Our team has tried to be reasonable in the benefits we are looking for this year. While it would be great to have no student fees, across-the-board raises, and 100% health care coverage year-round for all employees and their families, we realize all of that is not possible in one round of contract negotiations. Instead, we have expressed why each of these issues is important, and that we are looking for reasonable progress in each of these areas. Ultimately, we are asking OSU to make a real and significant investment in graduate employees. We are an essential component of OSU’s long-term strategic goals, and with the position of prosperity OSU has proclaimed itself to be in, we don’t view an investment in grads as unreasonable. What we have not heard from OSU is a clear commitment to make a real investment in graduate employees over the next four years that this contract will cover.

We responded to OSU’s position by making our position clear: Our membership has clearly demanded that we work to eliminate the burden of student fees on graduate employees. Next Friday we will see how OSU responds and if they are willing to listen to graduate employees’ needs. Based on OSU’s self-identified position of prosperity (President’s speech to Faculty Senate, October 2011), the ambitious strategic plan set out by President Ray, and the essential role that competitive graduate employees will play in such a plan, our team is serious about getting a contract that helps make OSU the top-tier university it wants to be. Student fees are a burden that creates resentment for graduate employees being forced to pay a significant portion of their stipend back to the University. Summer insurance coverage is necessary for us to stay healthy all year. Family health insurance coverage is necessary to make a graduate education accessible to all people and will keep graduate employees’ families off welfare. Increasing the minimum stipend is necessary to support TAs teaching core undergraduate coursework while earning wages above poverty levels.

Although we did not see the kind of commitment we are looking for from OSU on key economic issues today, their bargaining team has been working earnestly to make progress on important issues of mutual interest. Today we finalized language to bring our contract’s nondiscrimination language in line with OSU’s own language and to make a place in OSU’s safety committee for a CGE representative. This last point is a great example of how OSU and CGE can and should be partners with mutual interests. We hope OSU keeps recognizing that CGE can in fact be a partner and a valuable resource to OSU. We can help rally graduate employees to participate in events or on committees, we can tell OSU what they need to do to most effectively recruit the best graduates to advance its teaching and research goals, and we can make sure graduates are treated fairly and feel secure in their positions on campus.

We next bargain on Friday, May 25 at noon in Westminster House. Hope to see many of you there!

The session began with testimony from two witnesses about the need for a family and medical leave policy. Jessica Travers, a GTA in English, described her experience with uncertainty while trying to take maternity leave in Spring 2011. While she felt like OSU and her department were interested in helping her, the lack of a clear policy in the matter lead to a time consuming process where no one really knew what to do, and she was left with a great deal of insecurity in her future employment options. Trish Gregg, a postdoctoral scholar in CEOAS also testified about her experience talking maternity leave while on an NSF postdoctoral fellowship. As a response to her request for leave, the NSF has instituted a new policy promoting family leave that serves as a model for academic institutions.

At this point, the CGE bargaining team really wanted to hear what OSU is thinking about regarding a family-medical leave policy. We know that the Graduate School worked on a draft policy last winter, but OSU’s bargaining team has yet to clearly state what part of that policy they are interested in incorporating into our contract. Hopefully OSU can bring us a clear idea of what they are prepared to do soon.

The rest of the session focused on where we are with previously discussed items. We gave OSU a summary of survey data regarding expected enrollment of dependents and partners at different levels of employer health insurance premium coverage. They gave us a cost estimate (about $185k) for increasing summer health insurance coverage to 85%. They also stated that because our Pacific Source Health plan is an employee plan, they could only offer it while we are not employed when we have a reasonable expectation of being employed the following term. It was unclear why the plan has to be inflexible at this last point, but OSU’s team did agree that covering COBRA coverage for this period would be one way around it, although they did not indicate that was something they were prepared to do.

OSU also suggested they could be open to addressing the Matriculation Fee (the $300 fee every graduate employee pays their first term), but that they were NOT interested in dealing with the building fee, incidental fee, or health services/counseling fee. One important point we were able to make was that ALL fees are subject to approval by OSU including those passed by ASOSU or a student vote. The vote is only a recommendation. We again emphasized that reducing student fees is our top priority and that with the $300/term differential, we are over halfway to having all fees covered. It appears at this point that OSU’s leadership is not ready to make any groundbreaking progress on this issue.

Where does this leave us? Fundamentally, we are now making a major transition in Interest-Based Bargaining (IBB) from investigating the impacts of financial proposals and potential barriers to a fundamental question of what OSU is willing to invest in. OSU’s lead negotiator suggested she knows how to approach this with traditional bargaining but not with IBB. CGE’s team certainly hopes we can capitalize on the advantages of IBB and avoid the traditional positional bargaining where OSU makes ridiculously limited proposals and starts out with a realistic financial offer.

Interested in seeing how this turns out? Our next bargaining session is almost here! It will be on Wednesday May 16 from 1-3 pm in one of the agricultural rooms of La Salls-Stewart. Hope to see you there!

Details on the structure can be found on the Facebook event.  You can also RSVP there.

Hope you’ll make it.  It should be a lot of fun!

In attendance: Mindy Crandall, Ashley Bromley, Wren Keturi, Sean McGregor, Jack Day, Matt Loewen, Lauren Atwell, Angela McClendon, Eben Pullman, Rob Hess with limeade

Meeting called to order at 10:05 AM

Minutes from 4-24-2012 Meeting:  Approved

Previously Made Decisions:  None this week.

