Update 12/9/2009: The bargaining platform has been approved, with a vote of 98 for to 2 against.
11/19/2009: The CGE bargaining team has completed its work drafting our 2009-10 bargaining platform. This platform broadly outlines our goals going into negotiations this year as well as our rationale behind them. You can download a copy below.
Approval of this platform is pending a vote by the CGE membership. This vote will be held online and will be open until December 4. You can access the voting site through the following URL:
Voting is open to CGE members only. If you are a current CGE member, you will be emailed a unique ID to use to identify yourself as a member on the voting website. While each member’s ID is unique, they will not be associated with members’ names, so your vote will remain anonymous.
Please feel free to use the comment section of this post as a forum to discuss the platform online. You can also contact CGE directly with any questions you have.
Results of the vote will be published at cge6069.org when the polls close on December 4.
Anyone who thinks our medical insurance is “woeful at best” has completely unrealistic expectations. I’ve had private medical coverage, coverage through a large publicly traded company, and two small business. The coverage CGE members have is by far better than any other coverage I have ever had or heard of.
That said. If we could maintain our current pay and benefits at their current levels and significantly reduce or completely remove fees I would be ecstatic, as would in my opinion a majority of our membership. Increasing pay, improving benefits, ensuring fairness (like that’s gonna happen…) would all be gravy. Gravy is nice, but I sure hope we focus on fees.
I think considering the workload that graduate students have with respect to their duties, it is unfair to compare them with pay cuts of faculty and staff and pay hikes should be negotiated.
However, two important issues are health insurance coverage which is woeful at best and student fees.
I agree with Julie that in light of the economic crisis, most important is that graduate employees get paid for the time we are actually working. There are too many of us where that is not the case. That being said, I feel all of the items being proposed are important. Reducing fees and making health insurance more family-friendly are crucial to our quality of life. There are many quality-of-life issues being addressed in this bargaining platform, and I support this platform. Keep up the good work.
Given the current economic situation (with faculty taking pay cuts and losing positions) I think it would be effective to make a statement of solidarity with the University Faculty and Staff by not asking for additional salaries but focusing on making sure the University is funding each department sufficiently to cover the number of GTA hours required for the classes being taught by GTA’s. In other words, let’s make sure we are getting in practice what we’ve already won in contract (getting paid for the hours worked). I agree with Charles that lower fees are also acceptable to bargain for at this time and that focusing on one or two key issues would be most effective. Holding the University accountable for the agreements they’ve already made, however, takes precedence in my book. Otherwise, what is the contract really worth?
I think all the items in the bargaining platform are fair, but given the current situation I would only focus on eliminating or drastically reducing fees. The fee issue has been discussed for a long time and I think we should focus exclusively on that now. Adding more items for bargaining is adding more distracting elements. At the end OSU may just concede some of the points, like a better insurance, but refuse to eliminate fees. With only one big bargaining point on the agenda we may achieve more than we would get by bargaining several.
just my 2 cents.
Sanjuro: This is actually the first time I know of that we’ve developed a bargaining platform for the membership to approve. The platform is intentionally broad, mainly so we don’t corner ourselves by being too specific too early. Keep in mind that there’s a chance OSU will read this, too (we’re actually hoping that they do).
Just out of curiosity, what was our previous platform? This one seems a little non-specific.
Sanjuro