When union organizing and political action come together
Governor and labor rally on behalf of higher education unit

Months of intimidation for mid-level administrators seeking to form a union at Rutgers University came to an end when the university’s president, Richard McCormick, e-mailed more than 3,000 employees to clarify the university’s position on employees’ freedom to choose union representation. “Rutgers employees should feel free to engage in the process of gaining union representation,” he wrote. “No member of the Rutgers staff should feel reticent about speaking openly about the union at work or displaying union paraphernalia in an appropriate way.”

That clarification came as a result of a neutrality agreement between the AFT and the university, negotiated under the direction of the New Jersey Department of Labor (acting on behalf of Gov. Jon Corzine) and with key assistance from New Jersey AFL-CIO president Charles Wowkanech.

The agreement is “a credit to the governor, who rose to the occasion,” says Wowkanech, “and to the Assembly speaker and Senate president, and legislators on both sides of the aisle. It’s proof positive that politics and organizing go hand in hand.”

The employees, organizing under the banner of the Union of Rutgers Administrators-AFT, have been trying to form a union under the state’s card-check law since spring 2006.

On a campus where 70 percent of the employees are unionized—including full- and part-time faculty and graduate employees who are represented jointly by the AFT and the American Association of University Professors—bringing in a group of administrative professionals and staff would seem like an easy sweep. But not so: An environment of fear had carried over from the previous organizing attempts and had been perpetuated by the central administration conveying the message in myriad ways that employees would be better off not talking about or considering a union. 

In October, November and December 2006, the university’s human resources department sent three anti-union e-mails to the employees, which had a “chilling effect,” says Nat Bender, a URA organizing committee member. The first one characterized union supporters as similar to “outside vendors or solicitors” who have “disrupted and interfered with your job duties and your work site, and have not respected your privacy at home.” Later e-mails promised employees they would get a better deal from the university without a union.

Julia Zapcic, director of development for the Rutgers Libraries, had an unnerving experience when she agreed to show her support for the union by providing a testimonial in a URA flier. The day after it came out, she recounted, “Someone commented, ‘it’s not in your job description to be a dissident.’ I was shocked.” But she held fast to her values.

In January, Gov. Corzine went to the campus to reinforce every employee’s right to fully evaluate the benefits of forming a union. “People ought to have the ability to make a decision based on the free flow of information, especially on a college campus,” he said.