As we all know, a union needs to be guided by its members. We need to know your opinions, viewpoints, wishes, impressions, etc.

Read on, and tell us! We will be bringing your answers to the next membership meeting, May 8th, at 5.

1. How does our union represent us?

2. What kind of leadership do we want?

3. What should be the priorities of the union for next year?

4. What is the role of the union in terms of graduate employees’ political struggles on this campus?

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Graduate Student Parents are a very important constituency within GEO membership. Yet due to the time consuming nature of parenting, it becomes very easy to exclude them and their voices. As an all-inclusive Union, GEO is committed to protecting and enforcing the rights of all members including those with families. To this end, GEO is inviting members with families to actively participate in GEO affairs by involvement in the following activities:

• Family Issues Committee
• Family Issues Listserve
• Tenants Association
• Babysitting Coop

By actively participating in the above activities, families can help GEO assist them with problems related to childcare, family housing, family healthcare and other family issues.

If you want to join the listserve, or have any concerns regarding any of these issues, feel free to contact the Family Issues Advocate, Judith Obiero by phone at 545-0705 or by e-mail at familyissues@geouaw.org

Download: Application form

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On the morning of Thursday, October 18, over 150 GEO members and supporters picketed the entrances to several “New Dirt” construction sites at UMass-Amherst. Work stoppages occured at the New Central heating Plant and at the Skinner construction sites. The pickets were broadly supported. Many construction workers chose to stand in solidarity with GEO members rather than cross the picket lines. GEO was joined by undergraduate students, members of other unions and community members in sending the university a clear message that graduate student employees deserve a fair contract. 

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From the Daily Hampshire Gazette:

“GRAD STUDENT EMPLOYEES TAKE LABOR PROTEST TO UMASS STREETS”

by Kristin Palpini

AMHERST – “No contract, no peace” was the message shouted across the University of Massachusetts campus Thursday morning as a couple hundred members of the Graduate Employee Organization took their gripes over ongoing labor negotiations to the streets.

Graduate student employees said they are frustrated by what they see as a lack of progress during the 10 months students have spent brokering a labor pact with the university.

Student employees, who include teaching and residential assistants, are trying to secure adequate and transparent diversity funding, roll back student fees, maintain health insurance rates and increase access to child care in a one-year contract.

“We’re serious about this, and this is something that they (university administration) just can’t fizzle out if they drag us along. They hope we’ll forget about this and move on to something else,” said Aaron W. Winslow, vice president of the Graduate Employee Organization.

On Thursday morning a mass of about 150 to 200 students stomped through the Whitmore Administration Building and delivered a signed list of their contract demands to the chancellor’s office. They then marched to a new construction site to demonstrate how buildings at UMass are being established through student fees, Winslow said. Mandatory graduate student fees have increased by over 50 percent to $8,969 over the last five years.

Edward F. Blaguszewski, director of news and information at UMass, called the protest “peaceful” with no arrests. Blaguszewski also said that the university has a policy of not commenting on contract negotiations.

Winslow said protesters were unable to speak with any UMass administrators, but felt the demonstration was a success nonetheless.

“It went well,” said Winslow who promised increased protests if GEO’s demands aren’t met. “We did this to let people know our demands and mostly to let the administration see that we’re there, that our members are out there in response to the way in which bargaining has been going.”

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On Thursday, October 04, 2007, GEO met with the University once again, submitting a package proposal that contained the core issues most critical to our union, such as MOU6/affirmative action, fee reductions, improved childcare, and the protection of our health benefits (go to www.geouaw.org to see GEO’s complete proposal to the University). However, we showed that we were serious about bargaining by making significant movement towards the University by proposing a contract of a duration of 15 months, so that it would expire at the end of September 2008. Despite our good faith bargaining, the University has shown, once again, that they are unwilling to seriously address our proposals, and continues to take a wholly unacceptable attitude towards our core issues. Some key points:

· About our proposal to eliminate student fees (Article 34 in the GEO contract), University Chief negotiator Susan Chinman stated that our proposal “will be and will continue to be rejected,” and that there was “no chance” that we would see a reduction of fees that have grown by 126% since 2001, and continue to rise. These fees represent at least 10% of the yearly stipend of an average UMass graduate student employee. So long as the University has full control over our fees (and, as of now, they do) they will continue to grow, potentially overtaking any wage increases that we win.
In reference to grad student fees, the University stated that they are dependent on the $1.2 million that the graduate service fees generate, and that if they didn’t get them from us, they’d have to get them from somewhere. This is an outright lie: it is clearly a matter of priority of management, not a simple lack of funding, that prevents them from easing the financial burden of graduate student employees. While grad employees struggle month-to-month to pay the rent, the UMass Board of Trustees approves over a million dollars for the renovation of a boathouse.. While GEO members must use government food stamps in order to eat, University administrators receive exorbitant pay raises. The University’s top priorities appear to include ensuring financial hardship for graduate students.

