Coalition of Graduate Employees

As you may know, the University has recently called for state-sponsored mediation in bargaining, although CGE’s only remaining demands are to retain our $300 per term lump sum differential and increase the basement salary for graduate employees to the figure our own Graduate School recommends.

While we believe our proposals are reasonable and just, OSU won’t budge. And with its $40 million surplus, the University has finally admitted in bargaining that its refusal to boost the conditions of graduate employees even marginally is not an affordability issue. Investment in graduate employees is simply not a priority.

Let’s show we’re able and willing to mobilize for what we deserve. Rally in support of a fair contract.

• When: Wednesday September 8, 12:30 PM
• Where: Start on the steps of the MU Quad, then march to Kerr
• Bring: Your good-looking CGE gear, your signs, your voices, your friends

This rally is for EVERYONE! Invite friends, family, students, faculty, community members and anyone else who supports  decent compensation for the people who power Orange.

If you’ve read about the previous bargaining session, you know that we were pretty surprised to find out that the university couldn’t get a financial proposal together in five weeks.  On Friday, July 30^th, we met with them again to hear their revamped financial proposals that they’d had seven weeks to get ready.  It made for interesting reading.  (You can download their July 30th proposal here, along with copies of other proposals that have been made during bargaining.)

For the first time, the university brought numbers to the table – a cost estimate to back up their proposal.  Let’s walk through the various parts.

1.  Fees.  The university proposed to eliminate the $300/term differential and replace it with a $120 differential with three caveats:  That no incoming grads will get the $120, that grads in the MBA program and College of Engineering won’t get it, and that the university refused to confirm or deny that non-BU employees (if your dues are $10/month, that’s you) will be getting ANY fee relief in the coming year.  The State Board of Higher Education has also voted to include the Technology, Registration and Programmatic Fees in with tuition, which means everyone’s fee bill will be about $450 next year before fee relief.  Note that this means CGE was not consulted, but that OSU is attempting to get grad employees to pay for this decision.

2.  Salary. Despite both sides previously proposing that the minimum stipend be increased to match what the Graduate School recommends, the university had withdrawn that proposal.  They claimed that it would create pay equity issues with instructors.  They also claimed it would cost more than we had estimated, but refused to document that claim.  Instead, they are proposing that anyone who makes below the Grad School’s recommendation receive a one-time 5% increase in salary at the beginning of their second year.  This increase won’t even come close to bringing people up to the grad school’s recommended minimum.

The university is continuing to propose no change to health insurance.

Before even getting into the costs and benefits of their proposal, the bargaining team can’t agree to something that makes the fee situation worse for the majority of graduate employees or something that creates inequality among new and returning students as well as between students in different programs.

Looking at the university’s cost estimate, the picture gets even less palatable.  According to their estimate, they will be spending $161,000 more on graduate employees overall under their proposal – but 95% of that, or about $153,000, will be spent on graduate employees in the College of Engineering.  This is a third reason we can’t agree to their proposal.

The fourth reason is that they’re either not very good at math or simply trying to obscure the true cost to graduate employees.  In their cost estimate, they include the 2010-2011 costs for eliminating the $300 differential, waiving some fees, and the $120 differential.  However, they also include the cost of the 5% one-time increase to salary they propose.  Unfortunately, that increase occurs in Fall 2011, i.e. in a different year.  If that’s properly accounted for, then the university’s proposal is an immediate $200,000 cut to graduate employee compensation – and things only get worse in subsequent years as the $120 fee relief differential is phased out. So it’s not actually a $160,000 increase, but a decrease in graduate employee compensation.

Financially, the bottom line is that the university’s proposal is substantially regressive and increases inequality among graduate employees.  To a certain extent, we understand why:  The State Board of Higher Education voted to roll certain fees into tuition + the university’s desire not to invest in graduate employees + the administration trying to make it appear that no graduate employee loses money.  The combination of those things explains a lot about why the university’s proposal is structured as it is, but it is no more acceptable because of that.  Equally unacceptable is asking grad employees to cover the cost of rolling in programmatic resource fees that never should have been separated in the first place.

We’re in the process of scheduling another session that will either be on August 10^th or August 23^rd.  It might be the last session before we enter into mediation.

One thing that is becoming clear is that OSU faculty and staff have no idea what the university is proposing.  From the few contacts with faculty the bargaining team has had, it’s just as clear that faculty and staff disagree with the idea of making it harder for them to recruit and retain graduate employees.  If you have the time, please let your adviser and department head know what OSU is proposing to do (again, you can find their July 30th proposal here) and encourage them to voice their opinion to their Dean or to the university’s bargaining team.

CGE met with the university last Friday, July 16^th for the first bargaining session since June 11^th.  For those of you who are counting, that’s five weeks between sessions. We’d prefer to meet at least once every week.

We went into the session expecting to hear a full proposal from the university.  Instead, we were informed that the university’s team didn’t have a full proposal ready for us, because they didn’t have enough time to get something ready.  What was missing?  Any mention of minimum salaries or fees, i.e. the two most important topics we are bargaining over.

As you might imagine, the bargaining team and observers were less than impressed, especially since there is zero evidence being offered at these sessions that the administration’s team is actually doing any work outside of the session itself.  When we caucused, several observers made the point that grad employees recognize an unprepared student making excuses, and that’s exactly what the administration’s team sounded like.

When we returned from our caucus, we reiterated our disappointment with their apparent lack of effort.  When we pointed out that five weeks was much longer than the normal time between sessions, and that we were disappointed in their team for not having a full proposal, we were told that their team is busy doing a lot of work on our behalf and that we just need to realize not only how hard they’re working on behalf of graduate employees, but also how hard they try to save jobs for classified staff, ‘many of whom are working full time and trying to support families’ – as if many graduate employees aren’t doing either of those things.

