HPAE United at Rutgers Local 5089 Bargaining update – July 29, 2022
Bargaining Update for Rutgers University:
July 29, 2022 and we still do not have a contract
HPAE local 5089 met on 7/29/22 for our seventh session of negotiations with Rutgers University. Our contract expired July 1, 2022.
It is now more important than ever to get involved and support your negotiations team. We need to you to collectively show Rutgers you stand behind our team. Click the link to sign the petition and show solidarity with your negotiations team.
The University continues to delay our contract negotiations and came into our session on 7/29 without a single response to our proposal or counter offer. Our session last week was the same. The University has now spent two of the three sessions this month without any movement on our contract negotiations.
We presented a counter proposal on Vacation time. Currently our contract limits prime vacation time to only two weeks without the ability to request additional time off. Additionally, our contract has only one vacation period to request time under a seniority rule. Our current proposal would expand the amount of time our negotiations unit employees can take during prime vacation periods and create two vacation periods to allow for more time to be used on a seniority basis.
Our team spent the bulk of our time reminding the University how important the nursing staff is at Rutgers and how difficult it is to retain and recruit competent staff. Every department at Rutgers is short staffed and we are losing nurses regularly. This is all happening at a time when there is a nursing shortage, inflation is through the roof, and we have carried this University through COVID. The response from Rutgers was completely disheartening. While Abbe Kanan, Labor Relations, repeated his comments on how much the University respects the nursing staff, he also stated that the University will “eventually” make things right and pay back pay to those nurses who are current behind on their step movements.
Our next session is scheduled for August 12th at 1pm. We will officially be over one month expired on our current contract. This is unacceptable. We will continue to fight at the table for a fair contract but we need everyone to show Rutgers that we stand together. For those who were able to attend Unity Day in New Brunswick, we passed out buttons, stickers and t-shirts. Members took these items back to the departments. We are asking everyone to take pictures and send them in to support the team. You can send these pictures to Joel Brooks at jbrooks@hpae.org.
If you need buttons or stickers, please be sure to attend a future Unity Day event on one of the other campuses: Piscataway 8/17, Newark 8/25. Both events are from 12-2pm. If you would like to schedule a site visit, please contact Bennett Nagurka at bnagurka@hpae.org.
Our next virtual session is scheduled for August 12 at 1pm. We encourage everyone to attend the session for the first half hour to show the University we stand together in solidarity with the bargaining team and we will not accept falling behind on our Nurse Clinician and Staff Nurse experience scales. We are meeting as a caucus prior to the session at 12:30pm and are inviting all members in good standing to attend. The time commitment would be from 12:30-1:30pm. Please register for the pre-meeting at this link.
https://aft.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAqceCtrzsuEtTnC2qv2IXW1gsLBkIdX1xH
You should not be on work time during your attendance at the session. We are asking for a commitment of 1 hour to show Rutgers we stand behind our committee in solidarity. You can use either your personal or Rutgers device to log into the sessions.
In Solidarity,
HPAE 5089 Negotiations Committee – Sabrina Brown-Oliver, Jennifer Lerner, Josephine Machado, Dawn Yuhas, Khooshbu Patel, Arlene Cruz, Yuk Wong, Marilyn Mundy, Sri Kota, Joe Bentivegna, Marsha Lauriano, Lucia Otti, Francine Pasch, Tara Andino, Joan Santner, Donna Nelson-Henry, Susan Bauer