A lot has happened over the weekend and yesterday! With two emails, (Friday afternoon, Sunday morning), the Campus COVID-19 Risk Level has raised from “Elevated” to “High” Risk. First, we want to condemn the administration for NOT taking the unions’ suggestion seriously in the first place. The rise of covid cases was totally foreseeable when the administration decided to invite 5800 students back on campus. We want to reiterate our stance as a union: With a global pandemic going on, no safety measure is safe enough: testing does not stop the spread of the virus, social distancing does and keeping unnecessary people off campus does! The unilateral decision made by the university is putting everyone in great danger and has created unnecessary stress for the workers of the university. The university has managed to make it look like the covid positivity rate has gone down but actually testing has gone down just as cases are spiking! [Source] Feb 5: 4236 tests, 70 positive → Feb 7: only 56 tests, 9 positive.
Discussion of this and MORE at Membership Meeting THIS FRIDAY!
Time: February 12, 2021 (Friday) from 4-6
Zoom Link: Meeting Registration – Zoom
We are having our first membership meeting of the semester this Friday! There are MANY items on the agenda that we need to talk about including the coming up election and forming of the elections committee, impact on F2F graduate employees, approval of funding requests and a solidarity statement to protesters at Boğaziçi University.
Please make sure you save the time and come join us this Friday at 4. If there are any other items you would like to put on the agenda, please reach out to us at geo and we will try our best to accommodate it.
Given the economic hardship a lot of us are experiencing right now due to Covid, we decided to set up raffles for each of our membership meetings this semester (Credit to our Grievance Coordinator, Anna for the idea). At the end of the membership meeting, we will draw three names out of the participating members. The winners will get a $100 Stop and Shop gift card. We look forward to seeing all of you this Friday!
Residential life Employees Facing Eviction
Due to the ongoing needs of quarantine space on campus, the administration gave out a short eviction notice to some of the On-Campus ResEd employees. Employees were asked to pack and leave their apartments over the weekend so the building they were in can be made into a quarantine site. Notably, some live in Residential halls with their family members, and our members who are in these positions are overwhelmingly people of color. The sudden change during the semester is causing a toll on our members themselves and their families. While the feeling of instability and the distress is uncompensatable, the families being impacted have some financial needs too. With the assistance of Local 2322 rep Anna Claire, we started a GoFundMe campaign to make sure the families get the stuff they need in this hard time. Please visit here and share this widely. UAW rules do not permit us to use dues dollars for personal needs of members so we hope to raise funds from the community this way but want to stress that UMass should be paying for this and STOP collecting RENT from workers while evicting them! https://www.gofundme.com/f/UMass-Grad-Workers-Families-Suddenly-Evicted
To make the connection between the eviction and bargaining, let us be clear: Admin asked us to drop the reslife related proposals for Impact bargaining several times. Because they do not think reslife employees will be impacted. Obviously, this is a wrong assertion. Residential employees are, in fact, the frontline workers that are dealing with all the hustle along with all the F2F instructors. Please reach out to us if you have any related concerns or questions; we are also getting press inquiries and can talk to you about that if you have personal experience and would like to be put in touch with the press. Contact us geo
Calling members to Organizing Committee!
Come to GEO’s Organizing Committee meeting this Wednesday at 3:30 pm! (david). SEE YOU THERE!
Petition: UMass Amherst should disband Theta Chi
This petition is brought to our attention by one of our members. On February 6, Daily Collegian published an article about Theta Chi, a greek association, hosting two crowded gatherings weekend after students return to campus, leading to a sudden surge in COVID-19 cases in Amherst. The university has not made any public condemnation of those who did not follow Covid-19 related Policy or took any further disciplinary steps toward those students. The lack of action is concerning. This petition is to ask the administration to disband Theta Chi to set an example to prevent further incidents happening.
Dora & Jyoti, GEO co-chairs
