Coalition of Graduate Employees

On March 3rd, CGE met with the OSU administration for the last of three bargaining sessions for winter term. (Due to finals and schedules changes, we’ll not meet again until spring term.)

The administration gave us their final initial proposal, on fees. Essentially, it will do nothing next year, but in the 2011-2012 year, the administration is offering to roll the Technology ($105) and Registration ($11) fees into tuition along with all departmental fees. This proposal is positive; however, their overall fees proposals, when paired together, are regressive for everyone but engineers, since they earlier proposed also rescinding the $300 per-term fee differential. Specifically, under the administration’s combined fee proposals, grad employees in Engineering would see a net gain of about $240 per term (before tax), while everyone else would see a net loss of about $190 per term.

Fortunately, the administration appears to have no intention of cutting the funding behind the $300/person per-term, and seems rather to wish simply to allocate it in a different form than the fee differential. In the coming weeks, our goal will thus be to work with the administration’s team to determine a way to reallocate these funds in a way that overcomes the regressiveness of their proposals on fees. In other words, we want to come out of these negotiations with an agreement that benefits all grad employees at the cost of none.

This work cannot be CGE’s alone though, and we let the administration know that we expect them to come to the next meeting with a comprehensive economic proposal that indicates areas where they might be willing to make economic changes that benefit all grad employees in the end.

A second item on the agenda for this meeting was for CGE to respond to the administration’s proposal on Article 8 – Union Rights. Essentially, they originally proposed that a) OSU would stop deducting dues for Associate Members; b) CGE should change the language on our membership card authorizing dues deductions (though they would refuse to clearly tell us how); and c) members would have to re-sign union membership cards every time they leave and re-enter the bargaining unit.

On (a), we pointed out that we consider Associate Members union members and not just donors. They had apparently never considered that possibility. We also pointed out that as we understand ORS 292.055, state employees can authorize a deduction to a union regardless of bargaining unit status. They promised to take a look at the information we provided them and get back to us. On (b), we’re still waiting for them to actually clarify what’s wrong with the current language, and on (c), we suggested that if the underlying problem is the complexity of deducting so many different dues amounts from people – which is what they told us was the problem they are trying to solve with their proposals – we could just move everyone into the BU and that would really simplify everything. They weren’t too enthusiastic about that suggestion, but it does solve the problem they told us they have more effectively than their proposal.

The final significant thing to note about this bargaining session was that, unlike the previous session, the administration’s team was far more polite and respectful. This may be attributable to the large contingent of grad employees who showed up to observe the entire meeting, despite several lengthy caucuses. Regardless of the reason for the administration’s friendly behavior, our team certainly appreciates it and hopes they continue to behave that way for the duration of bargaining.

We’ll have another session early in spring term. When we schedule it, we’ll let you know when and where it will be.

*The title of the post refers to this, in case you were wondering.

The CGE bargaining team met with the university’s bargaining team on Tuesday, February 23, at 3 PM in the Memorial Union Council Room. On the agenda: the presentation of all of CGE’s initial proposals and the presentation of some initial proposals from OSU. What follows is a short summary of the main things we took away from the session, and below the fold, a more in-depth recap, including all of the proposals both sides made.

1. OSU didn’t talk much about the contributions of graduate employees or the role graduate employees will play in making OSU a Top-10 land grant school. CGE talked a lot about those things.
2. OSU did, however, talk about how much graduate employees cost. They proposed to lower that cost by cutting the differential from $300/term to ZERO. However, we think they will be proposing to roll some fees into tuition on the 3rd, so we’re waiting to see what the net effect is before we counter propose.
3. Some members of the OSU team also were skeptical that the CGE bargaining team knew what graduate employee life is like. As the union’s bargaining team is almost exclusively graduate employees, this was surprising. It could also be a potential roadblock going forward.

Overall, the CGE team was surprised at the harsh tone taken by the university’s team. The union’s team had told the university from the beginning that we wanted bargaining to be more collaborative and less acrimonious, but so far that’s been a one-way street. The team was also disappointed OSU didn’t acknowledge either the contribution of graduate employees to OSU or the fact that the union’s bargaining team has firsthand experiences with the issues we brought to the table.

The next bargaining session is Wednesday, March 3rd, at 2 PM in Westminster House (directions here). We’ll hear OSU’s final fees proposal, which is on the topic of departmental fees. Having lots of observers in the room last time made a big difference in the level of civility coming from OSU’s team, so we hope you can spare an hour or two in the afternoon to support the bargaining team and support ending fees.

(More below the fold.)

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There’s change underfoot at OSU.

No, literally.  Along with wrappers, empty bottles, and a bunch of other garbage.  You might have noticed the buildings of the OSU campus becoming dirtier and dirtier lately.  That’s because, about a week before Christmas, the company that OSU contracts with for custodial service laid off about 1/3 of their workforce.

Why did they do that?  Because OSU cut the amount of money going to the company, GCA Services Group, by about 1/3, or $400,000.

Here’s how it went down:  Around December 18^th, the entire custodial staff – 94 people – were called to an all-staff meeting at 6 AM, right at shift change.  It was announced that new runs (a run is the regular route for custodial staff) were being created.  Based on seniority, custodial staff picked new runs.  When they hit 61, the projector went off and employees were told that anyone who had not received a new route was now laid off.

One week before Christmas.  One week.

Services Employees International Union Local 083, or SEIU, is the union that represents the custodial workers.  They have released a petition for faculty, staff and students at OSU to sign that requests that OSU President Ray and Provost Randhawa restore the $400,000 to the GCA contract.

CGE is urging our members, and all graduate employees, to sign the petition (you can contact your CGE Rep about this as well).  There is a certain minimum level of service that must be maintained if OSU is going to function (to say nothing of the level necessary to actually attract people or the level necessary to prevent flu or other outbreaks), and right now, the services being offered are far below that level.

Online petition here.

Fact sheet about this issue here.

Corvallis Gazette-Times story on this here.

CGE and OSU have scheduled three bargaining sessions for the remainder of this term:

• 2-5 PM, Friday, February 12th, 2010, in Westminster House
• 3-5 PM, Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010, in MU Council Room
• 2-4 PM, Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010, in Westminster House

Westminster House is the building that houses the CGE office.  Directions can be found here.

All graduate employees are encouraged to observe bargaining sessions.  More information is forthcoming, but as of right now, the first session is the one you’re going to want to be at.

As many of you are aware, we’re going to be renegotiating part of our  contract with the university later this academic year. In preparation for bargaining, the grad employees who have volunteered to do the work of negotiating have prepared a survey for you, the membership, to get a sense of what’s important to you in regards to your employment. The bargaining team will use the survey results to help prepare their proposals. Please click the link and take a few minutes to complete the survey:

https://www.survs.com/survey/ZA3P2RONV3

If you have any questions or comments, there is space on the survey, or you can contact us here. Enjoy!