We then moved on to discussing workload issues, which the university was prepared to talk about.  Unfortunately, despite the university agreeing that the proposal that we had made at the previous session was fine and just needed some tweaking, the university brought back the same language they had been proposing for the last four or five sessions, language that was completely different than what we had discussed and agreed upon at the previous session.  (This is what we mean when we say it doesn’t appear the university’s team does any work outside sessions.)

After we expressed our disappointment that the administration apparently didn’t even look at their notes from the last session, we had a very productive exchange with them on specific language around hours worked per week and protections against overwork, and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to tentatively sign off on some language at the next session and lay workload to rest.  That said, the unprofessionalism and apparent lack of effort on the part of the university’s team has been very disappointing.

The next session is scheduled for Friday, July 30^th, at 2 PM somewhere in the Memorial Union.  At that session, we have been told the university will present a proposal on economics, including fees and stipends.  The observer turnout to the meeting on the 16^th was truly impressive, considering the length between sessions and the fact that we’re dead in the middle of summer.  In fact, we believe part of the administration’s willingness to engage us on specific language around workload issues at this session was driven by their desire not to look completely bad in front of lots of grad employees.  We hope you all can come to the session on the 30^th as well to keep holding the administration accountable.

Well, it’s July, and there’s nary a bargaining session in sight.  The university canceled our last planned session, and the next available time they’ve offered us is July 30th – but rest assured that bargaining is still going on.  We’ll keep you posted when something happens, but in the meantime, check out the fun time the GTFF down at UO is having with their bargaining.

CGE met with the university for the ninth bargaining session last Friday, June 11th, at 2 PM in the Memorial Union Council Room.

At the end of the previous session, the university’s team had told us to ‘tell us what you need,’ so our proposal was designed to do just that.

Article 12 – Waivers

The State Board of Higher Education, we understand, has voted to eliminate the Registration, Technology and Engineering fees starting next year.  In addition to that, CGE proposed that the Health and Building fees, along with any remaining program-specific fees, be rolled in to tuition.  If this happens, the team is OK with the university’s proposal to eliminate the $300/term in fee relief. However, without all of the above fees disappearing, the loss of the $300 would result in a net loss to grads on fees.  The membership has made clear on several occasions that fee relief is the most important thing for CGE to work on.

When CGE proposed fee relief, the university’s response was to barely acknowledge that we had proposed it and move on quickly.  It’s likely this is going to be a major point of contention and that the university simply didn’t want to engage with 25 observers in the room.

Article 11 – Salary

One point of agreement between CGE and the university has been the worthiness of increasing the minimum salary.  CGE’s initial proposal contained an immediate minimum salary increase that the university has since proposed as well.  In addition, CGE proposed an additional increase to the minimum that would take effect for the 2011-2012 year. Our best guess is that the first minimum increase would affect the bottom 20%, and that the second could affect the bottom third.  Individuals in the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Science would be the most affected.

Article 11 – Workload

In general, CGE is pursuing better contract language around workload limits, so that it is less likely for grads, especially GTAs, to be overworked.  We’re also hoping to provide increased contract protections for what happens when grads do exceed their hours.  The CGE team and the university’s team have gone back and forth about this at some length during bargaining, and we feel we’re getting pretty close to an agreement.  This doc file has a little more info about what we’re proposing and why.

Article 28 – Insurance

CGE proposed that any grad who is employed have 100% of their monthly premium covered, and that grads who take the summer insurance option have 85% of the monthly premium covered, up from the current 85% employed and 50% summer unemployed coverage.  The university’s only response to this was to suggest that since they increased premium coverage two years ago, they could not do so again so soon.

Article 9

This goes on for a bit, so bear with me: The university had been telling us for a few sessions that our proposals around advertising certain open GTA positions were unworkable, and had suggested multiple times that we should be content with seeing the positions advertised in OSU Today.  We had proposed just that, only to be told that no one in the university had the authority to compel departments to send job postings to OSU Today by the same person who told us it would be a good idea.  Then the university, as part of a proposal to us, proposed that HR would send notice once per year to units that they should send job postings to OSU Today.  So at the most recent session, CGE proposed just that – we even went so far as to take the language verbatim from their previous proposal and insert into our own.

Predictably, the university said they couldn’t agree to it. Graciously, they allowed that they made a mistake when proposing that language in the first place.

One thing that was different from previous sessions was that the university chose not to play the “we have no money” card.  While CGE is aware of the state economic forecast and of the overall OSU budget, we are also aware OSU is investing at least $11 million in new infrastructure and potentially a few million more in faculty salaries; because of the new investments, we know the financial situation is more complicated than it might first appear.

Overall, the university had asked us what grads needed, so the CGE team crafted a proposal to answer that question.  When we presented it, the response we were given was a mix of “we won’t” and “we can’t,” with no significant explanation given for either answer.  It’s again disappointing, but not surprising.

The administration team let us know that they would counter our proposal with a complete package at the next session on Friday, June 18, from 2-4:00 pm in the Westminster House.  Their behavior at this past meeting suggested that they plan to do very little to address the needs we brought forth there.  In particular, their coming counterproposal will likely leave in place the ~$185 net loss of fee relief for most grads. The CGE bargaining team will make it clear that we (and you) won’t agree to a contract that wipes out fee relief, but we’ll be much more credible in doing so if you show up to support us, so if you’re around for the summer, please come out to Westminster on Friday.