Faculty members at New York University reached a tentative agreement on Wednesday to end a two-day strike at the private school, winning substantial salary increases after hundreds walked off the job over a contract dispute.
The union, the Contract Faculty United-UAW, represents about 950 full-time faculty members who teach roughly a quarter of classes at N.Y.U. and are not on track for tenure. Many complained that their pay did not keep up with their tenure-track colleagues or the steep costs of living in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
Now, they are set to receive an average raise of 20 percent this year, and 3.5 percent increases a year for the remainder of the five-year contract, according to Brendan Hogan, a union spokesman.
The deal was set to bring an end to roughly 40 hours of disruption across the prestigious university’s Greenwich Village campus, where the estimated cost of attendance is more than $100,000 a year. About 29,000 undergraduates were just returning from spring break as the professors went on strike Monday morning.
With seven weeks left in the semester, substitutes were called in to teach while university administrators helped lead lectures. A number of students joined their professors on the picket line, declining to attend class despite the requests of school leaders. And some seniors worried that progress on their theses would be stymied without their advisers.
On Wednesday, faculty members were expected to return to their classes while the tentative agreement was put to a vote.
The university’s president, Linda G. Mills, and its provost, Georgina Dopico, told the campus in a letter that all would soon be back to normal.
They called the agreement an important recognition of “the vital contributions these members of our faculty make to your experience and education,” and “something the university will be able to sustain over time.”
“Strikes are difficult moments for close-knit communities like ours,” Dr. Mills said. “But even in moments of tension, we are one N.Y.U. community.”
Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for N.Y.U., said that the deal “provides meaningful raises and comprehensive benefits that will improve the lives of every member,” and that the office of Mayor Zohran Mamdani played a “constructive role” in the negotiations.
The university and the union said that none of the faculty members would make less than $91,000 starting in September, and that 95 percent would earn more than $100,000.
Mr. Hogan added that “our lowest paid and longest-serving colleagues” would see bigger gains, and that the union had won the “highest minimum salaries of any unionized full-time, nontenure track faculty in the country.”
Troy Closson is a reporter for The Times covering children, teenagers and young adults in New York City.
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