Coalition of Graduate Employees

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.

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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