June 28, 2017

It’s our pleasure to report to you on our first bargaining session with the administration of NJIT, which took place on Tuesday afternoon, June 27th. Given that this was our first meeting between our union’s bargaining team and representatives from the administration, it was a short session focused mainly around introductions and outlining our goals in broad strokes.

We told the administration that we anticipate bargaining in good faith and working to achieve just and equitable contracts improving the wages and working conditions for all graduate employees, adjuncts, and post-doctoral researchers in every academic unit at NJIT. We told them we are eager to get to work negotiating, and that we intend to spend the summer putting forward concrete proposals for their consideration.

The administration’s team responded to us, and though we can anticipate areas of disagreement, their lead negotiator assured us of treating our union’s bargaining team and the entire workforce with respect and dignity. We plan to hold them to their promise. We committed to working straightaway to get into meaningful negotiations with them and commit our proposals to paper for them to review.

During our recent unionization campaign, adjunct, post-doc and graduate employee members of our Organizing Committee met with and interviewed hundreds of people all across NJIT from different backgrounds. We heard loud and clear the serious issues we need to improve upon at NJIT.

UCAN Bargaining Team
Susan Bristol, CoAD, Adjunct Instructor
Jeff Reaves, NCE, Adjunct Instructor
Subash K. Ray, Biology, Research Assistant
Patrick Nolan, Rutgers AAUP-AFT Executive Director
Joe Richard, Rutgers AAUP-AFT Organizer
Jacob Chaffin, Rutgers AAUP-AFT Organizer