Umass Grad Student Union Frustrated By Long Contract Talks

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Workers Independent News


Umass Grad Student Union Frustrated By Long Contract Talks - 05/29/07

By Doug Cunningham

The Graduate Employee Organization at the University of Massachusetts is growing increasingly frustrated in negotiations with the UMass for a new contract. The grad student union is organized as a UAW local and got its first contract in 1991. Bargaining on the current contract has continued for five months. During the May 25th Umass commencement, the GEO protested the university bestowing an honorary degree upon former Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card. The union staged a job action and protested the Card degree at commencement exercises, calling Card a war criminal. The grad student union at Umass wants better raises and also has issues with increasing health insurance co-pays and grad housing and childcare.

AUDIO story here: http://www.laborradio.org/files/lo/winsheadlines.


Read more: http://www.laborradio.org/node/6026

[Bill McBlueState]

1. I'm on the GEO bargaining committee

The most serious problem we face is that, after campaigning for Deval Patrick, his administration has offered us a one-year deal instead of the three-year deals we've always had before. That's a tremendous strain on the union's staff to start a new contract campaign immediately after the old one is finished. Normally there's a break of a year or two.

We're arguing that, in order for us to sign a one-year contract, we need progress on these issues:

*Wages and fees: A combined increase in wages and decrease in the mandatory fees required of grad students. The effect of the wage increase and fee decrease has to result in a net gain to grad employees that at least keeps up with inflation.

*Health: Status quo on health care. The university wants to eliminate the $250 annual cap on the amount any grad employee has to pay in co-pays. They also want the ability to unilaterally add new co-pays and increase existing ones. We argue that these proposals taken together effectively eliminate our coverage.

*Childcare: An increase in the maximum annual income to qualify for free childcare. These maximums haven't been updated in at least ten years.

*Diversity: Our contract currently requires the university to spend $800,000 per year to increase the diversity of the grad student body. We want a guarantee that this funding will be distributed equally among academic departments and an annual report detailing the use of the fund.

We're also fighting a university proposal to halve the number of grad employees who get release time every year to work in the GEO office.

But other than that, everything's rosy. :sarcasm:

Thanks for posting this, Omaha Steve.