GEO and the university returned to the table with FMCS Commissioner Rosa Tiscareno serving as mediator on Friday, April 3. This session was largely spent with the mediator discussing tactics to get many of the outstanding articled TA’d, so we may focus on our key demands. To facilitate this, the bargaining committee ranked our priorities for the remaining articles and presented this through email to the BU and to the mediator in session. We then began discussing how to package articles and which articles to package. While we did not pass any articles back, this session laid the groundwork for significantly narrowing the remaining articles in the next 2 weeks so we can focus on those issues most important to members.
The University did pass back some articles:
Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment, Training, Additional Employment, Expenses, and Discipline and Dismissal where they simply rejected all proposed changes. Fortunately, we have also reached a TA on No Strike/No Lockout and Entire Agreement
We are at the point where compromises must be made to make progress on the remaining articles. The university has shown little willingness to compromise or even make counter proposals, showing they are not taking us seriously. Even the “little issues” are important to us, but splitting our focus is limiting the progress we are able to make.
Come to our CBA Committee meetings Thursdays 4-5:30 pm and Bargaining sessions on Fridays April 10 and 17 11am-3pm to see what packages we present to the university and show the university that people care about these issues.