BY JENNIFER RUTH
In “Rutgers Unions Prepare to Surf the Strike Wave,” Hank Kalet wrote for the blog about the authorization-to-strike vote to be held at Rutgers. The vote was held and 94 percent of Rutgers AAUP-AFT members voted “yes.” Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway has been using scare tactics to intimidate the Rutgers community. In response, a “Scholars’ Open Letter to Jonathan Holloway” went live today as an advertisement in the New York Review of Books, NJ.com, Rutgers’ Targum, and soon, the Chronicle of Higher Education. The letter opens:
We write to you as scholars of Labor, Social Justice, and the Black Freedom Struggle, who strongly support the right of Rutgers’ graduate workers, staff, EOF counselors, postdocs, adjuncts, lecturers, and tenure-stream faculty to bargain collectively and participate in job actions without facing the draconian power of a court injunction. We know that as an expert in African American history, you have thought deeply about how struggles for racial justice have consistently been aligned with the demands for jobs, labor rights, and democracy in the workplace.
And continues a paragraph later:
Given the importance of Rutgers AAUP-AFT and CRU to multiple campus communities, we ask you to rescind your administration’s threat to use the power of injunction to punish, fine, and arrest workers taking job actions. At a time when we are experiencing a full frontal assault on critical histories of the American past, academic freedom, tenure, and the right to organize as public-sector workers, we ask you to work with the campus unions toward a just and fair contract.
To read the letter in its entirety and to sign the letter, please see these links:
Good for you for posting this! I have written to President Holloway SEVERAL times about the way that Rutgers abuses adjuncts and asking for an explanation of why Rutgers employs MORE ADJUNCTS THAN FULL-TIME faculty. I was ignored. Now I have no compunction in NOT RECOMMENDING Rutgers to possible students.