Coalition of Graduate Employees

By 10:30, the time our 14^th bargaining session with the OSU administration was scheduled to start, at least 70 people were packed into the MU Council Room, both to participate in the negotiations and to observe.  These were not all grad employees, either: 10 or 12 representatives of ASOSU, the student government here, also attended, wielding signs supporting CGE and our proposals.  With this throng engulfing the bargaining table on all sides, one was almost compelled to pity the OSU administration’s bargaining team, about to walk into these unfriendly surroundings to play their role as nemesis, their backs to be against the wall both figuratively and literally.  It was they, however, who put themselves in this position with their deplorable proposals and their often contemptible approach to bargaining.

Predictably, the administration immediately tried to escape bargaining in these surroundings.  Their lead negotiator, upon entering the room and without even sitting down, stated that unless enough of the observers left to meet the room’s capacity limit (40 people), they would not bargain.  Unfortunately for the administration, fate and our observers were against them: our friends from ASOSU had already cleared out a bigger room in the MU, and we moved there to commence bargaining.

In the new room, the administration did their best to avoid the crowd by positioning themselves with their backs to the audience and speaking quietly so as to be audible only to our bargaining team and the nearest observers.  Finally situated in the most comfortable position we would permit them, the administration set about offering us what they called a “supposal”—a “hypothetical” offer that they, as their lead negotiator explained, wouldn’t consider themselves to have made if we ended up in mediation.

Their supposal addressed both fees and stipend.  On fees, they “supposed” reducing the differential by the sum of the Technology and Registration Fees, which would be rolled into tuition along with the Engineering Resource Fee.  This move would bring the differential down from its current value of $300 per term to $184 per term, and given that less tax would be deducted from the differential, this would actually be a slight gain for everyone.  Under their supposal, other small fees, such as the Summer Session Tuition Base, which CGE has grieved several times and once successfully brought to arbitration, would be rolled into tuition.  As the result of this “hypothetical” movement on their part, individual grad employees would see no change in the overall cost of fees, with the reduced tax deduction from the differential and next year’s fee increase balancing each other out, and Engineers would see the additional benefit of having the Engineering Resource Fee rolled into tuition.  CGE would also be in a good position to continue to reduce the overall burden of fees, with the differential still in place for all grad employees and several fees rolled into tuition.

Unfortunately, the university continued their change of heart on the minimum stipend, refusing now to increase it even after proposing to do so in writing earlier in bargaining.  Instead, they “supposed” giving a 4% raise to everyone earning below the Graduate School’s recommended minimum of $3543/month at 1.0 FTE, but only upon reappointment.  In other words, given that new a grad employee could still start out being paid our current contractual minimum of $2811/month at 1.0 FTE for an entire year, that grad employee would have to remain on assistantship for seven years to reach the Graduate School’s recommended minimum under the administration’s supposal.

The administration is adamant about leaving the contractual minimum stipend unchanged.  Their outward rationale for this insistence is salary compression.  Specifically, they’ve claimed that raising the minimum stipend to the Graduate School’s recommendation would cause some grad employees to be paid more than some instructors, especially in the College of Liberal Arts.  This is true for a very small number of people, since a few of the worst paid instructors in CLA make about $3333/month at 1.0 FTE.  However, the administration also refused to acknowledge that a number does exist between the current contractual minimum and the Graduate School’s recommendation that would not result in salary compression.  It thus appears that the administration’s real motivation behind refusing to raise the minimum stipend is to ensure that incoming graduate employees can continue to serve as a cheap alternative even to instructors, especially in CLA.

Unfortunately, the current contractual minimum has been in place since 2006, and in the time since that minimum was enacted, the cost of living here in Corvallis has gone up significantly.  Indeed, since that time, the Graduate School’s recommended minimum has increased over $400/month at 1.0 FTE.  Simply put, it is time that we stop paying incoming grads with wages that were poor even in 2006.  All of the Department Chairs, Program Directors, Grad Coordinators, and School Directors we’ve talked to—the collection of whom represents a majority of the departments in the College of Liberal Arts as well as departments across other colleges, even those departments that pay their instructors very poorly—support our efforts to raise the minimum stipend.

For these reasons, our bargaining team responded to the administration’s supposal by suggesting that we meet one more time to work to find a number for the minimum stipend that avoids salary compression but also brings the worst paid grad employees’ wages to a more appropriate level for the second decade of the 21^st century.  We also let them know that we were pleased to see movement on their part on the fee differential that meaningfully accounted for concerns we voiced about their previous proposals on fees, but we noted we could not reach any agreement on fees outside the context of an entire economic package.

The administration was not interested in continuing to negotiate, however, and informed us that they will request state-sponsored mediation.  Thus, our next bargaining session will likely occur with the parties in separate rooms and a mediator shuffling between us seeking to help us reach an agreement.  We are optimistic about mediation because we believe the mediator will see through the administration’s questionable arguments and will serve as a disinterested voice of reason to the administration.

The support we’ve received from grad employees and others throughout negotiations, especially the unprecedented turnout at this last session, is also heartening and strengthens our conviction that our members will do what it takes to impel the administration to reach a fair agreement with us.  While we are getting closer to that agreement, we all still have work to do, and our bargaining team will need the rest of the membership to continue their impressive support in the weeks ahead. So, be on the lookout for ways you can continue to help as we push to conclude these negotiations, which are now headed into mediation.

