On May 18^th over 80 GEO members showed up to support GEO’s bargaining team in our 13th bargaining session with the University. A wide variety of departments were represented at this session, from Electrical and Computer Engineering to History; from Sociology to Computer Science; from Plant & Soil Sciences to Education to Spanish & Portuguese.

While the University appears to be taking baby steps toward responding to the increasing pressure being applied by graduate student employees and their supporters who are frustrated with 5 months of unproductive bargaining, we’re not there yet…Our bargaining team let the administration know that a contract we can support has to include improvements in all of the areas outlined below. What happens next depends on you and on the participation of all GEO members in our campaign for a contract that takes us forward instead of backwards.

At the session, the University formally made its first comprehensive economic proposal and these are the highlights:

Fees:

The University continues to refuse to negotiate over rolling back any portion of the mandatory fees we pay as student employees, despite the fact that these fees have increased 126% since 2001 and will rise again in Fall 07. The University President, Jack Wilson, argues that the University’s fee increases are fair, given that they aren’t greater that the percentage of inflation—however, when compensation fails to increase at the same rate or better than rising fees, we’re left with less in our pockets no matter what. UMass graduate employees are ranked last among their peers when you look at stipends after deducting mandatory fees—let’s demand that we begin moving up those ranks!

Diversity Funding:

The University refuses to negotiate over this issue. Our current contract allocates $800,000 each year to support a diverse graduate student body—however, in recent years, GEO has discovered that the University has used this money for purposes other than it was intended. For example, the University used the bulk of this money to match a grant to promote diversity only in natural sciences, engineering, and math—this is great, except for the fact that at the same time they stopped funding diversity in the humanities and social sciences. The University is vehemently opposed to our proposal that shares this money across campus disciplines; requires more transparent reporting about and oversight over the use of this money; and defines the group the money is intended to serve. GEO’s proposed definition is the exact definition used in their own grant mentioned above—but still, the University refuses to agree to it.

Childcare:

The University refuses to agree to provide more money for childcare vouchers (only 23% of the current need is being met with their current levels of funding); refuses to agree to make changes to the current childcare center so that children are not learning in moldy basement classrooms or perhaps worse, modular buildings that were meant to be temporary whose life expectancy is expiring; and refuses to agree to a committee to do long-term planning about how to build a new facility to address long waiting lists for care.

Health Insurance:

The University continues to propose abolishing the limits in our current contract on how much you can be required to pay in co-payments. We continue to reject this proposal on the grounds that it means having no insurance at all, if you define insurance as paying a fixed amount now, to insure that you’ll be covered for a variable amount of care that may be required in your future. Under the University’s proposal, you could be asked to pay $200 for each prescription you fill because there would be no limit on your co-payment responsibility.

This University is, however, willing to make a modest increase to our health and welfare fund of $1 per week per full time employee.

Wages:

The University proposal is for a one-year contract, with wage increases of 2.5% for everyone, and an additional pool (created by multiplying 1% by the total graduate employee payroll) used to raise the lowest campus minimums. These increases may not sound so bad, but without a corresponding fee reduction, our modest raises are quickly eaten up by fees. In Fall 07, 11% of the average grad employee’s raise under this proposal would be used to pay the scheduled 3.4% fee increase. Further, a one-year contract is onerous and leaves our members with less long-term economic security—why would we agree to take less security for the same level of wage increases we typically get with a three year agreement—if the University wants a short-term commitment it will come at a price! Meet more of our needs as workers and we’ll consider it…

In addition, the University has made a regressive proposal in this area—at first they indicated to us that their raise proposal would start this summer, but now they’re saying that raises wouldn’t become effective until September 2, or even later if our members haven’t voted to endorse a contract deal by this date. Also, the University is saying that those employees who leave the university between the effective date of the raises and the date the state legislature actually appropriates money for the raises will no longer be eligible for the raise they earned. The legislature takes a notoriously long time to appropriate money for our raises—sometimes years—so this proposal is engineered to strip wages increases from at least 1/3 of our members.

Other items:

The University continues to insist on cutting half of the time off for union business allotted in our current contract. We’ve had this time off allocation for many years and it is what allows four grad employees each year to work in the union office, helping graduate employees with grievances, contract negotiations, and countless day to day advocacy tasks.

The University has proposed to give us a “special needs” pool of
money, and when we calculated its amount according to their proposal,
it was negative — yes, negative — $47,000. When we asked them about
this, they said they had no idea how much the pool was supposed to
have in it and had no idea what it could be used for. We’re not about
to write them a check for $47,000 to meet whatever “special needs”
they think they have.

Comments Off on Bargaining Update from May 18 2007: What’s At Stake