Highlights of Rutgers' 2007-2010 contract:
- SALARY: 8% raises for all TA/GAs each year, resulting in salaries of $24,962 (academic year) and $28,456 (calendar year) by 2010.
- HEALTH CARE: Fully paid, quality health insurance for part-time TA/GAs (we have been trying to get this for three decades). Full TA/GAs will continue to enjoy the excellent state health benefits plan, as they have since the 1970s.
- FAMILY LEAVE: Eight weeks paid leave from teaching and service obligations for both faculty and TA/GAs who become parents (of any gender, biological or adoptive). For birth mothers, these 8 weeks are in addition to the previous contract's 6 weeks paid disability leave, resulting in 14 weeks – an entire semester – of paid leave.
- WORKLOAD PROTECTION: Strong, enforceable protection for the standard 15 hours/week full TA/GA workload and the 7.5 hours/week half TA/GA workload. This near complete rewrite is the first significant improvement to the workload language since the original language of the 1970s. All of the changes in between had just added loopholes for exploitation.
- NON-DISCRIMINATION: Expansion of non-discrimination protection to cover all veterans, civil union or domestic partnership status, familial status (including pregnancy), certain medical, physical, and genetic conditions, and changing understandings of gender and sex.
More information on Rutgers' graduate student union can be found here.