Dear GEO Members,
We had an eventful week and much has to do with the new ICE regulations around F1 student visa holders. Thank you to our members for being engaged and actively participating in the union. It is a great honor to work with so many of you in different capacities.
Recap from last week:
Visa & Immigration Info:
JUST IN: The ICE memo/student directive has been rescinded in response to the Harvard vs Department of Homeland Security lawsuit. Big big thank you to all the UAW members who shared their stories and joined the amicus brief to support the case. This is a huge relief for all of us, though of course the pandemic continues to present other challenges to international graduate student study and work in the U.S. But for now, this victory should be celebrated!
Reslife Impact Bargaining and Coalition building with RAPMU:
ResLife graduate employees (working as Assistant Residence Directors) are one group of GEO members that face particular risks this coming semester. These graduate employees live on campus in close proximity with undergraduates. GEO leadership is working with rank and file ResLife employees to develop proposal language and actions regarding their changes in working conditions.
In addition, members of the bargaining committee met with the bargaining team of RAPMU, the undergraduate employee union for resident assistants and peer mentors. We discussed issues facing these employees and the idea of forming a coalition between our unions. Bargaining together around shared issues would give us more power.
GEO & GSS Coalition:
In the past, the university has purposely, arbitrarily, drawn the line between the “worker” and “student” identities of our graduate employees. We know this is not how identities work: these roles do not exist in a vacuum. Further complicating this are the intersection of race, gender, class and other aspects of identity. GEO and GSS play different, but overlapping roles in protecting graduate employees; it is a critical moment for all of us to stand in solidarity with one another. Last week, GEO representatives and GSS leadership met together to discuss issues faced by the graduate student population and the topics covered from childcare, campus’ health and safety and reopening plan. Stay tuned for more info from this coalition.
Coming Up this Week:
Impact Bargaining Session
Here is what we presented to the Admin on July 2 [link]. Please join us this Thursday to hear what they have to say about these proposals.
Zoom Link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/237329078
What questions do you have regarding the campus reopening plan?
Many of you have been actively involved in bargaining over the past few months- coming to the bargaining table, working on the Health and Safety and / or Work to Rule committee, following updates via Slack and email, and communicating with fellow GEO members.
We want to make sure that questions you may have for the administrative bargaining team get answered. We are compiling a continual list of questions from members that we ask the admin team. We will inform members as we hopefully get some of them answered. Please keep the questions coming! To add to this list of questions email the GEO bargaining committee at bargaining@geouaw.org or using this working doc to compile questions.
Actions:
CALL FOR MEMBER VOLUNTEERS to form ABOLISH THE POLICE WORKING GROUP
As many of you know, GEO leadership and many members are in support of removing the UMass police from our campus. At the same time, many of our members are skeptical of this idea, because it only recently started becoming mainstream. We are looking for GEO member volunteers who are interested and knowledgeable about the defund-the-police and abolitionist movements to lead our education campaign. If you are passionate about the subject, whether because of your research interests or because of your individual interests, we encourage you to email geo@umass.edu
Nomination for Cochairs of GEO International/ African American, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander and Native American (ALANA) Caucus
This year, the International/ALANA Caucus quickly developed into a critical working group for organizing around issues directly impacting the international graduate and ALANA student community. Further, the caucus has established a powerful voice in GEO to demand substantial measures from University admin for addressing the challenges that the pandemic, and the federal government’s responses to it, have created and intensified for international students to continue to work and study at UMass. This was due in no small part to the dedicated work of the Caucus’ co-chairs, Ragini Jha and Swati Birla, and the time and efforts of rank and file members like you. The Caucus committed to the page a robust set of demands that were signed by 900 people at UMass and the broader academic community, and likewise the co-chairs were an integral part of a GEO/GSS coalition group that crafted another set of well-supported demands that addressed the needs and precarity of the graduate worker community at UMass as a whole.
We are highlighting this important work by the GEO International/ALANA Caucus for a few reasons:
- The Union needs to elect new co-chairs for this caucus, and we impress upon you the need to continue this caucus’ organizational efforts more than ever (esp. given the current threat with the feds’ new ICE directive, which we will know more about next week as the lawsuits have just begun). We need rank and file members who are not currently on more than one other GEO committee to nominate themselves (or, we need members to nominate someone who fits this description).
- The Union should recognize the potential for any other caucus in what the International/ALANA Caucus has achieved in terms of an organizing structure and organizational strategies. This includes a Facebook group to disseminate important information, gather feedback from members, and create community despite social-distancing. If you are part of another caucus that is struggling to establish purpose, goals, and organizing strategies, please consider reaching out to anyone on GEO staff to learn more about what a caucus can be and achieve.
If you would like to nominate yourself or another GEO member for co-chair of the International/ALANA Caucus, please email us immediately at geo@umass.edu.
Words from Work to Rule Committee:
Our Work-to-Rule Action starts now as we need leverage in COVID-related Impact Bargaining! We are only doing the work that is within our contracts WITHIN the time period in which the contract is valid. We encourage all members to not do any additional work. For example, you should not prepare the syllabus, request a Moodle or Blackboard, or attend any unpaid “training sessions” connected with teaching online before the start date that your contract stipulates. This is a fully legal, GEO-endorsed action, which aims at showing the university how much unpaid labor we do all the time and that withdrawing our unpaid labor will cause significant disruption to the university. More details about the action to come. For now, feel free to respond to your supervisors with a simple message in which you refuse to do work outside of your contract as part of the Work-to-Rule GEO Action. We have strength in numbers! Let’s go!
In Solidarity, Dora and Jyoti, GEO Co Chairs
