The eighth bargaining session between your union and UMass still did not see any word on when we will be offered a financial package. Most of the session was therefore taken up with other issues, especially a drawn-out discussion on departments’ appointment policies.

The session began on a positive note, with the University finally providing us with information we had requested about how many members go above their health-insurance co-pay limits. This will help us to formulate a comprehensive proposal on health insurance soon.

Since there was still nothing forthcoming on the crucial issues of our raises and fees, we presented a proposal for a new article on immigration issues. The proposal seeks an assurance from the university that it would not overstep its legally mandated responsibility in cases of investigations of our members by Federal agencies or in cases of no-match letters sent by the Social Security Administration.

After a brief caucus, the University rejected the package of proposals we presented in the last session on March 30. Their objections were as follows:

• On Article 3 (dealing with the attachment of our dues forms with the graduate employees contract forms) the objections was specifically about what should happen in case this procedure was disputed and went to arbitration: the University’s team did not want the current procedure to continue during the time that it would be under arbitration; we responded that it was only fair that an existing procedure should continue until an arbitrator actually decided otherwise, and that any change cannot be unilaterally imposed on us.

• On Article 4 (the University’s proposal cutting paid GEO staff positions from four to two), the university still stuck to its position with no reason forthcoming.

• On Article 23 (appointment and reappointment), even after we compromised on several key parts of our proposal, the administration has stubbornly refused to move from their position. We withdrew two of our original demands (that called for mandatory criteria for departments’ hiring policies for graduate student employees and for a listing of the relative weight given to these criteria in hiring decisions), after the University complained that this infringed on the rights of individual departments. However, even our final compromise proposal, which only asks for a simple written assessment of applicants’ qualifications for hiring/rehiring in terms of the department’s existing appointment/reappointment policy, was not acceptable to the University. There was no reason given for the objection, except an insistence that this was a ‘management right’ and cannot be given up. In other words, not only is the university opposed to graduate student workers having any input into the policies that determine their hiring and rehiring, it does not want us to even know why we were or were not hired.

Finally on another part of the same article, our proposal called for an increase in the course cancellation fee paid to grad students teaching Continuing Education courses from the current $500 to $750. We saw this a natural and logical increase, since all Con -Ed course fees have also increased. The university’s team objected to this proposal again with no substantial reason.

The next bargaining session is scheduled for this Friday April 13 at 1.30 PM.

If you would like to attend a session, please contact your department steward(s) or call the GEO office at 545-0705

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