the historic Rutgers University strike is over for now unions reached a tentative contract deal with University leadership this weekend after five days of tense negotiations according to Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway the framework agreement includes 14 percent raises across the board for full-time faculty and counselors by 2025. part-time lecturers will get a nearly 44 percent increase in per credit pay over four years minimum salaries for postdoctoral fellows will increase nearly 28 percent for the same period teaching and graduate assistants will get a pay bump to forty thousand dollars over the course of their contract those concessions were enough to at least pause the strike classes resumed today for all sixty seven thousand students affected across three campuses senior political correspondent David Cruz has the story the news that the strike had been suspended came just after 1am on Saturday morning the biggest dollars and cents issues essentially settled the first academic work stoppage in the history of Rutgers University lasted five days it's a cloudy Monday morning and campus is pretty quiet you got a few students straggling into and out of the student center and there's a kind of a morning after feel to things but there are no signs and no singing and no chanting it's almost as if nothing really happened here except that it did I wanna know it was a joyous week in some ways and I think that song the way the students at Mason gross and other places brought their instruments that moment when everyone just started singing as we were marching down uh George Street from cook campus to the New Brunswick College Avenue campus um it's the best work day of my life reaching consensus today comes as a result of the active and engaged leadership of Governor Murphy to whom we are all deeply indebted said University president Jonathan Holloway in the statement released over the weekend but the strikes technically not over suspended is the word officials are using there are other issues equally significant that remain outstanding like a promise of five years of funding for graduate assistance student debt forgiveness a fund to help undocumented and other service workers across the campuses and the settlement with Medical Faculty we suspended the strike we didn't end it and we have it in our muscle memory so we are ready to go out again and we really are um there are people picketing today for the Medical Faculty which still has to get its contract issues resolved um I'm hopeful um we want to be able to do it by the end of the week um and I think we I think we can get there but some of those on the picket line that formed around noon today were expressing disappointment that the union may have taken its foot off the gas too soon personally as a grad worker I am pretty devastated that we suspended our strike as early as we did on we we are a Democratic Union though and we make Democratic decisions and the majority of our bargaining committee and our executive Council voted to suspend the strike and so that is what has happened but we are out here because we continue to put pressure on Administration to do the right thing are you concerned that suspending this strike is going to lose some of that great momentum yeah for sure for sure I mean we were literally shutting streets down last week basically we have power in numbers and we have power when we withhold our labor right the university had didn't budge for over 250 plus days when we were still working the only time that they budged on our demands was when we withheld labor and when we got onto the streets and into the picket line I'm relying on the good faith of our bargaining team I'm taking a bit of a leap and I'm going to rely on the good faith of University management the union may have won what they call a resounding Victory But ultimately the question that management and the gov governor and legislature will have is who pays for it all lawmakers all of whom are up for election this year will have to answer that one I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight news