrote letters and held rallies to send the message to school officials that the workers deserve a chance to make a better living by forming a union. And last week they got the message. Rutgers President Richard McCormick, who had waged a prolonged effort to prevent his employees from freely deciding to join a union, signed a neutrality agreement pledging the school will remain neutral in the workers’ effort to gain a voice on the job.

Although the neutrality agreement is a great step forward for Rutgers employees seeking a voice at work, New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech says there is still work to be done.

For this reason, we will soon be calling on…elected officials and others to support the organizing drive underway, which will give these employees the strong benefits associated with union representation.

Some 3,000 administrative, professional and supervisory staff—who include administrative assistants, program directors, chefs and accountants—now will be able to decide whether they want to become members of the Union of Rutgers Administrators/AFT without interference from the university.

That wasn’t the case before Jan. 25, the day McCormick wrote a letter pledging to remain neutral. During the past year, the school had sent anti-union e-mails to employees that caused some who had supported the union to back away, says Nat Bender, a member of the Rutgers employee organizing committee.

When HR [Human Resources Department] sent out those emails, some of my colleagues who were really interested in the union began to back away. I had one person who is not a citizen tell me she was afraid she would not be protected. Some of these workers are single mothers and they don’t want to lose their jobs.

These workers are the only group of the more than 11,000 workers at Rutgers who are not union members, says Marc Bostic, an organizer for AFT.

They are spread out over the entire state and work in 400-500 different buildings. Management has 100 percent discretion in salaries. Many of them have had no raises in years. They have no job security and their workload is increasing.

The neutrality pledge came after several key state leaders wrote letters to McCormick supporting the workers, including the two top officials in the state legislature, Senate President Richard Codey and Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts. In their letter, they urged McCormick to clear the air and immediately hammer out a pledge of neutrality.

They also suggested he ease employees’ concerns by scheduling joint meetings with the unions to explain neutrality to the employees and “reassure Rutgers employees that their union organizing efforts are protected by our federal and state constitutions.”
Gov. Jon Corzine (D) and U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) also backed the workers’ cause. Corzine announced he would hold a rally this week on campus supporting the effort to form a union and Menendez said he would hold hearings on the issue. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) also publicly backed the workers.

Besides signing the neutrality agreement, McCormick also signed and is distributing a personal statement to all administrative, professional and supervisory staff that “collective negotiations have been, and will continue to be, a tradition here at Rutgers University” and that “Rutgers employees should feel free to engage in the process of gaining union representation.”

Wowkanech says the neutrality agreement proves politics and organizing go hand in hand.

Because we had so many elected officials who are union members and the support of the governor and senator, we were able to bring pressure on the university to sign the agreement.

I am very happy. I trust this will allow us to focus on a very positive and very professional campaign for workers who want to form a union.

Because the state has a new series of elections every year, Wowkanech says union members there “eat, sleep and drink politics.” He says there are 450 union members in elected office at every level in New Jersey, including seven members of the state legislature who wrote McCormick supporting the workers.

The other key to the neutrality agreement, Wowkanech says, was the partnership among the national AFL-CIO, the state federation and AFT.

At a time when everybody seems to want to go their own way, this partnership is an illustration that when the federation and the state and local bodies and councils work together, we can achieve victory.

		Become a Fan on Facebook			Follow Us on Twitter			Subscribe to YouTube			Subscribe to Blog RSS

Print This Article | E-Mail This Article |Comments (1)