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Rider Chapter Reaches Agreement
By Gwendolyn Bradley
On the eve of an October strike, the Rider University AAUP chapter reached a tentative collective bargaining agreement with the administration. Highlights of the agreement include increases in compensation and faculty development funds and a cap on adjunct and out-of-load teaching.
Faculty will receive 4 percent salary raises retroactive to September for this academic year. For the next three years, they will receive the average of the increase in all faculty salaries and the increase in continuing faculty salaries, both as reported by the AAUP salary survey. The university will contribute an additional 0.25 percent to TIAA-CREF pension accounts in the fourth year of the agreement and will increase its contribution to help defray the cost of dependent health benefits coverage; faculty will not have to make additional contributions for health benefits. The university will increase funding for faculty travel to conferences and will add three additional summer fellowships for faculty development in each year of the agreement. There are presently forty such fellowships available, each with a stipend of $7,000. The amount of the stipend will increase along with salaries. The agreement stipulates that there will be no significant increase in the number of full-time contingent faculty, who remain in the bargaining unit and are paid at the same rate as all other faculty. The percentage of sections taught by full-time faculty within their normal workload must be 65 percent of all sections.
The agreement was ratified by the chapter’s membership on November 5.
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