GEO has been at the bargaining table twice since we started impact bargaining over the Chancellor’s fall reopening plan and the announcement of the revised academic calendar.
At our first session on July 2, 2020, we passed the following proposals:
COVID-19 face-to-face work: No graduate employee will be required to perform face-to-face work until such time as the serious and widely documented risks of doing so are shown to have diminished entirely or dramatically enough that PPE and special precautions are no longer necessary. All graduate employees reserve the right to refuse to work in a face-to-face capacity. No graduate employee will be required to (a) provide medical or other justification for such a refusal, or (b) waive their right to privacy in this decision. No graduate employee shall be required to disclose confidential health information as a condition of employment. Further, no graduate employee shall be denied an appointment on the basis of their refusal to perform face-to-face work.
COVID-19 Personal Protective Equipment: All graduate employees whose work takes place on campus will be provided sufficient personal protective equipment, at no cost to the employee, on a continuous basis by the University.
COVID-19 Duration of employment contracts: Graduate Fellowship and Assistantship Forms (GFAFs) for the Fall 2020 semester that were going to be or usually are a standard nineteen (19) weeks shall be twenty-two (22) weeks in length. The contract start date shall be adjusted to August 17th to allow for preparation for remote instruction. The end date of the contract shall remain January 16, 2021, to prevent undue hardship to graduate students in the form of a gap in pay. This is the same end date as the original GFAFs issued for Fall 2020. There shall be no post-hoc reduction of employed weeks on already-approved GFAFs. Additionally, GFAFs which have not yet been issued or approved for the Fall of 2020 and are for positions which are usually a standard nineteen (19) weeks shall also be issued for twenty-two (22) weeks. This article shall not apply to graduate appointments in the department of Residential Life.
COVID-19 Teaching Assistant instruction sections: The number of discussion sections typically associated with a course shall not be increased without an increase in contracted hours of employment, whether through more assistantships to cover these sections or assistantships with more hours per week proportional to the increased number of sections.
Fall 2020 holidays: All graduate employees who work on Indigenous People’s Day, Labor Day, and/or Veteran’s Day will be entitled to a holiday payout for each holiday worked. Further, employees who elect to take any of these holidays off will not be penalized.
COVID hazard pay: All on-campus GEO positions shall be paid 1.5x the full-time equivalent hourly rate.
COVID temporary expansion of eligibility for Article 45: Family and Medical Leave: In recognition of the unknown scope of spread of COVID-19 and that the inhibition of its transmission depends heavily on social agreements, and in recognition that bargaining unit members can not enforce safety measures beyond their own person, there shall be a temporary suspension of Section I (B) of Article 45 (Family and Medical Leave), to expand access to the benefit for all graduate employees for any of the following reasons: employees who test positive for COVID or exhibit COVID-like symptoms; employees who provide care for or reside with someone who has tested positive for COVID or who exhibits COVID-like symptoms; employees who are instructed to quarantine by a health professional or official. This temporary expansion of eligibility shall remain in effect until the end of the 2020-2021 academic year, with the possibility of extension/renewal.
Emergency technology & childcare fund: The university shall establish a one-time emergency technology and accommodation fund for the 2020-2021 academic year of $60,000 to provide financial assistance to bargaining unit members who have incurred technology or unexpected childcare costs (not otherwise reimbursable by the HWT Childcare Reimbursement Fund) associated with transition of most UMass instruction to remote course delivery and other remote work during the 2020-2021 academic year. There shall be an application period at both the beginning and end of the fall and spring semesters. “Technology” shall herein refer to: relevant software not free through OIT, hardware, home office items such as ergonomic chairs and other ergonomic improvements, blue light filters, microphones and other audio visual accessories, home office aids related to a disability and otherwise not made available/accessible through Disability Services, children’s learning aids/programs, items/materials to help occupy children at home while bargaining unit members are working, emergency non-licensed childcare reimbursement to accommodate short-notice work/duties.
At our second session on July 16th, 2020, we passed the following set of proposals:
Expansion of FMLA-Qualifying Events to include paid sick leave and expanded family and medical leave for specific reasons related to COVID-19:
● Two weeks (up to 80 hours) of paid sick leave at the employee’s regular rate of pay where the employee is unable to work because the employee is quarantined (pursuant to Federal, State, or local government order or advice of a health care provider), and/or experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and seeking a medical diagnosis; or
● Two weeks (up to 80 hours) of paid sick leave at the employee’s regular rate of pay because the employee is unable to work because of a bona fide need to care for an individual subject to quarantine (pursuant to Federal, State, or local government order or advice of a health care provider), or to care for a child (under 18 years of age) whose school or child care provider is closed or unavailable for reasons related to COVID-19, and/or the employee is experiencing a substantially similar condition as specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Secretaries of the Treasury and Labor; and
● Up to an additional 10 weeks of paid expanded family and medical leave at the employee’s regular rate of pay where an employee, who has been employed for at least 30 calendar days, is unable to work due to a bona fide need for leave to care for a child whose school or child care provider is closed or unavailable for reasons related to COVID-19.
COVID-19 Suspension of wage reduction for housing costs for live-in GEO members: For all bargaining unit members who live on campus as required by their appointment (e.g. ARDs/LCGs), the University shall not garnish wages for the cost of their live/work spaces in the residential halls for the duration of the Fall 2020 semester.
