April 23, 2020
To: Administration’s Bargaining Team
CC: GEO Membership
In our last meeting we discussed four proposals to address the impact of unilateral changes to working conditions of GEO members. To these, the administration has chosen to respond with a proposed MOU to only one. We are hopeful that this represents a misunderstanding. GEO is eager to reach a settlement in Impact Bargaining and understands the need of both sides to come closer together. This communication is meant to clear up possible confusion and to suggest a path forward to resume productive bargaining on Friday, the 24th. For the three proposals where the Administration has offered a no response, we again request a response and hope that this helps us forward. For the proposal the administration did respond to on vacation pay out, we offer a counter proposal in the final paragraph.
Job security:
Our proposal is to maintain the amount of graduate appointments at their current level, not use distance learning as a factor in cuts, and to ensure that there are no unusual cuts to particular academic departments. The proposal does not affect the Administration’s ability to determine who gets appointments, to determine levels of funding for departments, and, should extreme circumstances necessitate it, the proposal doesn’t limit the ability of the administration to impose layoffs. The Administration’s team treated this proposal as a recurring demand of the Union not well timed to the current moment, that, should it be enacted, would create an unprecedented change in the contract. This is not the intent of this proposal.
GEO has never before asked the University to commit to a similar level of funding from one semester to the next. In a usual semester, such an ask would hardly be a concession for the administration! This proposal creates no new employment security protections for the individual worker, nor does it encroach on management rights on an ongoing basis as it only constitutes a one time commitment from the Administration. Frankly, we’re shocked at the level of pushback.
It is not unreasonable for us to ask the University to commit to maintaining a similar level of staffing for GEO members, even if that means targeting higher paid workers for cuts ahead of us. We urge the Administration to provide a more fulsome and specific response. How much is UMass expecting to lose in the next semester? Why are workers making twenty three thousand dollars a year being considered as the target of cuts over administrators making two hundred and thirty thousand? What about our proposal to avoid disproportionate impacts on some academic departments is objectionable? Does the administration’s bargaining team believe that online learning requires a lower educator to student ratio
Secure housing:
Our proposal is to avoid any non-essential demolition and ensure grad workers can stay in their homes at Lincoln and North Village. We further push the University to stop collecting rent on buildings it is planning to tear down anyways. The Administration’s response is that GEO shouldn’t bargain with our employer, UMass, over Lincoln and North Village closures. In the Administration’s view, they represent only the employing capacity of the university and that the residents of the affected apartments should interact with the University in its capacity as a landlord. As of the last day of bargaining, the plan was a move out day of June 1st with an understanding that the Administration will continually reassess and may push back the eviction date as it suits them. Away from the bargaining table and after our action at the Chancellor’s house, the administration seems to have backed off the worst of this. Now, North Village residents have been told that they won’t be forced out until 4 weeks after the end of the Governor’s shelter in place order ends, currently May 15th. Taking the decision out of the Admin’s hands and putting it on a more rational public health basis is a welcome change. However, residents are confused because, according to press accounts, the shelter in place advisory appears to end on May 4th. Lincoln residents, especially, are confused because they have not received any similar notification, but have received a survey asking them when they can move out.
We feel this confusion is yet one more reason housing needs to be on the table at impact bargaining. This isn’t a technical question of which office to go to; interacting with the University as tenants going before the landlord leaves them unprotected. It cuts them off from their fellow graduate student-workers and it enters an arena where the University has no legal obligation to bargain in good faith. However, in the context of contract bargaining, the university does have an obligation to bargain over changes in our working conditions. Because we are working from home, graduate student-workers’ living conditions are our working conditions. TA’s, RA’s, ARDs who are also Lincoln and North Village residents cannot teach or conduct research on campus and must do so within their apartments. It is, then, extremely relevant to impact bargaining that the University, wearing any hat, is threatening to evict them in June! Our members deserve a safe place to work, free of continual terror of pushed back deadlines to be evicted into a pandemic.
