94% of members who voted across both full and
part time faculty unions voted yes to authorize a strike.
You've made it clear, we are strike ready.
>> Cuz we're fighting for a better Rutgers for our students,
our communities, and ourselves as workers.
>> We are strike ready because of the organizing work of hundreds of you,
our members.
We made calls, we sent texts, we knocked on doors.
>> We've taken it to the streets to say that we are Rutgers because it's time for
a fair contract now.
>> Academic workers at Rutgers University are on strike to fight for
better wages and better benefits.
Here to talk to us about the strike is my good friend Ben Burgis who is also
the host of Give Them an Argument and the author of Give Them an Argument,
Logic for the Left.
Ben, it's so good to have you on the show.
I think this is the first time I've had you on TYT.
>> I think so.
I was trying to remember, there was like a no filter thing back in like 2019 or
something.
Yeah, I do remember that, you're right about that.
Well, Ben is someone who has, well, he's part of the strike,
which is why he's on here to talk about the strike itself.
So, Ben, I loved your piece in Jacobin because it touched on so
many different arguments that I think people need to be cognizant of.
In particular, how oftentimes people think of
professionals as something separate from workers.
But when it comes to academic workers at Rutgers,
while they might be professionals, they're still workers, and
they're still dealing with a lot of the stuff that workers in other
fields complain about, low pay, terrible benefits.
And I think that the higher education system is such a good example of the,
as you mentioned, Uber, what do you say Uberization [LAUGH] of education?
So talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, I mean, I think that oftentimes when people think about professionals,
what we really mean is people who like need advanced degrees to have a job or
there's some kind of like social prestige associated with the job.
But the problem is that you can't really eat social prestige or
use it to pay the bill, the copay if you need to go see a doctor.
And often times especially as higher education gets Uberized, in other words,
with an increasingly large section of the workforce that's actually teaching
undergraduate classes increasingly resemble the labor conditions,
not of traditional cab drivers with benefits and pensions.
But Uber drivers have to worry about getting kicked off of the app at any time.
Increasingly people who are acculturated to think of themselves this way that they,
I'm not like a worker, I'm a professional,
I'm somebody who's like navigating the world in this different way.
Actually know what they really need is the same kind of collective struggle for
a better deal that everybody does, that Uber drivers themselves do.
That the people who might make coffee,
that if you're going to walk into class at Rutgers at the New Brunswick campus,
you're taking a class at that College Avenue campus and you stop at Starbucks,
while the people who are making your coffee at Starbucks,
they need to stand up for a better deal at the workplace, and
the people who are teaching classes do too.
And I think that a lot of people just hear, well, somebody is a professor,
and what they think of is like a 10 year track professor,
who has a high salary, and is gonna retire from that.
And oftentimes that's really disconnected from the reality of what
the working conditions are like for a lot of these people.
>> Absolutely, I mean, I think that the tenured professor position
is becoming rare, it's becoming more of a thing of the past.
Of course, there's better pay,
better benefits, more academic freedom when you're tenured.
And instead of hiring tenured professors,
universities are relying more and more on adjunct professors.
Which I believe is your title at Rutgers.
So could you talk a little bit about what it's like,
like what are the differences in pay?
What are the differences in terms of workplace protections when it comes to
a tenured professor versus a lecturer or an adjunct professor?
>> Yeah, so adjunct professors or like part-time lecturers is the job
title which is what I've been on and off since 2016 at Rutgers,
don't have any meaningful job security at all.
That you could be, have taught there for 20 years and
it's still a question on a semester by semester basis whether you're going
to continue to have a job there, which as you say,
whatever official assurances there are, makes academic freedom a bit of a joke.
Because, of course, you could always say, hey, you're not being fired because
of something you said, we just don't need as many people this semester, we're good.
And one of the things that I really wanna emphasize here is
that one of the key demands in the strike is equal pay for equal work.
So, right now, yeah, I still teach a couple of classes for
Rutgers and it's still a significant portion of my income.
People think that podcast,
[LAUGH] freelance right to make a lot of money that I have sad news for them.
But it used to be, for years, when I was living in New Jersey and
I was part of the elected board that led the union.
It used to be my only job.
And back then, every year I would either teach two classes in the fall,
three in the spring, or the other way around.
And that wasn't unique to me.
That was a very, very common set up for
people who are essentially full time adjuncts.
And the reason that it was always either three in the fall, two in the spring, or
the other way around is that was one class short of the line where they would be
contractually obligated to reclassify me as full time,
pay me way more money, and give me health insurance.
