At every recent public opportunity, whether at the University Senate, at the TA/GA Grade-In, or in an email to over 50,000 recipients, President McCormick has proclaimed his commitment "to moving these negotiations forward expeditiously in order to reach a satisfactory conclusion" or variations on that theme. He has further stated the obvious, that both sides must be "flexible" to reach agreement.

Here is how the administration team, led by Vice President Kavanagh, is carrying out that commitment.

After refusing to respond to the AAUP proposal for faculty and TA/GAs presented on February 29^th, and refusing to schedule a meeting any sooner than 11 days later and for no longer than 2 hours, and refusing to respond to our attempts to facilitate progress by the exchange of information before the scheduled meeting of March 10; Vice President Kavanagh informed us by telephone 4 hours before this scheduled meeting that the administration would not be making a counterproposal and would not modify their earlier offer.

In case you’ve forgotten, their earlier offer was the one erroneously described as "equivalent to the state colleges’ contract" in the email from President McCormick. It is also the offer that does not address current issues of subsistence and future issues of competitiveness for TA/GAs. It is also the offer that would result in a large fraction of our faculty falling behind increases in the cost of living, unlike the state college faculty, all of whom will stay ahead of the cost of living. The following table summarizes the across-the-board portions of the two proposals for faculty.

Once we arrived at negotiations, we were given the administration’s very questionable calculation of the "cost" of our proposals for faculty and TA/GAs. But, while they asserted that our proposals were too expensive, primarily because of their insistence on 50% "merit," they refused to give us such simple details as their calculation of the difference in costs between our proposal and their proposal for TA/GAs. It soon became apparent that they were unwilling to negotiate about anything.

Their unwillingness to negotiate anything soon was confirmed. They tried to declare that we were at an "impasse." SUCH A DECLARATION WOULD RELIEVE THEM OF ANY OBLIGATION TO NEGOTIATE WITH US AND WOULD ULTIMATELY PERMIT THEM TO IMPOSE THEIR PROPOSAL ON THE FACULTY AND THE TA/GAS. An attempt to declare an impasse after putting one "real" economic proposal on the table and talking about it for very little time is the most blatant example of bad faith we have ever seen. The only impasse is between the administration and the willingness to negotiate. We believe that negotiations must continue.

Apparently, the administration thinks that it will make Rutgers a top- echelon university without the help or good will of its faculty or graduate students. No doubt our new elite administrative team believes they will get Rutgers there all by themselves. The faculty and the TA/GAs must convince them otherwise, not just by talk, but by actions. We will soon have much more to say on that topic.

Bob Boikess, Chair
Negotiating Team