Join the candidates for a conversation about the future of our Union. Bring your questions and ideas!

Monday April 18 @ 7:30pm: Zoom link

Monday April 11 @ 7:30pm on Zoom

Registration link

All community members are welcome!

This is the time for change.

We deserve a Union that respects members and values action, democracy, transparency, inclusion, and justice.

We are running a slate of candidates in the spring AFT 1796 election:

Wendy Christensen: President
Murli Natrajan and Liz Victor: Co-Vice Presidents for Negotiations
Keumjae Park and Joseph Spagna: Co-Vice Presidents for Grievances
Ellen Pozzi: Recording Secretary
Deborah Sheffield: Professional Staff Officer
Richard Kearney: Librarian Faculty Officer
Atola Gerri Budd and Donnalynn Scillieri: Adjunct Faculty Co-Officers

Spread the word to help support the slate!

Our meetings are open to all Union members. Please contact us for the Zoom information.

Friday 1/28 at 12:30pm: Discussion topic: What does democracy look like in a Union?

Readings: AUD’s Union Democracy Benchmarks and Chapter 1, Democracy is Power

Friday 2/11 at 12:30pm: Discussion topic: Austerity in higher education

Reading: Shared Governance Unionism and the Fight against Austerity in the Age of COVID-19

Friday 3/4 at 2pm: Topic: Slate, Platform, and Campaign brainstorming

Friday 3/11 at 12:30pm: TBA

William Paterson University says it’s saving the institution by cutting nearly 100 full-time professors over three years. Faculty members wonder what will be left to save.

By Colleen Flaherty December 20, 2021, Inside Higher Ed

Thirteen tenure-track or tenured professors are finishing up their last semester at William Paterson University in New Jersey, having been laid off this year due to budget problems exacerbated by COVID-19.

Now professors who thought their jobs were safe—and who agreed to a number of concessions in order to save as many colleagues’ jobs as possible in the first round of cuts—are facing another, bigger round of layoffs: citing ongoing declining enrollment and a $30 million structural deficit, William Paterson proposed cutting 150 more professors over three years, or about 40 percent of the full-time faculty.

That number has since been reduced to 100 over three years, with the faculty union agreeing to even more concessions. It’s also possible that a few more professors will opt for special retirement packages by a January deadline. But the prospect of losing anything close to 100 professors, out of about 340 total, has the faculty at William Paterson worried about not just their jobs but the future of the institution as a whole.

Read more here.

On November 19, 2021, hundreds of faculty, students, staff, and others rallied against layoffs at William Paterson University. Faculty members also met with members of the Board of Trustees and the following statements were among those read to the Board.

Statement by Dr. David Fuentes, Dr. Carrie Hong and Dr. Ellen Pozzi:

To our William Paterson University Board of Trustees, faculty colleagues, campus partners and peers, I thank you for your commitment to our institution and to the academic mission we all carry out together for our students. It is my honor to address you today, as it has been in the past, in support of our university and its community. 

Today, we find ourselves as an institution at a crossroads.  Many of us have faced the impending possibility that we, or our colleagues, may not be here next year.  While that concern is of great significance to us, personally, there are even greater stakes at play in this crossroad. 

While, for my peers and I, being in potential peril represents a catastrophe of the highest personal magnitude, the prospect of our university not getting ‘this right’ and further underserving those who rely upon us the most, represents an even bigger threat to our nation, our commonwealth, and the region of Northern New Jersey, –and, most importantly to our students. 

As an education researcher and a representative from a college tasked with knowing, understanding, and implementing research-based best practices in education, I regret to say that there are none that support that what is happening here and now at WP will be beneficial for students, for their lives, their families, and their communities, nor their social mobility.  The problem that looms here at WP has the potential to be far more detrimental to our students than we all may anticipate.  Put simply, we are experimenting with the lives of children that have been among the most marginalized. 

The children we hope to welcome into our WP community are the same children the NJDOE and the federal government have allocated millions of dollars to address learning gaps created by Covid-19.  So, how will we support them next year?  It is my fear that a new generation of children could be left behind just as our commonwealth left their parents and grandparents behind.  In 2021, we have an obligation to do better than the failures of our past generations.  We can’t afford reducing the imperative of education for those who need it most.

Folks, we have the greatest of all responsibilities, working with underserved and historically marginalized students. For their sake more than ours, we have an obligation to be as just and equitable as we can be and that includes keeping ourselves capable of delivering on our mission and vision to transform lives, locally, regionally, and nationally by delivering the highest quality of education.

Stop Layoffs, Protect our students, Save WP!

“We envision a U.S. higher education system that works for and is led by workers, students, and the communities it serves. We envision a system that secures our nation’s democratic future and serves as a vehicle for addressing inequities.“

President Biden declared today, May 4, 2021, National Teacher Appreciation Day, and we’ve been hearing a lot about it from a variety of sources. WPU President Richard Helldobler’s weekly email describes “…how proud William Paterson is, of all our great faculty and academic support staff, whose work is at the heart of this University.” And yet, Helldobler’s administration still intends to layoff 18 members of the faculty before June 15, 2021.

AFT National President, Randi Weingarten, wrote in her thank you email to members: “Your union has your back. It’s not just about thanking you; it’s about fighting for the policy and conditions you and your families need so you can thrive.”

We couldn’t agree more, and we’re glad to have the national AFT supporting us! But we also know that the fight Randi describes will only succeed if we organize workers to take action.

What can rank-and-file union members (and our allies) actually DO at this point?

1. If you haven’t already, sign and circulate the AFTNJ petition to save programs at William Paterson University. Eliminating “programs” opens the door to firing even tenured, senior faculty.
2. Contact your Senators and tell them to pass the PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) ACT NOW! The National AFT is a sponsor of the bill, and both of our NJ Senators support it. As them to lobby their Senate colleagues to pass the bill. You can also reach out to your representatives at CNJSCL and AFTNJ and ask them to devote more resources to passing this important national legislation—it’s the most labor-friendly bill to go through congress since the Great Depression! You can read more about it here.
3. Connect with other activists via this website: savewp.org
4. Speak truth to power whenever you can. This Michigan Middle School educator tackles the emptiness of managerial declarations of “respect” for educators in his moving public resignation. His concerns are about insufficient re-opening protocols, but his words resonate with so many of us.

AFTNJ has begun circulating a petition here. Please sign and share it widely.

The drastic measures planned by the WPU administration will gut the heart of the third most diverse public university in the State of New Jersey. William Paterson is a designated Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) with a population of 34% Latinx students; 21% of our students identify as African-American, and 30% are the first in their families to attend college. More than 60% of our students commute to campus, and most hold jobs and have family responsibilities in addition to pursuing their degrees. We currently rank in the top 5% of universities on the Social Mobility Index, a jump of 43 spots since last year. Faculty and staff are doing the important work of offering affordable, quality public education, and these cuts will negatively impact our ability to do that in the future. Not only will the faculty-to-student ratio increase if these changes are implemented, but there will also be fewer tenured faculty on campus. Tenure is not simply about job security; it also allows for the discussion of controversial topics in the classroom. University Administration is encouraging faculty to decolonize their curricula–and rightly so–but at the same time, they are destroying the hard-earned protections that allow faculty and teaching staff to do precisely that.