Fellow workers,
It has been wonderful to meet so many of you in orientations these past few weeks. We’re excited by your excitement and enthusiasm about getting involved in your union! This email has two important pieces of information: a reminder about your first paycheck of the semester, and information about GEO’s first general membership meeting of the semester.
FIRST PAYCHECK OF THE SEMESTER
If you have a contract that began at the start of the fall semester, you should receive your first paycheck today. If you do not see a deposit in your account or the amount looks wrong, you can check your paystubs via HRDirect. The UMass HR website has a guide to accessing pay advice here. If you have not been paid and you should have gotten paid, please reach out to GEO immediately! We can pass your information along to the university and ensure you receive an emergency salary payment ASAP.
FIRST GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING OF THE SEMESTER
GEO’s first general membership meeting of the semester will take place on Tuesday, September 17 from 5-7pm in Campus Center room 163 (in the basement). A draft agenda is attached to this email. This will be a hybrid meeting with a zoom link to be shared closer to the time of the meeting. Please reach out to the GEO co-chairs, Madison Albano (malbano) and Terrell James (tjames) if you have questions or would like to suggest agenda items. For new members, we will give members an overview of GEO, what we do, and how we work, and give folks a sense of ways to get plugged in and involved. This will also be a very important meeting regarding our ongoing contract negotiations. GEO has been bargaining since August of 2023, and we have been in mediation since the previous May. We are currently very close to fact-finding, which would mean that negotiations continue for several more months and move us closer to letting management impose a contract on GEO without allowing them the right to vote on whether or not to accept a tentative agreement.
In the time GEO has been bargaining, we have reached several major tentative agreements with the university, such as a full waiver of 100% the graduate service fee in 2024 and a waiver of 100% of the engineering fee over the life of the contract, streamlined information provision to the union, improved language around discrimination and harassment, and an expanded ability to file formal grievances about articles that were previously not grievable. We have also been working to include provisions addressing housing in the contract–a major development and step forward to address the housing crisis in the Pioneer Valley. Most of what remains to be discussed are economic issues pertaining to wages, and the bargaining committee needs YOUR input about how to proceed and what GEO members need and want.
More detailed information about all of the above including a summary of tentative agreements and an FAQ about fact-finding will be provided at the membership meeting and sent out to members. Members who would like more detailed information about the proposals on the table or who would like to provide input on the process should email the bargaining committee directly at bargaining. If you are not able to attend this meeting, PLEASE reach out to the committee!
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In solidarity, GEO Leadership
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