And so, what we want is, the phrase is fractional pay,
which means that if you okay, tenure professors, they're expected,
they have research requirements, they serve on committees.
The administration could argue that the pay difference reflects that fair enough.
But if you are a full time NTT, non tenured track professor,
whatever you're getting paid, if an adjunct is doing five-six of the workload,
it's exactly the same job, they should be getting five-six of the pay.
>> I think that, that makes a lot of sense.
Equal pay for equal work, makes all the sense in the world.
What has the response from the university been so far?
Yeah, so far they have totally rejected that idea of equal pay for equal work,
which of course they do, cuz their business model right now rejected that.
And by the way, we could have a whole conversation about the amount of money
that Rutgers administrators regularly pay themselves in bonuses, cuz they thought
they did such a good job and- >> Please get into that.
But after you finish this thought.
>> [LAUGH] The previous year, but
they want this more precarious workforce.
They don't wanna have to pay a lot for this.
They don't wanna have to spend a lot of money on the people who
are actually making the university run.
I mean, if you have no classes, there's no university,
everything else is built around that.
They certainly don't wanna give people health insurance.
Let adjuncts buy it to, either the grad student or
the normal faculty health insurance plan.
Which means that at best people are buying insurance off the exchanges,
which I'm sure everybody watching this knows how
much of a joke that could often be- >> Absolutely.
>> In terms of what's actually covered and
how much it's like the health insurance equivalent of the kind of car insurance
where you're essentially just paying a fee for being allowed to drive.
It's not gonna really help you that much if you get into into an accident.
>> I wanna give the university the benefit of the doubt.
>> Sure. >> I mean,
do they have the resources to provide these benefits and
just provide all these the lavish pay, the benefits?
I mean, it's a university that they've got to pay other staff.
I mean, they're probably struggling, right?
I mean, that's the reason why they're unable to do this for you.
Yeah, what would think, but if you look up,
like people just do a quick Google search for
the Rutgers A-A-U-P-A-F-T that's a union at Rutgers.
By the way, one of the side issues in the strike is that one of the demands is to
consolidate all three of the unions that represent faculty members at Rutgers.
So they can't do the divide and conquer stuff.
They have to negotiate with everybody at the same time.
But if you look at any of the three faculty unions websites,
you can see detailed breakdowns of how much Buddy Rutgers has in the bank.
How much Buddy Rutgers is spent depending on the ever increasingly spiraling
administration costs, because administrators all think they're
essential and they keep hiring more of themselves.
And you can see the point by point comparisons and
the [LAUGH] how could we pay for this?
And I guess the, the last point I would just make about this
question of how to pay for it, is that, let's say that the end result of this,
in a few years, that everything that happened,
everything's been demanded in the the strike was granted.
And that maybe over the course of the coming years, Rutgers would end
up hiring fewer adjuncts, okay, on one level that would be sad.
And certainly it might even be for me, let's say, for the sake of argument,
right?
Although honestly, they have more money [LAUGH] than you think,
they just don't wanna spend it on this.
But even if they did, I think that there's a much bigger trend in higher
education here, that I think at some point somebody has to say enough is enough.
And if you can't afford to pay people to teach a class for decent pay, for
benefits, so they can go to see the doctor if they get sick,
then I'd say you can't really afford to pay somebody for that class.
So, even if they were broke, which I think if you look at those breakdowns,
they're absolutely not broke.
That I would still say that we don't want the kind of future for
Rutgers in particular for higher education in general that looks like this.
We want one where people have equal pay for equal work,
where people have dignity, where people have job security.
And if we get all that, and then the next fight is for allocated more money for
education in New Jersey that I'm much happier to do this than just doing
the status quo for here on out, because,
hey, at least you have a job stop could play them.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
So currently there are around 9000 workers who are on strike at Rutgers University.
Ben keep at it.
I love that you guys are taking a stance and a strike is a great way to do it.
You've got union representation.
I think consolidating the unions makes a lot of sense as well.
And you always look out for labor.
If you guys are not familiar with Ben's show, definitely check him out.
Give Them an Argument is the name of his show.
You're just one of the most principled people on the left in my mind,
because you're always looking out for what matters the most,
which is workers rights, labor power, organizing.
And hopefully you'll come on soon to tell us that you guys
succeeded in getting what you wanted through the strike.
But thank you for taking the time to come on, Ben.
>> Absolutely, thank you so much for having me.
And I cannot tell you how much I always enjoy talking to you.
>> Thank you Ben.