Release of UMass Community Agreement signing requirement for GEO members: On the basis that it shifts the liability for onsite workers away from the employer and onto the employee, no member of the bargaining unit shall be coerced, as a condition of employment, to sign the UMass Community Agreement.
COVID-19 Additional PPE for Reslife employees: All ResLife graduate employees will have ongoing access to sufficient PPE, supplied by the University, for all facets of their jobs. This means PPE that is appropriate for both home and office type spaces / duties. Further, the University shall provide spare masks for ResLife employees to give to residents who lose or forget their masks. This shall continue until the University deems PPE unnecessary for the general campus population.
COVID-19 ResLife Employee Door Access: In order to minimize exposure upon entry and exit, all ResLife graduate employees, not just ARDs, will have unrestricted access to emergency doors in the building(s) in which they work for the Fall 2020 semester.
COVID-19 ResLife Lounge Space Closure: All residential lounge spaces will be closed off to student access, without exception, for the duration of the Fall 2020 semester.
COVID-19 Testing for Graduate Employees: Due to the pandemic, the University has mandated that all who return to campus must be tested for COVID. Thus, the University shall arrange and cover the cost of COVID-19 testing for all graduate employees who return to campus to complete on-site work. Furthermore, graduate employees shall not be required to interact with any individual until it has been confirmed that they have tested negative for COVID-19.
Visa-related International Summer Pay adjustments: Given the adjusted early start date of the Fall 2020 semester and loss of income: any international graduate student worker who has both summer and fall employment on campus and who faces a reduction in the number of hours worked as a result of visa restrictions that differ between the summer and fall semesters will be compensated, via adjusted hourly wages, to make up the lost wages, over the winter session.
ResLife Office Space: In order to uphold the possibility of social distancing in the performance of bargaining unit members’ job duties, the University shall ensure all bargaining unit members in ResLife are given discrete/detached/individual offices. Further, to minimize the spread of COVID across Residential buildings, the University shall ensure that assignments are such that bargaining unit members are able to live and work in the same building.
Campus Safety from Police & ICE: To ensure the health and safety of the campus community, UMPD shall not be involved in any COVID-19/social distancing response protocol. Policing is inherently violent, anti-Black, and provides a pathway for ICE to access the campus community, so UMass Amherst shall begin to cut ties with UMPD while finding alternatives to using police to enforce the UMass Community Agreement, Residential Community Guidelines, and prevent the policing of students and workers on campus altogether. UMass Amherst shall also advocate for the defunding and eventual abolition of UMPD and adhere to the following timeline for UMPD’s defunding:
– FY 22 – Reduce FY20 UMPD budget by 50% (3.2M),
– FY 24 – Reduce FY20 UMPD budget by 75% (1.6M),
– FY 25 – Reduce FY20 UMPD budget by 90% (640k)
Financial Stability Proposal: Ensuring the University has the funds to properly provide for the health, safety, and dignity of its workers during this time is paramount. To provide financial stability for itself and its workers, and to fully fund all necessary expenses related to the compensation and safety of its workers, the University of Massachusetts system shall pursue the following:
– The UMass system can self-finance its activities by issuing credits called “Unis.” The term “Unis” is derived from the more widely known municipal debts called “Munis.” Unis will be issued as University Payment Anticipation Notes and have value as circulating money by virtue of the university’s willingness to accept them in later payments. To fully establish the Uni’s liquidity will require UMass to petition the Federal Reserve to accommodate and monetize Uni credits just as they do banknotes in the financial sector.
– Unis are based off of the Munis issued by the Fed’s new Municipal Liquidity Facility–essentially, this allows for the Fed to back the establishment of municipal lines of credit. Likewise, the University of Massachusetts system shall propose that the Fed back a University line of credit–the Uni. – UMass system leadership will complete the Fed’s Municipal Liquidity Facility Notice of Interest to formalize their own direct purchasing relationship with the Fed. This relationship with the Fed will allow for critical investment in key University infrastructure including but not limited to the payment of all workers, covering the costs of COVID-19-related safety measures, and freezing if not reducing tuition and fees for students. – Once the Uni system has been approved and backed by the Fed, all distribution of Unis to cover necessary operating costs shall be done so democratically, with the UMass administration consulting all UMass Unions and appropriate student governance bodies to determine where funding might best be allocated.
The significance of Fed experimentation for universities like UMass will be determined largely by their ability to be as politically and rhetorically effective as banks, insurance companies, automakers, and the fossil fuel industry at adjusting the Fed’s terms and conditions to meet their own needs. At present, the Fed is framing its assistance as “loans,” meant to be paid back later at interest. Under this rubric, the Fed is now accommodating the State of Illinois, the Port Authorities of New York and New Jersey, and New York’s Municipal Transit Authority. As the economic crisis from Covid-19 deepens, however, these alleged “loans” are likely to become effective grants, as was the case with trillions in Quantitative Easing in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis.
What we are proposing is that UMass aggressively negotiate with the Fed such that Unis are not loans, but are instead the Federal Reserve’s support for UMass’ ability to issue credit. The Uni model will revolutionize the way Universities are funded. This model is not only a reaction to the current crisis, but also a bold way forward which will end the privately-funded model of higher education and usher in a new era of affordable, accessible, and dignified institutions of higher learning which are self-financed due to the Fed’s support. Just as the Federal Reserve gives banks the authority to issue credit, it is time the UMass system pressures the Federal Reserve to give public institutions the same liquidity authority.
