{"id":53,"date":"2007-09-29T11:57:57","date_gmt":"2007-09-29T16:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/29\/bargaining-update-for-tuesday-sept-25\/"},"modified":"2007-09-29T12:01:17","modified_gmt":"2007-09-29T17:01:17","slug":"bargaining-update-for-tuesday-sept-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/29\/bargaining-update-for-tuesday-sept-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Bargaining Update for Tuesday, Sept. 25"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nTwo weeks ago, nearly 40 GEO members packed the bargaining room to directly confront the University with numerous questions concerning our demands, especially over affirmative action\/diversity funding, aka Memorandum of Understanding #6 (MOU6) in our contract.\u00c2\u00a0 The University bargaining team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chief negotiator, Susan Chinman, was unable to answer such questions, citing the absence of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153diversity expert\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Graduate Dean John Mullin.\u00c2\u00a0 On September 25th<\/sup>, again with a room packed full of GEO members clad in black for solidarity, the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdiversity expert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 was in attendance:<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s What They Claimed:<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

1) Dean Mullin was unabashed in claiming that from the GEO contract-mandated $800,000 earmarked for diversity funding, he had sole control over a roughly 100k \u00e2\u20ac\u0153flex-fund\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for diversity spending of his own choosing. In the course of discussion, GEO had to remind him that the money was not, in fact, his, but rather the state of Massachusetts.\u00c2\u00a0 Though Mullin claims that some of this money is allotted to diversity fellowships, the simple fact is that there is no way to verify this.\u00c2\u00a0 Nor is there a concrete policy in place that would direct Mullin in how to spend this money, nor adequate reporting on how it actually was spent.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the precise definition of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcunaccountability,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and this very lack of transparency is the exact reason why our contract must<\/em> include language stipulating both the ways in which Diversity money is spent and a public report detailing who receives fellowships.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

2) Equally unfounded was the claim that current diversity initiatives have been successful.\u00c2\u00a0 Mullin referred specifically to NEAGEP (Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education and Professorate), a federally program that matches diversity funding to the natural sciences.\u00c2\u00a0 This program has consistently been touted as the University\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsuccess story,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 claiming substantial increases in the admittance and retention of students from underrepresented populations.\u00c2\u00a0 But this supposed success is based solely on the amount of money given to this program.\u00c2\u00a0 In actuality, the increase in representation of students from \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcminority\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and underrepresented backgrounds has been negligible, and the diversity that the University claims simply is not there.\u00c2\u00a0 UMass cannot simply pump money into a broken system:\u00c2\u00a0 what is needed is dramatic and rigorous structural change that gets diversity fellowships to the people who need them.\u00c2\u00a0 Only by changing the way <\/em>in which affirmative action happens on this campus can UMass expect to become accessible to people of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and class status, regardless of citizenship.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite these glaring inadequacies, the University refuses to make any movement on this issue, and Mullin has flatly refused to give up his personal control of the process. At the close of the session the University rejected our 3 year contract proposal (see the geo website at www.geouaw.org<\/a> for our proposal), not only saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to improving transparent and accountable diversity funding, but also rejecting improved funding for childcare, the reduction and eventual phase out of the graduate service fees, and fair wage increases. In their three-year proposal they offered 2.5% in the first year and 2% in each additional year. In addition their \u00e2\u20ac\u0153offer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d again included removing the caps on co-payments.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

GEO members have been making powerful statements at the bargaining sessions–the presence of large numbers of members displays a membership that not only is determined to get a fair contract — but knows that direct and participatory action is the only way to get it.\u00c2\u00a0 We now need the membership to continue driving this contract campaign by organizing and participating in upcoming actions that will put more pressure on the University.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago, nearly 40 GEO members packed the bargaining room to directly confront the University with numerous questions concerning our demands, especially over affirmative action\/diversity funding, aka Memorandum of Understanding #6 (MOU6) in our contract.\u00c2\u00a0 The University bargaining team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chief negotiator, Susan Chinman, was unable to answer such questions, citing the absence of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153diversity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","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=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geouaw.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}