Significant Gains on our platform; Challenges Remain

We’ve reached three more tentative agreements! 

We mutually signed off on three more articles: union rights, workload and scope of work. As a union, we will be able to secure access to University facilities, bulletin boards, and meeting spaces, and ensure that our elected stewards will have the right to represent members. Articles on workload and scope of work formally clarify expectations about regular work hours, meetings with supervisors, and graduate workers’ duties and responsibilities. It allows us to refuse extra work (including personal favors!) that is unrelated to our teaching and research. 

…and we’re getting close to signing even more!

We are only one section away from tentative agreement on our proposal on graduate student employee rights. This article will secure us the right to request office and storage space, work remotely, and seek employment outside the University if we want. We are still haggling over the protection of graduate workers’ contributions and authorship of publications, patents, and copyrightable materials.

Big wins on international student support; still negotiating

The International GSE Rights Article requires the Office of International Affairs (OIA) to respond in a timely manner. The University commits to ensuring that positions of employment will be held for workers stuck outside the US pending the resolution of immigration issues. The University will no longer cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and release information regarding undocumented workers unless legally required. If any such request is made by DHS, the University will inform affected workers to give them a heads up to prepare for any challenges. We look forward to finalizing this article, which is a great start to winning even more supportive provisions for international graduate workers in the years to come!

We still have some gulfs to cross.

The University maintains the opinion that graduate workers can ONLY be covered by the contract while they are ACTIVELY performing their teaching and research positions during their academic programs, meaning that technical membership in the bargaining unit will change quarter to quarter. Unfortunately we have no legal recourse, as the University has the right to not bargain over this under federal labor law. The union should protect workers throughout the entirety of their program, and we will keep working in any way we can to expand the scope and timeframe of bargaining unit protections. 

We are still negotiating Grievance and Arbitration – graduate workers covered by this contract should have the right to access a grievance procedure in addition to the University’s Title IX procedure. The University wants to maintain the status quo for mechanisms to address grievances – it is important that we continue to exert pressure on the Administration on this point in light of numerous failures to solve these problems justly and expediently. 

Come to CAT on Tuesday at 5:30pm and register for GMM on Aug 15th to know more about the bargaining process and get involved. We can’t do it without you!