Down to last three articles and big news from MIT!

Five Tentative Agreements!

In another full day of bargaining, we reached five tentative agreements on Graduate Student Employee (GSE) Rights, Health and Safety, Agreement, Term of Agreement, and Recognition! 

The Health and Safety article guarantees our right to a safe workplace. Graduate students who work with lasers and toxic materials, for example, can request medical evaluations at no cost to the GSE. Additionally, this article protects the rights of grad workers to stop working in instances where they identify “imminent danger”. Complaints filed through UCAIR or the UCPD Compliments and Complaints form must now be responded to within 48 hours, ensuring speedy investigations into such complaints. 

The GSE rights article is robust and worth reading in its entirety. First, it grants us the same intellectual property rights as faculty for papers, inventions, copyrightable materials, and other intellectual property we create everyday through our work. This article further affirms our right to not be pressured to falsify data. It also delineates a number of University commitments that ensure we are provided with the materials we need to teach and research. The University will now pay for all work-related purchases and/or  promptly reimburse us in instances where we have to make such purchases for our work. 

Gaps Remain on Critical Issues

The University still insists on carving out discrimination and harassment complaints from the Union Grievance Procedure. The University offered that a complainant (the person who files a complaint of harassment or discrimination) will be entitled to Union representation during the Title IX process but that the complaint may not be challenged in a third-party arbitration. For complaints regarding other forms of harassment, discrimination or retaliation, one may challenge the process or lack of impartiality of University processes in a third-party arbitration–but not the merit itself. This offer still fails to provide us with real recourse in cases of harassment, and we will continue to fight on it.

The University also refuses to provide a counterproposal to our latest Union Security (“Union Shop”) article. At the table, they gave us the run-around with many periods of prolonged silence. The University has yet to make movement in our direction on the security of our union. This article is existential to a strong union and a unified workplace. It was a key sticking point at MIT, which brings us to an exciting development…

Big Big Big News of the Day

Our UE siblings at MIT have reached a tentative agreement on their first contract! After negotiations reached an impasse, MITGSU publicly announced that they would launch a strike pledge at a General Membership Meeting (GMM) on 9/13. The day before the pledge launch, the MIT administration folded and came to a tentative agreement with the union where they gave the union: 

(1) Real Recourse: Timely nondiscrimination procedures with access to full third-party arbitration, with the option for union stewards along the process.

(2) Economics Package: The package includes good raises, dental premium coverage, access to a vision insurance plan; local transit subsidy; and backpay to June 1 for both wages and dental.

(3) Union Security that will ensure a strong and united union that allows membership to hold MIT accountable and enforce the contract.

MITGSU’s membership will be voting on the contract after a year of negotiations and hard work of hundreds of organizers. You can see their General Membership Meeting where they discuss their contract in more detail here.