What Strong Public Employee Unions Look Like: Militancy; Transparency; Solidarity

Even as The Chief continues its editorial transition from its old slogan, “New York’s Civil Service Newspaper” to its new one, “A Voice for Workers,” I suspect that most of its readers – that’s you! – are still members of public employee unions.

Myself, I’ve been an almost continuous member of three different NYC public employee unions since 1984, when I joined Transport Workers Union Local 100, and a Chief reader almost as long.

Sometimes I’ve been proud of the unions I’ve belonged to – when they fight for their most victimized and underpaid members, when they support shop stewards and workplace activists organizing against management abuses, when there’s genuine dialogue between union leaders and “ordinary” members, when they address important social justice concerns alongside traditional bread-and-butter ones.

But often in those forty-something years, truth to tell, I’ve been disappointed with my unions, and the other ones that set the tone for labor relations in New York. We – New York’s municipal unions – let management get away with too much; and too often, we seem to have no long-term strategy to reverse that trend.

That’s why it’s exciting to look across the Hudson River at the methods and practices of three public employee unions representing different kinds of faculty at Rutgers University campuses in New Brunswick, Newark and Camden.

In April 2023, unions representing full-time faculty, graduate student-workers and adjunct (contingent) faculty joined together and, in defiance of New Jersey’s anti-strike laws, waged a highly victorious week-long strike.

That militancy was coupled to solidarity among and within the bargaining units, despite Rutgers’ attempt to split them apart. The biggest gains went to their most vulnerable members.

Over four years, Adjuncts received a 48 percent pay increase (30 percent immediately); graduate student workers got nearly as much, and improved healthcare provisions. For the first time, non-tenured full-time faculty received a measure of job security. There was even some money set aside for programs to assist disadvantaged students.

“What was so special and valuable,” noted Bryan Sacks, an officer of the Adjunct Faculty Union (AFU), “was the willingness of the full-time faculty to align with us; to organize our contract campaigns together and to bargain at the same table… the fact that we insisted on bargaining together had a disorienting effect on management… they resisted it, but we held our ground.”

That unity and solidarity didn’t just simply appear full-blown. It was the fruit of sacrifices tenured faculty made during the Covid-19 years to protect adjuncts from layoffs. It was nurtured during an effort to merge the unions that only foundered on legal technicalities.

And in the years since the strike, they’ve strengthened efforts to work together, develop joint policies, and alleviate tensions that management tries to provoke between full- and part-time workers.

Now they’re bargaining again, this time as a joint bargaining committee and with the intention of creating a master contract covering all titles. Their plan is to replicate what they did in 2023, but do it better.

For one thing, they’ve had three years to build out a better communications structure.

Already, in 2023, they had open bargaining, with members able to listen in to bargaining committee caucuses on zoom and mass zoom Q&As every night of the strike. This time, says Sacks, they are creating intermediate structures of departmental liasons, so that news can filter down in a more organized way, and the voice of members can filter up.

To see what real bargaining transparency looks like, I urge you to click on their marvelous website at https://rutgersaaup.org/contract-2026-resource-center/ - that’s not really hard to key in if, like me, you like your hard copy of The Chief.

Make sure to look at “Bargaining Status at a Glance,” which shows the actual text of every union and management proposal and counter-proposal. Click on “Bargaining Updates,” with its comprehensive account of each bargaining session. Watch the wonderful “Video Updates,” where bargaining committee members briefly describe the significance of various union demands.

What you’ll find in those demands is an intention to build on 2023’s gains. Adjuncts seek pay and job security parity with their non-tenured but full-time colleagues.

Graduate Student-Workers want guaranteed funding, and health benefit continuity. Tenured faculty want to guard against grant disruptions and theft of intellectual property. Everyone wants iron-clad protections against politically-generated discipline and firings – what faculty unions call “academic freedom” to speak in the classroom – and prevent any replacement of teachers with AI.

Contracts expire June 30, and Rutgers management would like to sign a contract then, or soon after. But for the unions, it makes sense to wait until the school year is underway, when job actions matter, and they will have the support of the student body.

Will there need to be another strike?

Sacks thinks it’s way too early to answer that question. “Not until they have done the difficult organizing work to ask their members what it is they want and what they are prepared to do if they don’t get it. But our units know how to do it. And I don’t think any bargaining unit can be serious about winning transformative demands if it’s not prepared to ready itself to go on strike.”