On Friday, Rutgers professors and teachers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.
A few ideas crossed my mind when I read this news. First of all, how is it possible that with a $4 billion dollar budget, there is even a question about the salaries and wages of the teaching staff? But then I looked around the state and thought, it's not that far-fetched.
We know that nurses bear the brunt of patient care and struggle to make ends meet in New Jersey while hospital administrators get rich with high six-figure salaries. As far as teachers, the average salary in the Garden State is less than $30,000 a year according to Zip Recruiter. That while superintendents are making north of a hundred thousand.
And for years the supers have been avoiding the so-called "caps" by taking perks and other allowances. It's certainly unfair, to say the least.
As far as Rutgers is concerned, a few things come to mind. First, that they are talking about a BILLION dollars every year from the taxpayers in New Jersey. Where's the money going?
Although professors are being paid above the national average at about $120k a year, the gap between athletics, administration, and teachers is wide. Take a look at the top one hundred staff members at Rutgers including the head coach of the football team making north of $3 million a year.
Looking at these outrageous numbers, it's clear that one of the very first things that should be cut in our state budget is the billion-dollar taxpayer subsidies.
So let the teachers strike and let Rutgers figure out a way to stop paying multimillion-dollar contracts to professors at the expense of the rest of the staff.