· The University again stated their resistance to bargaining over diversity funding/MOU6. On the one hand, they expressed a willingness to give a detailed report and demographic breakdown. But, the fact is that the information they are willing to supply is already publicly available, and without any contractually guaranteed oversight, the university cannot be held accountable. Graduate Dean Mullin has said that it is his ‘responsibility’ to manage diversity funding, but it is clear that the University is refusing to act responsibly by refusing to allow those who are affected by diversity funding to have any control over it whatsoever. It is well known that UMass’ diversity funding is broken, and it is inexcusable for the University to fail take any measures to fix it.

The bottom line is that, even after multiple moves toward University positions by GEO’s bargaining team, the University refuses to make any but the smallest movements towards our position. It’s clear that if we want a contract that benefits all of our members equally, we have to be prepared to act now. It is absolutely crucial that all GEO members to attend the first March and Rally of the semester, on Thursday, October 11th, at 11am at Whitmore.

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Two weeks ago, nearly 40 GEO members packed the bargaining room to directly confront the University with numerous questions concerning our demands, especially over affirmative action/diversity funding, aka Memorandum of Understanding #6 (MOU6) in our contract.  The University bargaining team’s chief negotiator, Susan Chinman, was unable to answer such questions, citing the absence of “diversity expert” Graduate Dean John Mullin.  On September 25^th, again with a room packed full of GEO members clad in black for solidarity, the ‘diversity expert’ was in attendance:

 

Here’s What They Claimed:

 

1) Dean Mullin was unabashed in claiming that from the GEO contract-mandated $800,000 earmarked for diversity funding, he had sole control over a roughly 100k “flex-fund” for diversity spending of his own choosing. In the course of discussion, GEO had to remind him that the money was not, in fact, his, but rather the state of Massachusetts.  Though Mullin claims that some of this money is allotted to diversity fellowships, the simple fact is that there is no way to verify this.  Nor is there a concrete policy in place that would direct Mullin in how to spend this money, nor adequate reporting on how it actually was spent.  This is the precise definition of ‘unaccountability,’ and this very lack of transparency is the exact reason why our contract must include language stipulating both the ways in which Diversity money is spent and a public report detailing who receives fellowships.

 

2) Equally unfounded was the claim that current diversity initiatives have been successful.  Mullin referred specifically to NEAGEP (Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education and Professorate), a federally program that matches diversity funding to the natural sciences.  This program has consistently been touted as the University’s ‘success story,’ claiming substantial increases in the admittance and retention of students from underrepresented populations.  But this supposed success is based solely on the amount of money given to this program.  In actuality, the increase in representation of students from ‘minority’ and underrepresented backgrounds has been negligible, and the diversity that the University claims simply is not there.  UMass cannot simply pump money into a broken system:  what is needed is dramatic and rigorous structural change that gets diversity fellowships to the people who need them.  Only by changing the way in which affirmative action happens on this campus can UMass expect to become accessible to people of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and class status, regardless of citizenship.

 

Despite these glaring inadequacies, the University refuses to make any movement on this issue, and Mullin has flatly refused to give up his personal control of the process. At the close of the session the University rejected our 3 year contract proposal (see the geo website at www.geouaw.org for our proposal), not only saying “no” to improving transparent and accountable diversity funding, but also rejecting improved funding for childcare, the reduction and eventual phase out of the graduate service fees, and fair wage increases. In their three-year proposal they offered 2.5% in the first year and 2% in each additional year. In addition their “offer” again included removing the caps on co-payments.

 

GEO members have been making powerful statements at the bargaining sessions–the presence of large numbers of members displays a membership that not only is determined to get a fair contract — but knows that direct and participatory action is the only way to get it.  We now need the membership to continue driving this contract campaign by organizing and participating in upcoming actions that will put more pressure on the University.

