well the 8 000 faculty members at Rutgers University are on the verge of a historic strike the unions representing tenured professors adjuncts and graduate student instructors today began a 10-day long vote on whether or not to authorize the strike as contract negotiations remain stalled it could be the first ever walk out by professors in the school's history senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan was in Newark where union members rallied outside a Board of Governors meeting Rutgers faculty and staff rallied at the Newark campus to fire up Union support for a strike authorization vote now underway after working since last June without a contract some 7 500 full and part-time professors graduate students and adjunct instructors could hit New Jersey State University with the first strike in its 255-year history and we will strike [Music] [Applause] [Music] and we will win understand that this fight is going to go on and on and on but we here today to make a statement and if we don't get it we want if we don't get it speakers like Chris Smalls who organized the first Amazon Union on Staten Island rallied the crowd leaders for the two unions the American Association of University professors and the Rutgers adjunct faculty say negotiations with Rutgers administrators have stalled we have demands that we think make this a better record for everyone that fit the president's idea of a Beloved Community and really make us a fairer place for for everybody in the Rutgers community and the university has responded by rejecting all of our demands contract demands include salary increases of 20 percent over four years for full-time professors and immediate 23 percent raised to thirty seven thousand dollars a year for graduate workers and equal pay for equal work by part-time adjunct professors plus health benefits a two-year minimum appointment to start and a path to tenure Amy higher's been an adjunct for years a lot of us are looking for full-time work and we would love to teach at Rutgers we love it here we love our students but they find that it's much cheaper to employ us piecemeal critics point to Rutgers football coach Greg schiano's salary 32 million dollars over eight years as a sign of misplaced priorities why is the University spending millions of dollars on the black hole that is Administrative costs and Athletics throwing away millions of dollars for athletic debt for an awful football team we are very involved I promise you at the highest levels on both the union side Rutgers side I hope it's sooner than later that they find resolution and get this to the place it should be Governor Murphy's a pro-union Democrat but Rutgers Administration contains two holdovers from the Republican Christie Administration John Hoffman and David Cohen view it as anti-labor by Union negotiators a Rutgers spokeswoman says it has full confidence in our negotiating team which Faithfully represents the position of the university and that administrators will continue to meet in good faith with them until we reach comprehensive agreements on mandatorily negotiable issues including compensation as quickly as possible it's time to bargain Fair contracts and our members are saying we don't want to go on strike but if we have to we will voting will last for 10 days it takes just a simple majority to authorize a strike and Union officials expect overwhelm support in Newark I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight News [Music]