Students at Rutgers University are heading back to class after the college and union reached a deal overnight Saturday.

Faculty members at Rutgers hadn’t had a contract for nearly a year, but now after over 100 bargaining sessions, they finally do.

The union posted an update overnight, suspending the strike after leaders touted frameworks for new contracts.

Gov. Phil Murphy tweeted at 1 a.m., shaking that the college and union came to an agreement that, “…respects the interest of many different stakeholders; upholds New Jersey’s values; and puts and end to a standoff that was disrupting to our educators and students alike.”

This all comes after negotiation teams from Rutgers University returned to the New Jersey State House for a fifth day of talks Friday. University officials said “significant progress” had been made just hours before the deal was struck.

The preceding days involved long days of negotiations that went past midnight.

This has been considered one of the largest walkouts in higher education – five days of uncertainty surrounding exams and graduation, picketing, lengthy negotiations, and disrupted schedules.

It included about 9,000 professors, graduate students, adjuncts, and others who had been working without a contract since last summer. The walkout impacted more than 67,000 students across the three campuses as they were set to finish out spring semester.

The unions say they will return to work but are emphasizing the strike has simply been suspended and not canceled yet.

“Our team was really clear about what we needed. We needed to end contingency and raise wages for those not making enough to survive,” said AAUP-AFT President Rebecca Givan.

Negotiators for the two sides will restart talks next week on a full deal. In the meantime, the current agreement would increase salaries across-the-board for full-time faculty and counselors by at least 14% by July 1 of 2025.

It also would include important gains for Rutgers’ adjunct professors, which had been an area of the contract the two sides had battled over for months.