{"id":27,"date":"2007-04-09T19:15:12","date_gmt":"2007-04-10T00:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/10\/bargaining-update-8-492007\/"},"modified":"2007-04-12T19:18:11","modified_gmt":"2007-04-13T00:18:11","slug":"bargaining-update-8-492007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/09\/bargaining-update-8-492007\/","title":{"rendered":"Bargaining Update #8  4\/9\/2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\"><strong>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&#8217; appointment policies.<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nThe 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.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<\/span>   <span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">On <strong>Article 3<\/strong> (dealing with the attachment of our dues forms with \tthe graduate employees contract forms) the objections was specifically \tabout what should happen in case this procedure was disputed and went \tto arbitration: the University&#8217;s team did not want the current \tprocedure to continue during the time that it would be under \tarbitration; we responded that it was only fair that an existing \tprocedure should continue until an arbitrator actually decided \totherwise, and that any change cannot be unilaterally imposed on us.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">On <strong>Article 4 <\/strong>(the University&#8217;s proposal cutting paid GEO staff \tpositions from four to two), the university still stuck to its position \twith no reason forthcoming.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\">On <strong>Article 23<\/strong> (appointment and reappointment), even after we \tcompromised on several key parts of our proposal, the administration \thas stubbornly refused to move from their position. We withdrew two of \tour original demands (that called for mandatory criteria for \tdepartments&#8217; hiring policies for graduate student employees and for a \tlisting of the relative weight given to these criteria in hiring \tdecisions), after the University complained that this infringed on the \trights of individual departments. However, even our final compromise \tproposal, which only asks for a simple written assessment of \tapplicants&#8217; qualifications for hiring\/rehiring in terms of the \tdepartment&#8217;s existing appointment\/reappointment policy, was not \tacceptable to the University. There was no reason given for the \tobjection, except an insistence that this was a &#8216;management right&#8217; and \tcannot be given up. In other words, not only is the university opposed \tto graduate student workers having <em>any<\/em> input into the policies that \tdetermine their hiring and rehiring, it does not want us to even <em>know<\/em> \twhy we were or were  not hired.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\"><br \/>\nFinally 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&#8217;s team objected to this proposal again with no substantial reason.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt\"><strong>The next bargaining session is scheduled for this Friday April 13 at 1.30 PM.<\/strong><br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nIf you would like to attend a session, please contact your department steward(s) or call the GEO office at 545-0705<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217; appointment policies. The session began on a positive note, with the University finally providing [&hellip;]<\/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-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bargaining-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","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=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}