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The GEO bargaining team met with the university on Tuesday, September 11^th, with nearly 40 members in attendance. We presented the University with a partial package composed of our most important issues: Fee reduction, Diversity funding, Health Care Protection, & Childcare, with a contract duration of 3 years.

GEO’s bargaining team came into the session hoping to signal to the administration we were ready to bargain: reducing our wage demands from 6% per year to 5% per year and offering to drop our most expensive fee proposal: a reduction in the curriculum fee (the per-hour fee departments are charged to hire graduate employees) in favor of focusing on a phase-out of the graduate service fee over three-years. (Please note that since these proposals were made as a package we are not locked into anything and can readjust our demands if we choose.)

The University rejected GEO’s proposal for 5% wage increases in each of the three years of the contract, instead offering 2.5% in the first year and 2% in the second and third year. They did suggest that they may still be able to offer as much as a 5% raise in a one year contract. Over the course of the three year contract they claim that they simply do not have the financial resources. GEO members’ in attendance pressed them hard on this issue: raising the fact that the income of a typical GEO member makes them eligible for heating fuel assistance and free food from the food bank. The administration had no answer to this, nor to the question of their own sky-rocketing salaries when it was raised. They feigned total and complete ignorance of the latter issue despite the fact that this was a major issue in the faculty union’s bargaining this year. In her analysis of the Umass Administration done this past spring, Professor Stephanie Luce provided the estimate that the total number of administrators has increased 21% since 2003/2004, total salary has gone up by 51%, and the average salary per administrator has increased by 25%. As this analysis demonstrates GEO’s position is that it is not a matter of money, but of priority, and the Administration is simply choosing to distribute its funds to the extreme upper levels of an ever-expanding Umass bureaucracy.

It should also be noted that with the exception of wage increases and fee rollbacks our key demands are, for the most part, non-monetary. Our efforts to reform diversity funding on campus are largely focused on implementing procedures for the fair and equal allocation of fellowships, as well as ensuring graduate employee participation in the decision-making process. Neither of these would cost the University any money, yet they are so far aggressively opposed. It is not so much a problem of the amount of money, but rather a problem of the oversight and distribution of this money. Despite the fact that a number of GEO members in attendance raised the issue of diversity funding and its importance, the UMass’s bargaining team refused to answer any of the many questions concerning diversity funding. They pointed to the absence of “diversity expert” Graduate Dean John Mullin, whose only past contribution to the discussion has been to reject any improvements to graduate school affirmative action initiatives. They offered to ensure Dean Mullin was in attendance at the next bargaining session to attempt to address these questions. GEO members concerned about these issues should plan on attending that session, which is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 25^th at 9 am in the Campus Center.

In one other significant exchange the University stated that “if healthcare is a holdup” to signing a contract, they may be willing to negotiate over the longstanding caps on co-payments they have so far insisted on eliminating. In essence, the University has admitted that they are using our healthcare as a bargaining chip to attempt to distract us from other important issues.

While we are still far apart on many issues the GEO bargaining team remains hopeful that the University is interested in resolving this dispute. The attendance of GEO members at the bargaining sessions clearly helps to maintain the administration’s focus on negotiating a fair contract for GEO members.

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Attend Bargaining

Tuesday, Sept 11th 9am Campus Center 903

All GEO members are invited to attend the next bargaining session this Tuesday, Sept. 11^th at 9 am in the Campus Center 903. As we did at two sessions in May, let’s pack the room!

Bargaining Update

Wednesday August 29th

At the July 9th bargaining session, GEO’s bargaining team delivered the membership’s demand to the administration: a 3 year contract that included improvements in the critical areas of diversity funding, greater access to childcare, fee reductions, and the maintenance of our health coverage. So, on Wednesday, August 29^th, the University responded, passing two package proposals across the table: one, a contract with a duration of 1 year, the other for a duration of 3 years. This ‘choice’ was, of course, only nominal, as both contracts were the same in that they fail to address our core issues in any substantive way. There was no improved childcare support, no increased diversity funding, no reduction of fees, and still their insistence on dismantling our health care by removing the longstanding caps on co-payments for prescription drugs, emergency room visits and more. Moreover, the raises offered in their most recent proposal are just 2.5% in the first year and 2% in the second and third year, not coming close to keeping up with inflation or the expected fee increases. This contrasts with the one year contract wage offer of 2.5% with an additional 1% pool to bring up the GEO minimum stipend..