RA Campaign Update

May Day Rally:  At noon today in the library quad.

Solidarity Fair:  Was on Sunday at Central Park. Wren saw about 15 CGEers and they all helped at the table. There were lots of postcards signed and all the CGEers had a good time. The event was physically spread out but each part of it was full of people!

Bargaining Update:  Next session is May 11: Hoping for response from OSU on what they’ve been talking about.

Membership Drive Update:  It went well for reconnecting with members, and got about 12 new cards.

ASOSU Election Recap:  The Harris/Cushing ticket won. We haven’t seen results yet on whether the grad write-ins were elected.

Strategic Retreat:  All or at least most of the incoming officers are okay with June 22 – 24. Ashley and Angela will get the house reserved ASAP.

GMM Recap:  Great turnout (>70) and the food and beer were fantastic. Some people mentioned to Wren that they felt a little uncomfortable with the awkward conversation with David Rives. The C&B Amendments took a lot of time to talk about, but it was important work and the discussion was good; same with the M/V/V discussion. In the future, we should reserve a longer time at the Senior Center because we’re always going late; need to decide about taking a break in the middle to help keep focus.

Online Tax Payment:  Approved

Salary Information:  A member has asked for anonymized salary data for a few departments in order to argue for an appropriate raise that they and a colleague haven’t been given. We’ll help with this.

[Executive Session]

Meeting adjourned at 11:35 AM

In attendance: Ashley Bromley, Sean McGregor, Matt Loewen, Jack Day, Wren Keturi, Bret Seferian, Angela McClendon, Rob Hess

Meeting called to order at 10:09 AM

Minutes from 4-10-2012 Meeting:  Approved

Minutes from 4-17-2012 Meeting:  Approved

Previously Made Decisions:  Approved paying for two new listservs for caucuses. In the long term we may want to look into cheaper listserv options (such as google groups), but for now PEAK is reasonable.

RA Campaign Update

Bargaining Update:  Had a session last Friday. Matt and Jack feel less positive about this one, although one attendee who hadn’t been to previous IBB sessions said it still seemed much better than previous “traditional” bargaining. Now there are a few weeks off before the next session on May 11th.

ASOSU Elections:  Ashley has sent the Candidate Report Cards draft to the Reps. Several of them have indicated an interest in being write-in candidates as well. We’re planning to have a computer set up for people to vote at the GMM (since elections close that night).

Membership Drive:  Not a huge number of new membership cards (2 at this point), but our main goal has been to get out and talk to our membership again. Bret feels that people don’t all explain fair share in the same way; Ashley suggested something like “You’re already paying for it, although you can get some portion back if you ask for it.” Matt will work on getting more cards from Geo this week. Jack wants to get SBHS up to 100%.

Tax Day Recap:  Ashley and Shari attended a protest downtown at Wells Fargo. Our megaphone got some use, and we got a few postcards signed as well.

Projector Dongle:  This has come up a few times in the last couple weeks (Rep meeting, bargaining). Everybody has a Mac and they can’t connect to CGE’s projector. Matt thinks it would be about $30. Jack thinks it’s a good investment. Sean approves the expenditure. Bret will go to the bookstore and find one.

Personalized Emails:  Angela will try a different plug-in on her current version of Thunderbird to make sure it works before Bret updates his version and loses compatibility with the old personalizing plug-in.

Bret’s Computer:  He blew air into it and it’s still making a lot of noise. Sean moves that Rob fix it. Wren seconded. Everyone voted in favor.

Online Backup:  Angela is about to finalize this. Will pay for it month-to-month for a little bit and then go to the (slightly lower cost) annual plan once we’ve lowered the jigabytes. Public Employment Relations Conference – Bret attended on April 5. Good information about labor law and the status of labor in Oregon. He thinks it would be a good thing to send an officer to next year.

May Day Events:  Still need more people to table at Central Park on Sunday! Wren and Bret can probably do the earlier shift. Ashley is bummed that she’s going to miss it. Wren thinks she should be able to borrow a pick-up to transport a table. Ashley will pick up some markers for poster-making because ours are all used up. There are some fliers that we need to pass around, and there will be some more lit written up about CGE stuff for the table.

All-Member Email:  This should go out tonight or tomorrow morning!!! GMM reminder and RSVP request. ASOSU candidates info and election. May Day events.

Strategic Retreat:  Ashley looked into a place Sean had recommended and it won’t work for us. There’s another place we’ve looked at that Ashley will try to reserve.

GMM:  Bret will ask the Senior Center about wifi and sound enhancement. Ashley will call McMenamins to get a couple tables reserved for the after-party. Here’s what we’ve worked on for the agenda:

1. Welcome and recruit an elections committee (5)
2. Nominations for officers (5)
3. Budgets (2)
4. Membership update (2)
5. Bargaining (5)
6. ASOSU candidates and voting (5)
7. Constitution and Bylaws – talk and vote (15)
8. Mission, Vision, Values (5)
9. Candidate speeches (15) 9.5 Voting
10. Campaign update (8)
11. May Day events (3)
12. Caucuses (4)
13. Convention recap (8)
14. Events (3)
15. Presentation of next EC (1)
16. Singing of “Solidarity Forever”

Garden Volunteering Day:  The June 2nd date we were hoping for won’t actually work.

Meeting adjourned at 12:09 PM