The bargaining session with the university on March 12 2007 saw disagreement on the crucial issues of paid leave for graduate employees and on transparency in appointment\/reappointment policies in departments\u00e3\u20ac\u201a<\/p>\n
The session began with an agreement \u00ef\u00bc\u02c6in fact our first signed tentative agreement of this bargaining cycle\u00ef\u00bc\u2030on the inclusion of ethnicity as a criterion in the article on non-discrimination\u00e3\u20ac\u201a The university suggested using \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcethnic origin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 instead\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 and we agreed\u00e3\u20ac\u201a<\/p>\n
However, the university then rejected both our packaged proposals where we responded to the university\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcs attack on the union\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s staff position and also included several of our counter-proposals\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 including a proposal on paid bereavement and parental leave and on an arbitration procedure in case the university reneged on our current procedure of processing GEO dues forms.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After a caucus\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 the university\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcs team rejected our packages\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 but in a minor concession, they proposed to fund two GEO staff positions instead of their original proposal of cutting the union staff to one. On the issue of arbitration over the processing of GEO forms, the university proposed an expedited grievance procedure instead of an arbitration\u00e3\u20ac\u201a On the question of paid leave however\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 the university rejected our proposal outright without any response\u00e3\u20ac\u201a On being asked what it was about the proposal that was not acceptable to them\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 they said that it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u02dct the time-frame but the concept of paid leave itself: they did not think that graduate employees should have the right to seek paid leave.\\<\/p>\n
After a brief caucus\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 we presented our response to the issue of dues forms\u00ef\u00bc\u0161 we agreed to the university\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcs proposal on an expedited grievance procedure instead of arbitration provided that the university notified us of any change in procedure well in advance\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 and that they do not discontinue current procedure while the grievance process is taking place\u00e3\u20ac\u201a<\/p>\n
On the issue of paid leave\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 we tried to reason with the university that graduate employees\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 as workers\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 as equally entitled to paid parental and bereavement leave\u00e3\u20ac\u201a We offered to negotiate over the number of days that we were asking for\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 and indicated we were willing to accept a reduction\u00e3\u20ac\u201a However\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 the university\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcs team indicated that they were ideologically opposed to any kind of paid leave whatever\u00e3\u20ac\u201a When asked whether they did not believe that graduate students who would become parents while still working\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 or who unexpectedly lost a loved one were as entitled to take paid time off work to deal with these situations as any other university employee\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 the university\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcs response was telling\u00ef\u00bc\u0161 they argued that such issues are best resolved informally\u00ef\u00bc\u0152that we should depend on the benevolence and magnanimity of our professors and supervisors to allow us to take time off\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 but that they would not like it codified in a contract\u00e3\u20ac\u201a This type of response continued the university\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fondness for solutions involving individual generosity on the part of the administration towards graduate students\u00e3\u20ac\u201a We argued that only a commitment to codify these agreements in the contract will ensure that apply equally to all grad employees rather than haphazard instances of individual benevolence for a few favored employees\u00e3\u20ac\u201a The issue remained unresolved\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 with the university taking a ideological opposition to the concept and unwilling to offer any counter-proposal\u00e3\u20ac\u201a<\/p>\n
We then reminded the university\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcs team that we were still waiting for information on Article 17 \u00ef\u00bc\u02c6limits on health insurance co-payments\u00ef\u00bc\u2030and for a response on Article 23 \u00ef\u00bc\u02c6transparency in appointment and reappointment policies\u00ef\u00bc\u2030\u00e3\u20ac\u201a They did not have any information on the former\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 and rejected our proposal on the latter\u00e3\u20ac\u201a Their argument for rejecting it was that appointment and reappointment policies should be left to the individual department and should not be dictated by us\u00e3\u20ac\u201aWe pointed out that we were in no way asking to dictate policies\u00ef\u00bc\u0161 we were merely asking that each department clarify their policies and procedure – whatever they may be – according to certain definite criteria\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 so that potential employees would know what chance they had of an assistantship and it would be clear why an employee was or was not hired for a particular position\u00e3\u20ac\u201aThe university responded that the current procedure of publishing these policies on the provost\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s website was adequate\u00e3\u20ac\u201a We pointed out that these policies as they existing are vague to the point of being meaningless\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 and that the lack of any mandatory criteria meant that they had absolutely no real use to graduate students seeking assistantships\u00e3\u20ac\u201aOn this issue also\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 the university refused to offer any alternatives\u00ef\u00bc\u0152 and concluded that any further transparency would harmful to their constituents\u00e3\u20ac\u201a<\/p>\n
Our next session is currently for Friday March 23 2007 at 1\u00e3\u20ac\u201a30 PM\u00e3\u20ac\u201a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The bargaining session with the university on March 12 2007 saw disagreement on the crucial issues of paid leave for graduate employees and on transparency in appointment\/reappointment policies in departments\u00e3\u20ac\u201a The session began with an agreement \u00ef\u00bc\u02c6in fact our first signed tentative agreement of this bargaining cycle\u00ef\u00bc\u2030on the inclusion of ethnicity as a criterion in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bargaining-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}