Fall Impact Bargaining Proposals [link] and Recap:
On Thursday (7/3), GEO members met UMass management at the table for the first session of impact bargaining over the new working conditions outlined in the Chancellor’s plan for the Fall 2020 semester. GEO brought quite a few proposals to the table regarding appointments, safety, and pay during the Fall 2020 semester. Many of our members spoke powerfully and articulately about their experiences working as TAs, TOs, RAs, and ARDs about their concerns to administrators. We are proud of our fellow grad student workers for showing up and speaking up to try to make working conditions better for all of us.
GEO proposed that no graduate students should be forced to work on campus if they feel unsafe doing so and that this should be an individual choice. This would mean allowing for reappointments to remote work for any grad employee who requested it. The university negotiators insisted that UMass would only allow for accommodations in individual situations where specific, extenuating circumstances existed. This is not acceptable. Workers need autonomy and privacy in the decision to risk exposure to COVID-19.
Not only did management demonstrate initial resistance to our proposal for individual autonomy in terms of face-to-face on campus work, but their lead negotiator seemed to think that this was a way for our members to reject work and collect pay. Speaking plainly, the implication that graduate workers do not want to work at all is ludicrous, given that UMass Amherst depends heavily on a tremendous amount of free grad labor already in the form of research and service work. Overwork is a persistent issue for GEO members, and the contribution of our free labor during the best of times earns us the right to be recognized as the ambitious and committed research and teaching community members that we are. The campus-wide plan itself recognizes the need for individuals to behave cautiously, requiring everyone to sign the “UMass Agreement”, and we are simply proposing the option of being able to create even safer conditions for everyone.
Further, TAs and TOs are currently doing unpaid prep work for Fall courses, and GEO proposes our members should be paid for the work they are doing prior to and after the proposed end of the 2020 Fall semester, in order to prevent future workload grievances, and to prevent a break in pay over the winter.
UMass management seemed agreeable to the proposal that if the University requires the use of PPE that they should provide it without cost to graduate workers, although no guarantees were made at the bargaining table. Our members still have questions about what kinds of PPE will be required, and thus provided, as many other public-facing workers, such as grocery workers, have plexiglass dividers and other necessary protections that may not be possible to implement in a classroom or lab setting.
Management did not respond to any of our other proposals at the table. Although the Admin representatives seemed to dodge concerns about public health and worker safety, the GEO Bargaining Committee is working with the Health & Safety Committee and rank and file member volunteers to draft more proposals to protect our members. The proposals brought to the table on Friday were just the start of what GEO members will be fighting for during this round of impact bargaining. As always, active member participation is critical to success at the table.
If you have any ideas, questions, comments or would like to contribute as a volunteer member, please email GEO’s bargaining committee at bargainingcommittee@geouaw.org to get in touch.
New ICE Modifications to Temporary/COVID-related Online Education Adaptations for the Fall Semester
Many of us learned today that ICE has issued new regulations around the temporary exclusions around online education, triggered (out of necessity) by COVID and the transition to online instruction to minimize the virus’ spread. We are still reading through these revised regulations and their implications and are seeking legal advice on what this will mean for our members. UMass seems to fall within the third category of a University “adopting a hybrid model” of both in person and online education for the coming fall. As such, international grad students at UMass would, according to the linked page, be permitted to take more than one class online and remain in the country. However, there are a number of requirements that the University must be able to fulfill, and one of them is confirmation that each international student is not taking all their courses online in that semester. This presents an extremely problematic dilemma and would make the University complicit in going against its own proposal to hold almost all graduate level courses virtually. We hope to gain a better understanding of this soon and are devastated by the implications and possibilities it entails.
Words from our Grievance Coordinator:
Dear GEO members, My name is Anna and I am the new Grievance Coordinator for GEO. The Grievance Coordinator is the GEO officer who is responsible for providing you with help when our contract is violated.
One of my main objectives this year is to empower as many of our members as possible to be able to recognize breaches in our contract and confidently file grievances with Steward support and some support from GEO staff. This is because 1) I would like all of our members to be able to fight for their rights and recognize that the entire union is what gives us power in protecting our contract and 2) I would like the administration to see how powerful we are as rank and file members of an active and organized union.
As a result, I want to start a workshop series, which is going to offer all of us a space to learn about the contract and the grievance procedure. This will include reading through the actual contract as well as studying past grievances and workshopping together through potential grievance scenarios.
The workshop series will be open to all. Please email me at anna@geouaw.org if you are interested. I envision that we will meet every two weeks for an hour or an hour and a half. I will start a Google Doc and provide materials to look at before we meet. Stay tuned for more details!
Coming Up: Actions required!
Work to Rule Committee:
No meeting this week.
W2R committee welcomes our members to send in any questions or concerns you could think of to help them formulate a FAQ sheet. Please email worktorule@geouaw.org.
Health and Safety Committee:
Meeting for this week is scheduled on July 10, 2020 11:30 AM
Meeting ID: 874 1621 9019
Password: 508011
The GEO-ALANA and International Students Caucus will be electing two new co-chairs:
As we continue to struggle with precarity and an indifferent administration, it’s important that this work be continued and broadened. Many thanks to all the work put in by our community and the tremendous organizing work of our outgoing co-chairs Ragini Jha and Swati Birla. This year the caucus was revitalized and has been central in making the specific constraints of international and immigrant grad employees of color visible, especially aggravated by the COVID uncertainties and admin transitions. Please consider nominating yourself or someone you know for the co-chair positions.
To send your nominations email geo@umass.edu. We will hold the elections virtually the next week and transition after.
The GEO Political Action Committee – contact us if interested in coalition and political action work beyond the level of the University
The GEO bylaws describe certain “standing committees,” such as the Political Action Committee. This committee “shall be responsible for organizing GEO participation in local, state, national, and international concerns, as well as building coalitions with campus and local unions, student organizations, community organizations, and caucuses including but not limited to those in our union representing marginalized and oppressed groups. GEO resolves to actively support legislation which seeks to improve the higher education system, including the principle of educational access and promotes free collective bargaining. This committee shall recommend proposed actions or endorsements to the Assembly of Stewards. Political endorsements and expenditures shall require a two-thirds vote of approval by the Assembly of Stewards or the membership.”
As 2020 is the year of global uprisings for Black liberation in the U.S., as the pandemic presents unprecedented global and nationwide challenges, economic uncertainty, and as the U.S. presidential election creeps up on us, more than ever GEO needs this committee to help us grow and strengthen our coalitional organizing efforts and leverage our collective power and voices in political struggle at all levels.
FOLLOW US ON OUR NEW INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT @geo_uaw2322
In Solidarity,
Dora and Jyoti, GEO Co-Chairs