The CGE bargaining team met with OSU for what we thought might be the last time this past Tuesday, August 10^th.  We were scheduled to present a package proposal. From communication we had received the previous session, we thought that the administration’s team might be ready to call for a state mediator to step in after this past session, even though the CGE team thought we were still making progress.  As it turned out, we have another session scheduled for 10:30 AM on August 23^rd in the Memorial Union.

Now… what happened this past Tuesday?  In simple terms, we presented a proposal to their team (that can be found here), they objected, we talked for a bit, they caucused and then told us they were willing to meet one more time before mediation.

Our proposal is very simple compared to both our previous proposal and their last proposal (in no small part due to the fact that we dropped a request for half a million in new compensation towards health insurance premiums – which, by the way, would have still left us behind the grad employees at UO).  In addition to non-economic language we’ve basically agreed on, we proposed to increase the minimum stipend to what the graduate school recommends (found here) and to leave the $300/term in fee relief unchanged.  This would cut everyone’s fee bill by $100/term (except engineers, who would see an additional $430 in their pockets from the eliminated engineering resource fee), and would put an average of $100 more per month in post-tax stipend in the pocket of the average grad employee who currently makes less than our proposed minimum.

In short, it would end the egregious engineering fee, help everyone a little bit and those at the bottom a bit more.

In the long run, we hope to move more fees into tuition, as the differential is a very inefficient way to pay for fees.  However, the university has refused to waive enough in fees to make changing the differential an option for grads.

One of the university’s objections to increasing the minimum stipend was revealed a bit more when they told us both that some Deans don’t want the minimum stipend increased and that increasing it too far would make the pay rate for GTAs higher than that of instructors in the College of Liberal Arts. [Update 8/17/10:  We have been told by someone in the College of Liberal Arts that this is not true.]  Their team suggested there was a number between our proposed number ($3543/month at 1.0 FTE) and the current minimum ($2811/month at 1.0 FTE) that would work.  We hope their next proposal reflects that middle ground in some fashion, but so far comments made at one session by the university appear to have little bearing on their behavior during future sessions.

Check below the fold for a lot more of the back-and-forth of the session.

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Tuesday afternoon, about 35 CGE members took a few minutes to deliver a letter to OSU President Ed Ray’s office.  That letter was the culmination of a week’s worth of work by volunteers delivering almost 900 letters to faculty members here on campus.  The letter makes clear that we need to see progress on fees if we are to wrap up bargaining, and encourages faculty to weigh in on this issue, because the bargaining team believes that moving backwards on fees will make it harder for faculty to recruit and retain talented graduate students.

Tomorrow, July 30th, at 2 PM in the Memorial Union Council Room, the bargaining team will be meeting with OSU.

The university has promised us they will bring an economic proposal that takes into account the importance we place on fees, and has indicated they will have guests present from the Finance and Administration unit.

We hope to see as many of you there as possible.  We’re getting very close to the end of bargaining now, and what happens on Friday will probably play a large role in determining what the overall outcome of bargaining looks like.  Please join us!

2 PM at Westminster House.  The university will be presenting a comprehensive package proposal, so come find out what they have to say!

Last Friday’s bargaining session was one of those sessions that didn’t look like much but might turn out to be important.  We continued discussing announcements of grad assistant job openings and workload issues, and we delved briefly into the more technical dues deduction procedure.  The CGE bargaining team left the session feeling that the discussion was substantive and encouraging overall.

Article 9 – Job Opening Announcements

The CGE bargaining team came to the table with a proposal on advertising (some) open grad assistant positions that was substantially different than our previous proposals.  In fact, we basically wrote down what the employer had been suggesting we do for the past two sessions: that the 30 or so positions not housed in academic units have job announcement info sent to OSU Today, the daily email that goes out all over campus.

Did they agree to their own idea?  No, of course not.  Instead, they claimed that no one at the university has the authority to require hiring units send position announcements to OSU Today and instead suggested that the contract simply “recommend” non-academic employing departments post grad assistant job openings in OSU Today.

From the bargaining team’s perspective, a contract is not the place to put language like “recommended.”  It is the place for language like “required.”  So we’re sticking to that.  And, after a lengthy discussion about this and an open expression of exasperation at the OSU bargaining team’s apparent unwillingness to engage the CGE bargaining team on this issue in a meaningful way, OSU made what appeared to be a sincere commitment to look into the feasibility of this.  We will see whether anything meaningful comes of that commitment.

Article 11 – Workload

The two bargaining teams had some discussion on the proposal made by CGE at the previous session, and the CGE bargaining team continued to make what we think is a compelling case for reasonable restrictions on the number of hours grad employees can be required to work during the 11-week academic term.  Unfortunately, it appeared that the OSU team hadn’t done enough work in the two weeks since the previous session to actually be able to reach any decisions on anything.  However, they did agree to come back with another proposal on this issue at a future session.

If you’re getting the sense that not much happened during this session, you might be right.  At this point, it certainly appears that OSU’s bargaining team is simply not doing the requisite work they need to do to make progress in bargaining.  They, of course, deny this, and so far, we’re taking them at their word.  During this session, the CGE team noticed signs that OSU may be nearing a point where they can agree on some of the issues we’ve been discussing, but we have been optimistic about this in the past with nothing to show for it.  The next few sessions, as we try to wrap up non-economic items and move into economics, should prove to be telling.

We’ll see you at the next session, on Monday, May 17^th, at 1 PM in the Westminster House, where the CGE offices are located.