Coalition of Graduate Employees

As you may know, CGE is currently in the midst of a class-action grievance proceedings related to what we believe is a breach of contract by the university. For those unfamiliar with this grievance, this summer, and every summer past, all of our members, regardless of whether or not they were on assistantship, were levied a $34 charge on their student account entitled the “Summer Session Tuition Base.” The name alone would imply that this charge is, in fact, part of tuition, and hence, under Article 12 of the CGE-OSU collective bargaining agreement, should be remitted to all grad employees on assistantship over the summer term.

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Today, the seven-member Grievance Review Committee met to review the facts surrounding our grievance over the $34 summer session tuition base charge that was levied on our members this summer.  For those unfamiliar with this grievance, more information can be found here.

After hearing our case for the grievance and what we expect to be the OSU administration’s case, the GRC voted unanimously to send the grievance to arbitration, pending the administration’s response at step 3 of our grievance process, for which the deadline is Feb. 2.  CGE has notified the administration of the GRC’s vote, and we have informed them that we are willing to discuss a settlement to this grievance outside of the arbitration process.

If our efforts to settle with the administration fail, however, this will be the first grievance CGE has ever taken to arbitration.  Should that become necessary, we are confident that we will prevail based on the strength of our case.

Quick update on the $34 Summer Session Tuition Base grievance.  We just found out that the OSU administration deferred to the Oregon Department of Justice to handle the grievance for them in arbitration.  In other words, little old CGE is going to be arguing the case against well trailed lawyers whose job is to know Oregon law.  Doesn’t matter.  It’ll make it that much sweeter to win the thing.

Those of you who are interested in this grievance, start getting fired up.  We’re going to need all the member support we can get for this.  Though we don’t know if it’ll be possible, our goal is to have members be able to attend the arbitration hearing.  I think we might be able to put the DoJ folks off their game a bit if sea of grads show up sporting their (new, black) CGE t-shirts and beanies.

After more than one year of fighting through the grievance and arbitration process over the $34 Summer Session Tuition Base Grievance, CGE has agreed to a settlement with OSU over the matter.

Under the terms of the negotiated settlement, OSU will reimburse all members of the CGE bargaining unit who were wrongfully charged the $34 Summer Session Tuition Base for the 2008 Summer Session.  Those employees who are still students at OSU will be reimbursed through a credit to your student accounts.  Employees who were wrongfully charged the $34 but who are no longer at OSU will also be reimbursed.  CGE currently has scheduled a meeting with OSU for July 29th to determine the mechanism by which former employees will be reimbursed.

We see this settlement as a victory for CGE.  As far as we know, this is the first time in CGE’s history in which a grievance has resulted in members being reimbursed for a fee they were wrongly charged. (Continue reading...)

In an unexpected turn of events, OSU has repudiated the settlement they themselves had agreed to earlier in the summer over the $34 summer session tuition base grievance.  Their refusal to sign the agreement came after CGE filed a new grievance because grad employees were again forced to pay the summer session tuition base for the 2009 Summer Session.  Considering the fact that the settlement contained language specifically reserving CGE’s right to grieve over future violations related to the summer session tuition base, we see OSU’s repudiation as  retaliatory, and for this reason, we are considering filing an unfair labor practice against OSU.

In the meantime, we will proceed to take the 2008 grievance to arbitration.  A hearing on this case is currently scheduled for November 23.  We will also continue to push the 2009 grievance through the grievance procedure outlined in our contract.