Labor lawyer Melissa Atkins discusses strikes at universities across the U.S., and what she recommends to her employer clients.
As the unions representing 9,000 academic workers at Rutgers University went on strike this week, theirs became one of several local universities tied up in contentious labor disputes, which are increasingly reaching a boiling point across the U.S.
The strike has led to class cancelations just a few weeks before the end of the semester, and while the university has assured students that graduation won’t be canceled, some students are worried about the consequences of missing instruction if the strike continues for too long. When a strike was announced, Gov. Phil Murphy requested that both sides continue negotiations under supervision from his office, and asked the university not to take legal action to get strikers back to work.
Melissa Atkins, a labor and employment lawyer at Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel in Philadelphia, represents universities and other public employers in collective bargaining with unions. While it’s impossible for schools to give their employees everything they ask for, she said, employers need to come to the table willing to make concessions. Her frequent advice to employers is to try and work out their disagreements with workers before getting lawyers involved, she said.
As the Rutgers strike continued Wednesday, Atkins spoke with The Inquirer to discuss the employer’s perspective.
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