By ZACH LAIRD, InDepthNH.org
DURHAM — After 490 days of bargaining, the University of New Hampshire chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-UNH) declared an impasse in contract negotiations with the university administration, alleging it failed to address rising living costs and the long-term health of the university while struggling to retain faculty.
The AAUP-UNH has petitioned the New Hampshire Public Employee Labor Relations Board for mediation. It previously voted to declare an impasse after months of negotiations produced no real progress on critical concerns like salaries and health insurance. According to the press release, administration proposals offer no salary increase for the period during which negotiations stalled and only modest increases afterward, adding: “these proposals fall behind comparable institutions and threaten UNH’s ability to recruit and retain high-quality faculty.”
“We have seen a very slow process in our contract negotiations, and after over a year the distance between our position and the university’s proposals is so far that we’re seeking outside mediation to try and speed the process along,” Julia E. Rodriguez, AAUP-UNH president said in an interview with InDepthNH.org.
Executive Director of Media Relations Tania deLuzuriaga said “the university mutually agreed to an impasse and offered to mutually agree to a neutral; the AAUP-UNH decided to file the petition with NH’s Public Employee Labor Relations Board (PELRB). UNH will follow PELRB’s process.”
Referring to the press release’s comments on there being little movement around issues like salaries and healthcare, Rodriguez said she can’t yet speak about the actual numbers because they haven’t been made public yet. Taking into consideration the cost-of-living, inflation, and the rising housing costs for younger hires, she said the union came up with what they believe are “very fair and commensurate salary increase proposals with the economy we’re all experiencing.”
“The university’s counter-proposals, on the other hand, have been very low single digits, shall we say… The contract negotiations are happening at a time when the faculty is experiencing multiple stressors that have been building for the last couple years. On the one hand, there’s the larger economy and cost-of-living, and then internally on campus the faculty has experienced increased workloads because of major cuts to support staff that happened a couple of years ago, as well as declining members of faculty,” Rodriguez said.
She continued that by some faculty taking other jobs or retiring, the university over time has lost a huge number of staff because they haven’t been replaced. In Rodriguez’s history department, when she arrived in 1999, they had about 23 full-time faculty members. It now has just 13, which she said is “typical across many, many departments.”
According to the AAUP-UNH, the tenure-track faculty body is expected to lose 67 colleagues between May 2026 and May 2027, and the bargaining unit will then have approximately 30 percent fewer members than it did a decade ago.
“There just hasn’t been a replacement of faculty members, so we’re all under a lot of pressure for higher teaching loads, more advising, and more administrative tasks, because we’ve lost so many support-staff members,” Rodriguez said.
She continued, “I’ve been at UNH since 1999; I spent my whole career at UNH. I’m deeply invested in the students, in my colleagues, in my research that we produce, and in order for us to do our jobs right, we need to have decent economic conditions. Salary and healthcare are obviously the big pieces of that, because if you’re a young professor who might have other job options, and you’re told you have to commute an hour and a half to find decent housing, you’re not going to make that investment in UNH, you’re going to go somewhere else.
“Or, you’re going to be at UNH and be spending a tremendous amount of energy trying to get through the day; commuting, picking up your kids, and still having the time to focus on your students and research.”
In the AAUP-UNH’s opening statement letter dated March 27, 2025, it noted it was focused on a contract that accomplished the following:
- Values faculty as the heart of curricular and research innovation and recognizes faculty as integral to the long-term goals of UNH.
- Prioritizes the role of faculty in shaping and maintaining the UNH student experience (in the traditional classroom; in the field, laboratories, and other research locales; and in our offices and virtual environments).
- Demonstrates a commitment to faculty through strategic decision-making in faculty recruitment and in work environments (e.g., physical and technological infrastructure maintenance and management, professional development, shared governance, and work-life empowerment).
deLuzuriaga said UNH has negotiated in good faith since March 2025 to reach a new agreement with the AAUP-UNH.
“We recently made both three-year and five-year contract offers that included 2% salary increases for the 2026-27 academic year and each year after that. These offers are similar to those accepted by the UNH Law Faculty (NEA) — UNH and NEA reached a contract agreement in June and members are expected to vote on the contract in August. UNH’s contract offers on salary and benefits align with the budget UNH submitted to the Board of Trustees for Fiscal Year 2027 and the assumptions in that budget. This budget projects a $10 million operating loss for FY27,” deLuzuriaga said.
She continued that the financial challenges UNH faces are well documented, and that the university “is working hard to ensure the long-term health of the institution.” She explained that this will entail switching all University System of New Hampshire employees to a new health insurance plan and “taking steps to right size our personnel in light of student enrollment declines (12% since 2016).”
deLuzuriaga also said they recently negotiated a retirement incentive for the AAUP-UNH which will see 47 faculty depart UNH and which included significant financial incentives for retirees, which were approved by the Board of Trustees.
According to deLuzuriaga:
- As of FY25, the minimum salaries for faculty with nine-month appointments are:
- Assistant Professor: $74,658
- Associate Professor: $87,493
- Full Professor: $111,053
- Median salaries for UNH faculty are:
- Assistant Professor: $90,383.09
- Associate Professor: $104,728.53
- Full Professor: $139,970.73
AAUP-UNH is a chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and advocates for fair working conditions, academic freedom, shared governance, and high-quality public higher education at the University of New Hampshire. The chapter works to ensure that faculty have the resources and support necessary to provide outstanding teaching, research, and service to students and the people of New Hampshire, per the press release.