Coalition of Graduate Employees

The CGE bargaining team is extremely happy to announce that we reached tenative agreement with the OSU administration today on a complete contract. Full agreement is contingent on ratification of the new contract by the CGE membership, which will take place in the coming weeks. This agreement came during the last session before the teams could have chosen to enter into mediation, and we see it as a major victory. Details of the agreement, which calls for a four year contract with a reopener of up to 6 articles after 2 years, are below. (Continue reading...)

It’s been quite some time since we’ve posted an update on negotiations, partly because we’ve been so busy negotiating, preparing for negotiations, and taking action in support of negotiations, but none of that excuses us from keeping you loyal members up to date. With that in mind, here’s an update on all that’s been going on since we last wrote.

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On Tuesday, July 14th, a sea of CGE shirts, buttons and spirit gathered outside the Kerr Administration Building. We hung up a banner and milled around a bit, catching stragglers and the curious, before heading up the 5 flights of stairs to the nerve center of the OSU administration – the sixth floor.

Over 30 members of CGE crowded into the waiting area to deliver a message to Sabah Randhawa, the Provost and Executive Vice President for the University. Of course we just missed him, but we were assured that what we had to say would make it to his ears, and that message was this: Release the OSU bargaining team to bargain. A simple request for effective negotiations, yet this is proving very difficult to achieve.

For months the bargaining between the administration and graduate employees seems to have been stuck in neutral, a lot of noise and very little movement. And when it comes to the really big items, like fees, insurance and fair share, it appears that the administration’s bargaining team can’t actually negotiate over these items at the table without clearing it at the top. But the rub is that these are the items over which we must be the most efficient and cooperative, since they will determine the quality of life for graduate employees at OSU years to come and the time we have to get a contract is running out.

So hopefully our message to Sabah, to allow the administration’s team to make decisions on their own and to really engage with CGE in bargaining, will have been heard. And maybe, just maybe, this puppy will slip into first and start going somewhere.

Today, Monday, June 30, is payday, and there are many reasons why this is a more significant payday than most others. For starters, this is the last payday of the 2007-08 academic year, and thus, for many of us, it represents the last paycheck we will receive from OSU until the end of September. In addition, this payday will bring a check for only half of a month’s work, meaning that some of us might have to scramble to make up for the other half of the pay we will not receive this month.

What really distinguishes this payday, though, more than by any other feature, is the fact that it will be the last payday under our current contract, and thus, as we have not settled in negotiations for this contract’s successor, we, as of tomorrow, will be working without a contract.

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Leave it to Friday the 13th to bring out the unexpected. It certainly happened this past Friday at the bargaining table when the Administration, for the first time, actually proposed a package that represents real progress in what have been to date incredibly frustrating negotiations. While their package is still a long way from what we are looking for, we were happy to see that they seem to be starting to change their ways, perhaps spurred on by testimony by State Representative Brad Witt and six CGE members at the previous week’s bargaining session.

Here’s a brief summary of some of the provisions included in the package they put forth:

• A contribution of 75% towards summer health insurance (the normal Pacific Source plan) for grads who were on an assistantship of at least 0.2 FTE for each of the three terms of the preceding academic year and who are “reasonably assured” of being on assistantship the following fall term; there are some issues with this, which I’ll discuss below
• An increase of $50 to the once-per-term lump-sum differential (from $250 to $300)
• A 3%-per-year salary increase for everyone who is paid at a 1.0-FTE rate less than $3164 a month until they are paid at a rate of at least $3164 (by our estimates, this would affect about 120 of the lowest paid grad assistants)
• Some additional rights for the union, including the right to use the university’s email system (i.e., to send email to our members’ OSU inboxes) and the right to introduce incoming grads in departments that don’t hold orientations to the union
• Convergence on some of the less exciting issues we’ve been bantering back and forth about for the past three months, including articles on discipline and discharge, the grievance procedure, and consultation
• Unfortunately, there was one major thing missing from their proposal: fair-share; at this point, any contract we sign must have fair-share; we will not go without it any longer.

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This past Wednesday (June 4), we had our most significant bargaining session to date. Trust me. When I say big, I mean BIG. Let me see if I can summarize everything that happened during the meeting in some bullet points first, and then I’ll get into some details.

• Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives and Democratic candidate for Oregon’s U.S. Senate seat Jeff Merkley kicked the morning off by talking in support of our efforts
• Six grad assistants and members of CGE testified to the administration on our key economic proposals; the administration seemed receptive to what they all had to say
• Gordon Lafer, a professor at the Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) at the University of Oregon, testified in support of our proposal on fair-share
• Oregon State Representative Brad Witt testified on behalf of 41 of his colleagues in support of our bargaining position; the administration got pretty defensive during his testimony

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After waiting on the Administration’s bargaining team for nearly 40 minutes, yesterday’s bargaining session began with the Administration’s team expressing frustration over CGE’s recent attendance and distribution of informational fliers at an OSU donor event. They felt their initial bargaining position had been misrepresented. Despite the fact that their initial proposal included eliminating from the contract the letter of agreement that gave grads the $250/term differential with no replacement, the administration felt it was unfair of CGE to characterize this (representing a wage cut of up to 13% for some grads) as their opening position. While the administration had indicated previously and reiterated that they wanted to hear what we wanted before they made changes to other financial portions of the contract, that’s what bargaining IS. There’s no point in this process at all if they won’t consider changes in their proposal based on what we want, but both teams agreed to state their initial positions in the first and second meeting. And I think CGE has every right to characterize their initial contract proposal as we have – elimination of the $250/term differential with nothing to replace it. In retrospect, it mostly seemed to me as though the Administration’s team had made its own bed, but then found it a bit uncomfortable to lie in (especially in front of wealthy donors).

After that unpleasantness, we went on to discuss important, but non-financial, parts of the contract:

- Article 17 on discipline and discharge of graduate employees

- Article 18 on grievances filed by CGE on behalf of grads

- Article 19 on Consultation between the administration and CGE

Our goal in these parts of the contract is to make sure that CGE and the grads we represent are in as good a position as possible to resolve problems with their supervisors or the administration.

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It’s been a while since we’ve posted here.  But that doesn’t mean the wheels of bargaining have not been turning.  We had two sessions in the last couple of weeks.

The first was extremely frustrating.  We left feeling like the Administration’s team really had no plans to actually negotiate with us and were instead simply entertaining us with their presence.  They started that session by immediately caucusing for nearly half an hour (or about a quarter of the allotted bargaining time), and when they came back they stonewalled us at every turn, refusing even to agree to try to move some of the less contentious stuff off the table in the first few sessions to try to build some harmony between the teams on our way up to the bigger stuff.

The second session seemed to go better.  We presented a few proposals we figured would be very non-contentious (like the articles on Discipline and Discharge, the Grievance Procedure, and Consultation [17-19]) and the Administration engaged us in a bit of back-and-forth about each one.  We’re hoping that they will come back to the next session (which is TODAY at 1:00 in MU 206) with some counter-proposals on these articles, so we can discuss them and move them off the table.

We’re also going to try to address the Articles on Appointments and Work Assignments (9 & 10) today.  There have been numerous issues with Grad Employees not having the time to prepare for assistantships due to their not being appointed or assigned their duties a timely fashion, and we are trying to work some remedies to this situation into the new contract.

So, some to the bargaining session today.  Your support really is important to us, and it shows the Adminstration that we’re all interested in this contract.  The session will last from 1-4:00, but you can come for any amount of time, and you can bring work to do while you’re there.  Your simple presence is what’s important.

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.

Yesterday afternoon, the management of Oregon State and the Coalition of Graduate Employees laid out the their visions of the future. They are markedly different.

The CGE has a three-pronged approach to increasing every graduate employee’s total compensation:

1. Wage increases every year of the collective bargaining agreement for both the minimum salary and for every graduate employee based on their years of service.
2. A full fee waiver for every graduate employee.
3. Increasing OSU contribution to health insurance from 75% for the individual premium to 100% of the individual premium and 50% of domestic partner and family premiums. The OSU contribution would also be extended to include summer term.

To reiterate, CGE wants every employee with more money in their pocket. We want larger paychecks through raises, through an end to fees, and through a larger employer contribution to health insurance. By extending the employer contribution to health insurance, we want to increase graduate employees’ ability to take care of their families. By increasing OSU’s contribution on individual premiums from 75% to 100%, we are also preventing de facto wage cuts when premiums go up.

Management’s proposals on these three issues are dismal. They proposed eliminating any kind of a minimum salary, no raises and completely killing the $750 per year fee relief. That’s around a month’s rent, utilities and groceries. They think the current health insurance plan doesn’t need any improvement and didn’t really have any comment our proposed changes. Apparently the administration  doesn’t foresee any insurance premium increases. I do, and I see them as wage cuts. So, the adminstration’s position can be summed up as less pay for getting better at our jobs.

We went over several other issues. Highlights include: (Continue reading...)