Coalition of Graduate Employees

Results are in for the 2009-2010 officer elections conducted at tonight’s general membership meeting. Next year’s officers are:

President: Rob Hess
Secretary-Treasurer: Mindy Crandall
Vice President for Collective Bargaining and Grievances: Matt Loewen
Vice President for Communications: Miriah Russo
Vice President for Organizing: Michelle Zellers

Congratulations to next year’s officers. They take office on June 1.

Bargaining starts in 39 minutes! Let’s see what the university thinks about the future of graduate employees!

Once a year, the local unions (e.g., CGE at OSU and GTFF at UO) affiliated with AFT-Oregon (AFT being the American Federation of Teachers) get together and pass resolutions that help guide the actions of AFT-Oregon (especially its political actions). This past weekend, April 17-19 was the most recent convention. Two important events occured there.

First, attempts to change the “percaps” structure were defeated. Percaps (standing for per capita, as in per head) are what a local pays to be affiliated with a larger body. CGE pays percaps to AFT-Oregon, AFT National and I think the Oregon AFL-CIO. Percaps are assesed on a per member basis by the salary of each member, though the member does not directly pay the percap. The higher an individual’s salary, the greater the percap for that person paid by the local. The more individuals in a local, the higher the total percap. AFT-Oregon currently has a regressive percap structure, so that those who make the least are assesed a relatively larger percentage of their income. The proposed changes would have made the system more progressive. Unfortunatley, the proposal was defeated. I imagine some modified plan will be proposed again next year.

Second, two members of CGE, B.J. W. and Angela B., were elected as officers of AFT-Oregon and will be offering a graduate student’s perspective on the issues before AFT-Oregon. Mark L. of the GTFF was elected treasurer, and will also be offering his input.

Yesterday, CGE and OSU management met for the seventh time. Management promised a comprehensive response to all the issues we’ve raised in bargaining.

• On the key issues of salaries and fee relief, they’ve said “no:” no raises and no increases to the fee relief of $250 per term. Under Management’s current proposal, the only way for someone to get a raise is if the department wants to give a raise. (By the way, fees are going up by at about $60/year to pay for the right to get a football ticket. There are other fees increases as well. Departmental fees will not increase but things like building fees and technology fees could increase.)
• On the issue of email access, they’ve said that we can could start sending email to multiple graduate employees at one time. Clearly they are not in touch with reality. Anyone in the world can send email to multiple graduate employees at one time. Just go to any department’s personnel listing, copy and paste a few email addresses, type a message and press send. Presto! You’ve just violated the university’s email policy, and they won’t do anything about it, because this happens all the time.
• The bit of good news is that we might get summer health insurance, if the details can be worked out. This is certainly something that we are interested in and we are pleased that Management has brought this to the table. The CGE bargaining team is prepared to work very hard to get this in place for this summer. We’ll see what the administration is willing to do.
• The university is not willing to increase its contribution for health care beyond 75% of the single payer deductible.
• The university is not willing to increase its family friendliness. They are not willing to to contribute towards health insurance for spouses or dependents. Further, the university is not prepared to offer graduate employees specific money for childcare that is separate from what is already available.
• The university is not willing to grant us fair-share.
• On a variety of issues regarding the interaction between CGE and university, the university has made some movement.

Overall, the CGE bargaining team and the CGE members present were very displeased with proposal. Progress on summer health insurance is good. However, no increases in fee relief and no guaranteed raises are unacceptable because it does not guarantee graduate employees’ ability to keep up with inflation. It is distressing to see that OSU Management would not propose anything to make OSU more family friendly, via contributions to spouse and dependent health insurance and child. Not granting fair-share is unacceptable because it will keep the union weak. Fair share is something that OSU is not philosophically opposed to, as they collect fees set by student government. Second, of all the groups affiliated with campus, CGE is one of the largest (at nearly 360 members) and it is what our members want. Third, every other higher education related union in the state has fair-share, including OSU’s Service Employees International Union, the union for classified employees on campus. In other words, neither OUS nor OSU are opposed to unions having fair-share.

It sounds like the administration wants to make this a long summer.

The third round of negotiations will be held in the Westminster House on Monday, March 17, from 3-5 pm. This session will see the first round of real negotiations (as opposed to simply exchanging proposals, as the sides have done at previous meetings). Keep an eye on this post to see what specific issues we will be negotiating over.

We understand that the 17th is the Monday of finals week, but your contract is probably more important to you than a grade anyway, so we hope you’ll show up. This session may be the most interesting so far, since we hope to engage the Adminstration in a real back-and-forth over some important issues. We are especially looking forward to seeing how the University justifies some of its proposals, such as the elimination without replacement of the $250-per-term fee differential (i.e. a $750-per-year pay cut).

We hope to see you there. As always, feel free to come and go as you please, and bring some work to do if you want. Your simple presence is imposing enough.