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.

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.

The real fun part of the session came in the conversation that dominated most of the 90 minutes:

• One member of their team claimed the $300 isn’t for fees and that grads can spend it however we want.  This came after their lead negotiator admitted they had resisted talking about it in relation to fees for years, but that yes, it’s about fees – which it always has been.  Their team member then claimed we were arguing over semantics.

• The same team member tried to tell us that the university’s proposal would result in a net gain for grads because OUS was rolling a few fees into tuition.  That the university is also proposing to cut fee relief from $300 to $120 – that $180 being more than the value of the fees that will be waived next year – did not seem to change his mind.  He stuck to claiming that the $300 isn’t about fees and suggested we shouldn’t think about it in those terms.

• Their team also tried to claim that removing the engineering resource fee and making everyone else pay for it was what the union had always wanted.  In the same part of the conversation, their team suggested that the $300 – which everyone receives – was really about only the resource fee, not fees in general.  We’re not sure what union they were referring to, but it wasn’t CGE, since we’ve always wanted total fee relief (and why would we have pushed for $300 for everyone if it was really just about engineers?).  We’ve also argued that the engineering resource fee was a problem as long as it existed, so characterizing fixing the problem as generosity on the part of the university was a bit much to hear, especially since it was clear that if the OUS system didn’t do it, the Legislature was likely to.  The bit where management told us their proposal was what we have always wanted is straight out of some “how to negotiate with unions” workshop, and all the more transparent as a tactic for it.

To each point we responded that making the fee situation worse for everyone was not what we wanted and we didn’t think it was in the university’s interest.  We also pointed out that we have a vision for what the university could be like for graduate employees, and that the vast majority of what we hear from the university’s team is about the cost of employing grads, not about the value we add to the university or what their vision is for the future of graduate employment as OSU undergoes significant changes.  The bargaining team can’t decide if this is a function of their team being composed mostly of people who never work with graduate employees or a deliberate insult.  Either way suggests that their team needs more awareness of what grad employees actually do.

The university also tried to claim that since they think each department is free to spend money how they wish (a claim that will certainly send Department Chairs into spasms when they hear it, since we know Department Chairs’ budgets have so many strings attached they resemble marionettes), they hope each department will continue to provide raises outside the contract to their graduate employees.  As easy as it would have been to laugh, we responded by citing the case of Zoology, where the graduate employees there had to spend more than a year lobbying to get their first raise in at least six years, even with the support of the faculty and department as a whole.

The university’s response was to claim that the Dean of the College of Science “took care of it.” (This guts their argument, since the department was unable to give a raise on its own, but had to get the Dean to clear it.)  We know the Dean agreed to a one-time, not recurring, raise after it was pointed out to him that the pay equity issues in Zoology left the university open to legal repercussions.  We’re not faulting the Dean, but pointing out that even with good intent it can be very difficulty to change grad employee salaries at the department level.

On top of that case, we also know that departments – even well-meaning departments – that aren’t required to give raises often won’t give them.  Or, as we pointed out, graduate employees can’t eat hope.  We don’t bargain over hope.

Interestingly, that part of the conversation made it sound like the university wanted to go back to the days before collective bargaining, when there was no legally binding tuition waiver, no minimum salary, and no health insurance – and grads were forced to negotiate directly with their PIs and departments.  It’s almost like they don’t like having to actually commit to decent conditions for graduate employees.

Next, the university tried to claim that since new grads won’t know that previous grads got fee relief (remember, they are proposing to phase the differential out entirely), they won’t miss it.  We responded by pointing out that not only will that take a long time, as grads tend to talk to each other, but that having $300 less per term in income will be missed, period – and that the union would never willingly sell out new grads like that, and the bargaining team made it clear that even if we agreed to something like that, we knew the membership wouldn’t agree to it.  That the university intimated we’d be so selfish and shortsighted is insulting.

After that, the conversation turned to the engineering resource fee and the relative benefit and costs to engineers compared to everyone else.  We asked their team how the College of Engineering felt about OSU proposing to benefit engineers but cut everyone else’s pay, and their team suggested that the CoE was OK with that.  We are not entirely convinced that’s true.

They also brought up the fact that with the fee roll-in for engineers, PIs on grants have to account for $430 per term more in tuition waivers than they wrote the grants for.  We pointed out that the conversation about rolling fees into tuition has been happening for years, and that the university should have told anyone seeking grant money this was coming.  Given the conversations that have been happening in the Legislature, at the bargaining table, at the State Board of Higher Ed, within the Provosts’ Council, etc., the end of the fee was almost as predictable as the yearly tuition increase.

We also asked if the State Board of Higher Ed, who voted to roll the fees in to tuition, intended for OSU to attempt to get that money back from graduate employees or if they had accounted for that cost in their budgeting.  If it is the intent of the Board that rolling fees into tuition would be an increased benefit to graduate employees, then we’re curious if the Board knows that OSU is trying to get that money back in the form of decreased stipends.  If the Board intended for OSU to try and get that money back, it also stands to reason the Board needed to make that clear to CGE beforehand.  Since neither has happened, we are wondering if the university’s team is trying to play CGE against the Board on this one.  We’re working on getting in touch with the Board directly to find out what kind of decision-making process took place and what information was shared with whom and when.

After that, their team suggested they wanted to keep devolving authority over stipend decisions to departments.  We responded by pointing out that increasing stipends to cover more fees was incredibly inefficient, and that rolling them in to tuition was far more effective.  They responded by suggesting we need to talk to the student government, which does not actually address the problem at all.

At this point, the CGE lead negotiator asked their lead negotiator point-blank if they could afford our proposal.  They initially said, no, and he asked again.  This time, they said they had already provided us with an offer (which is not a no).  Our lead responded by telling them we need to see proof they can’t afford our proposal in the form of numbers.  They responded by saying it all depends on how departments spend their money (another non-answer) and that they are insisting their proposal is a net benefit to grad employees (which it isn’t – it’s a net gain for engineers and a net loss for everyone else).  Our lead then suggested he would send the university a formal information request to get that information if they did not want to hand it across the table voluntarily (under state law, any information that is germane to bargaining – especially how much proposals cost – is information that the employer is legally required to give to the union).  They responded that we should go that route if we wanted, but they weren’t going to voluntarily hand it over.

What’s interesting about that exchange is that under state law, refusing to justify or explain a proposal is often used as evidence that one side is bargaining in bad faith, which is a big no-no.

With a few more comments, after about an hour of back-and-forth, their team decided to caucus amongst themselves.  They came back and offered us one more bargaining session on August 23^rd before they request mediation.  While the bargaining team has differing opinions on how that session will go, we’re all sure that having another session before mediation is a sign that the university wants to make a deal, which is a good thing.

Barring unforeseen events, then, the next session is the last time the two teams will be in the same room (there is an outside chance it will be the last session, period).  The bargaining team can’t stress this enough:  We need as many members as possible to be there.  You all have carried us a long ways, and it’s time for your presence to help us wrap this up on a good note.  August 23rd, 10:30 AM, Memorial Union (room TBA).  Please be there.

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!