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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