Fellow workers,
This is a reminder that GEO is going into bargaining again with the university tomorrow, 8/18 from 2-4pm in Campus Center 904-908. We strongly encourage every GEO member who is able to join us at the bargaining table. For those of you out of the area, there will be a Zoom component; you can join using this link.
We’re in a strong position going into this session. Last week’s rally showed the university we aren’t messing around. It demonstrated the solidarity of our community and our fellow workers, including graduate workers from Harvard (UAW Local 5118) and other UMass campuses (UAW Local 1596). We came together and spoke with one voice, saying: we won’t accept anything less than a fair contract! This means we need real wage increases, the removal of fees, and the maintenance of our existing protections from harassment and discrimination. This has been GEO’s position since the first day of bargaining, and it continues to inform how we engage with and counter the University’s proposals.
As we noted on Monday, there is some positive movement at the table. But there are also some very concerning developments. The Bargaining Committee believes the membership absolutely must know about these. In short, this is where things stand at the table.
The university has presented us with a package that is contingent on us accepting their wage proposal, which has remained largely unchanged since the beginning of bargaining:
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6.64% increases for the life of the contract (2020-2023).
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no retroactive pay. Instead, grad employees still on payroll as of May 2022 (which does NOT include many of the grads who worked during the life of this contract) would receive a lump sum roughly but not ultimately equivalent to actual retroactivity.
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NEW: We would also have to accept the extension of our contract’s duration from 3 years to 5 years. If we did this, we would not be able to bargain over any changes to the contract until 2025. We would be locked into 2% wage increases for 2023 and 2024, unless (and only unless per the university’s proposal) another on-campus union received more than 2% yearly wage increases during that period of time. Then we could return to the table and negotiate, but only about our wages (this is commonly referred to as a “wage reopener”).
Extending our contract in exchange for a wage reopener would have many harmful consequences for GEO members. From the moment we resumed successor negotiations in 2021, we have operated under the premise that GEO would be going back into bargaining in 2023 for our next contract. This has allowed us to focus all of our attention on the chief priorities of GEO members at this point in time: fees, non-working fellows, and stipends. As a result, we have not proposed any new individual contributions by the university to the Health and Welfare Trust fund (which provides us with free dental and vision coverage, as well as wellness reimbursements and other benefits). We also decided not to propose changes to the Student Health Benefits Plan this round of bargaining.
What a wage reopener and extended contract would mean for graduate workers is that the HWT, which has not seen increased contributions for the last three years, would have to run at a deficit for at least two more years. If the HWT’s reserves were depleted, the university would push to cut back on the benefits it administers—adding an additional cost for graduate students that we would not be able to bargain over. Similarly, the premium increases to the SHBP, recently and suddenly announced by UMass just one day after we reached a tentative agreement on health fees, would go unaddressed. We would not be able to negotiate over future increases or plan changes until 2025 at the earliest.
Finally, we are at the very beginning of an economic recession. Inflation in the last year alone has skyrocketed to almost 10%. We have no way of knowing how much worse things will get. To give away our ability to fight for better pay and safer working conditions, just to lock in minuscule wage increases and graduate fee waivers—the tradeoff doesn’t pay off.
On the other hand, the administration’s package contains some useful information about where they’re willing to move thanks to the organizing we’ve been doing this summer:
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UMass has indicated a willingness to accept our language on including non-working fellows in the bargaining unit, establishing a mechanism for identifying and including fellowships in GEO that fall outside the parameters proposed by the university;
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UMass has suggested they will withdraw their proposal to make graduate student employees mandatory Title IX reporters (though they continue to affirm their proposed cuts to our Harassment protections);
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UMass has signaled their intent to withdraw (with some important caveats, discussed below) their proposed changes to Article 25, “Second Job,” which would block graduate students from holding more than one assistantship at a time without prior approval (and which in practice has been used to justify barring grad students, many of them international students, from applying for and holding first jobs in the bargaining unit); and
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UMass has outlined a plan for phasing out the Graduate Service Fee over the next three years, waiving 50% of the fee in the upcoming 2022-2023 academic year, 75% of the fee in 2023-24, and 100% of the fee in 2024-2025.
The bottom line here is that we do not need to accept the administrations’ reopener framework. It is not the only way to settle this contract. We’ve seen what they’re willing to do to reach agreement; we’ve seen the impact our organizing efforts have had at the table. Friday’s rally was only the beginning. What are you willing to do for a fair contract?
Join us tomorrow from 2-4pm in Campus Center 904-908 for the bargaining session! The Committee will bring counters on wages and fees. We need rank and file members like YOU to come prepared to share your experiences and to let UMass know we’re ready, all of us, to settle a fair contract. So why aren’t they?
Write to us at bargaining with any questions you have. SEE YOU TOMORROW!
Solidarity always,
The GEO Bargaining Committee and GEO leadership
PS: For a thorough rundown of what’s been bargained over up till this point, check out our last state-of-bargaining update from May 31, available here.
