GEO and University administration returned to the table for 5 bargaining sessions (4/17, 4/20, 4/21, 4/22, and 4/24) as we approached the end of the semester and a possible strike.
After an extremely lackluster session on April 17th where the university gave us a beautiful “admin gets everything they want and graduate workers get even less than they already had,” we’ve seen much more progress this week with our strike looming. On Monday we were able to settle seven issues: Management Right, Training, Evaluation, Union Rights, Expenses, Dues Deduction, and Health and Safety. We were able to win a more explicit process for requesting a new evaluator or appealing your evaluation, and protecting the union’s presence at orientation while allaying administration’s fears that they would be held responsible for what our presenters may say.
We now have six issues remaining, and these six are the most essential issues for graduate workers: international worker and AI protections (Non-discrimination and Anti-Harassment, Employee Rights), job security protections (Hours of Work, Appointment Terms), our wages, and CampusCare.
The remaining sessions were spent passing those articles back and forth with minor changes and stepdowns. A notable stepdown was reducing our ask from $55,000 for 12 months to $38,000 for 9 months, as we had heard many concerns that our proposed number was too high. They responded to this by holding at their offer of a measly 2% raise. They also hold steady in an increase in the cost of CampusCare, despite our stepping down on our demand for a private option and an announcement this week of a significant increase in co-pays on the program.
Of note was their rejection of our attempt to empower individual departments, programs, or colleges to be able to provide additional benefits not explicitly outlined in the contract, such as covering of additional fees, a tech stipend, or a move-in bonus. We had heard concerns about this, especially from the College of Medicine, and they explicitly said they intend to standardize benefits across the bargaining unit and implied this was due to RAs joining the union.