Again, we ask for a more fulsome response. Why send construction workers out to demolish homes that people are living in? How will you ensure that these evicted residents aren’t put at risk or putting other community members at risk? How will you ensure that construction workers are not put at risk? Will there be adequate PPE for them? How can you justify sending PPE to be used on a construction project now when hospitals need it? Please remember that no ground rules prohibit you from bringing in a guest. If no one on your team possesses the requisite “landlord” hat, if no one on the team has the authority to protect our fellow GEO members, please invite someone who does.
Summer funding
GEO proposed providing summer funding to all graduate students who had had funding sometime this year. International students face new visa issues. The lack of ubiquitous summer funding already left many graduate student workers in a precarious position in a “normal” summer. The additional barriers that result from COVID-19 will make their positions disastrous. Those who ordinarily rely on subletting their apartment in the summer may no longer have that as an option.This makes it an extremely opportune time to extend summer funding. This was referred to multiple times by the administration’s chief negotiator as a “basic income”, perhaps a revealing misunderstanding. To be paid for research is core to the research university. Whether funded by RA or TA, the research that graduate student-workers do is part of our work. UMass will be stronger as an institution, not weaker, when it pays graduate student-workers for the research that they do.
We recognize the need to move closer together on this and ask the university to lay out how many additional Research Assistantships it feels it can fund at this time. As communicated previously, we have no objection, in principle, to directing these with an eye towards financial need. However, GEO is extremely concerned about extending models of economic hardship relief funds where money is extended on an application basis. We object to any process where decision making is opaque. We feel that it’s already off to a bad start when no details about the size of the fund are made available and where it’s a shared fund for undergraduate and graduate students.
The path forward on this is simple. How much funding can the administration direct to summer Research Assistantships at this time? What does the administration feel are the most important considerations in determining who receives funding? GEO believes that the Union and the University can move quickly and together to create a fair, rational and transparent process for allocating sufficient funds for the research of graduate workers during the Summer. Does the administration’s bargaining team share this belief?
Vacation payout
GEO members are expected to take their vacation during the Fall and Spring breaks. When that’s not possible they may take them at a different time, with the approval of the GPD or supervisor; should no vacation happen, they receive a pay out for unused time. The effects of Covid-19 constitutes a unilateral change to working conditions, causing grad workers to work over their breaks. The sudden and crucial transition of UMass to remote learning fell on the backs of faculty and graduate students. If grad students had refused to work, and instead had taken their vacation at that point as planned, the transition likely would not have gone so smoothly. Instead of complaining, grad workers diligently worked to get their classes online. For researchers, last minute changes in lab work, fieldwork, hiring technicians, analyzing data from home, and meeting with lab groups from afar created a different set of challenges that needed to be dealt with immediately. Instead of splitting hairs about the number of hours each student worker worked during this collective effort, we believe the university should give vacation payouts for everyone.
With respect to the suggestion that Graduate workers take their vacations at another time later in the semester, we have no objections in principle, just observations about practicality. The administration’s chief negotiator’s suggestion, that it be taken in the week after grades are due but before the end of the appointment, (i.e. the last week of the appointment) is a non starter. It’s been the long standing position of the University that the protections in the contract against overwork are more than adequate because overwork in one week can be applied against another elsewhere and that the University generously extends the appointment through winter break for the Fall and an extra week in the Spring. The Union’s position is that this is inadequate. The last week is often used by TAs and, especially, TOs who need to accommodate late students or entertain protests about grades by students. For research assistants, the point is moot as research often runs through this week. GEO objects to double counting this week as both the loose compensation for overwork elsewhere and also the pay for the work that happens at the conclusion of the semester. We certainly cannot tolerate counting it a third time as compensation for losing Spring break. The ratio of instructional time to total paid time should not be changed unilaterally by administration.
Given that we think finding an alternate time to take a break is going to be difficult in many departments but perhaps not impossible, our counter-proposal is a simplified vacation request process. If a Graduate worker has worked spring break during Spring 2020 for COVID-19 related reasons or were required to work for COVID-19 related reasons during a previously scheduled week of paid time off, they can request an alternate week of vacation. To take the vacation, notwithstanding any provision of Article 38, they will need only prior written approval from their supervisor. Should that permission be denied for any reason, the University shall pay out the full week of vacation pay.