Nevertheless, there is every reason to believe we can achieve a fair contract. For months, the university had refused to bargain over a 3 year contract, saying that any contract with a duration longer than 1 year would be ‘impossible.’ GEO, however, made it clear that a 3 year contract was our priority, that we consider duration to be an important issue. The pressure that we have put on the university over the summer, both outside and inside the bargaining room, has forced them to engage with us over this issue. And though we will have to fight to make progress on our other issues, we have demonstrated that we have the strength and solidarity to set the terms of the debate.

Not only must we keep the pressure on the university, we must use this semester to escalate our tactics and let the university how serious we are about our contract.

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From the Daily Hampshire Gazette:
Newly appointed University of Massachusetts Interim Chancellor Thomas W. Cole Jr., promptly made his first visit to the flagship campus – his new home.

“It’s wonderful, beautiful here,” said Cole, 66, as he answered reporters’ questions before entering a private party to welcome him to Amherst Wednesday night.

“I know a lot of great people, alumni, current people on staff, that make a very positive statement about the kind of quality produced here,” Cole said. “This is a university I’ve always heard a lot of really good things about.”

Cole, a former president of Clark Atlanta University, was officially appointed interim chancellor by a unanimous vote of the trustees Wednesday. Their meeting also established a search committee for a permanent chancellor.

He will succeed John V. Lombardi and start serving Sept. 1.

“We have lofty aspirations for UMass-Amherst and Thomas Cole is someone who has always aimed high and achieved at the very highest levels,” said Trustee Chairman Stephen P. Tocco in a statement.

Cole came out of retirement to take the one-year, $350,000-salaried job. He retired from his position as the president of Atlanta Clark University in 2002 after leading the school for 13 years. He then took a job heading Great Schools Atlanta, a nonprofit fund for the city’s public school system. Cole retired from that post in 2006.

“There aren’t many opportunities that I would have come out of retirement for,” Cole said in a statement, “but I have always had a deep feeling for the special nature and the academic quality of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.”

As the interim chancellor, Cole said his most important duty will be to keep UMass moving forward and hand off the campus in good shape to the next chancellor.

“I’m going to do what you’d expect any chancellor to do – keep UMass running,” Cole said. “I don’t think we’ll miss a beat.”

Cole is making a good first impression on faculty. He appears to be a wise person, someone who can get his mind around complicated issues, said Faculty Senate Secretary Ernest D. May.

May, like many on the UMass campus, had his first meeting with the newly appointed chancellor Wednesday.

“He strikes me as one who has experience, as a wise person who can figure things out,” May said after meeting Cole at a Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday afternoon.

“He wants to keep the campus moving forward.”

May said he expects Cole will facilitate the continued progress of Lombardi’s “new dirt” capital campaign and the Amherst 250 Plan, which seeks to increase the size of the university’s tenure-track faculty.

Lombardi is leaving Amherst in the wake of a chancellor shake-up that had ramifications for three of the five UMass campuses and a proposed yearlong study of new management styles for the university system.

These mid-May events led to the faculty taking a “no confidence” vote in the president and trustees. Lombardi was named the new president of the Louisiana State University system last month. He is expected to start serving in this new role by Sept. 1.

“It seems (Cole will) be a mediating force in what has been a dynamic situation,” said May.

And Cole appears ready to meet that challenge.

“Part of my job is working out conflicts,” Cole said. “I’m not sure what they are yet, or what the top priorities are now, but I’m a fast learner and I know there are always two sides to every story.”

Cole shepherded Clark Atlanta University through the merger of Atlanta University and Clark College, which took place one year before his appointment as president of the joined schools in 1989. During his tenure, Cole helped increase the university’s student enrollment, faculty and operating budget, according to UMass officials.

He joined the Atlanta University staff in 1966 as a professor of chemistry. He went on to hold a number of administrative, director and chairman positions at the university.

From 1982-86, Cole was the president of West Virginia State College. In 1986, he was appointed chancellor of the West Virginia Board of Regents. He returned to Atlanta as president of Clark College in 1988 just before the merger with Atlanta University.

A native of Texas, Cole graduated with honors from Wiley College and earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago.

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