Extension of the current heath care plan which includes a clause that the University will cover 20% cost increase to current benefits, plus 90% of all cost increase above the 20%.
Also regarding the health care plan, the University will contribute towards raising the annual cap in health care benefits by giving $250,000 this year and another $250,000 the following year. This should be enough to raise the cap from its current level of $100,000 to $500,000 next year (08-09) and $1,000,000 the year after (09-10), which will allow GTFs to qualify for FHIAP.
In addition to the current plan, the University will increase their contribution to GTFs with dependents by $100, by lowering the per-term premium for dependents from $165 to $65.
8% raise to the minimum salary over two years, 4% this year and 4% the year after next.
$56 reduction in fees per-term, reducing the costs to GTFs from $206 per-term to $150 per-term.
The extension of the tuition waiver to GTFs who take an “intersession” course.
The University agreed to cover the matriculation fee assessed to all new GTFs in the fall who have a GTF assignment.
Two weeks of paid vacation for GTFs with at least a 9 month research position.
The ability of GTFs to request a reassignment for positions in which they don’t feel safe.
Increased access to supplies, computers, private meeting space, and office space for GTFs.
The GTFF will be allowed to make a presentation at the annual Provost's Retreat for Department Heads.
The administrator in charge of hearing Step 3 grievances will have to have experience handling labor/management disputes.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
Contract Agreement Reached
The bargaining team today is pleased to announce that we have reached a tentative agreement with the University on a two year contact. I think it is safe to say the current agreement represents the best contract in GTFF history. Below is a list of the big highlights from the settlement. All full members will be receiving ballots over the next couple to weeks to vote on the proposed changes that would take effect in September 2008.
· Extension of the current heath care plan which includes a clause that the University will cover 20% cost increase to current benefits, plus 90% of all cost increase above the 20%.
· Also regarding the health care plan, the University will contribute towards raising the annual cap in health care benefits by giving $250,000 this year and another $250,000 the following year. This should be enough to raise the cap from its current level of $100,000 to $500,000 next year (08-09) and $1,000,000 the year after (09-10), which will allow GTFs to qualify for FHIAP.
· In addition to the current plan, the University will increase their contribution to GTFs with dependents by $100, by lowering the per-term premium for dependents from $165 to $65. This reduction in costs to the GTF is in part to offset childcare costs.
· 8% raise to the minimum salary over two years, 4% this year and 4% the year after next.
· $56 reduction in fees per-term, reducing the costs to GTFs from $206 per-term to $150 per-term.
· The extension of the tuition waiver to GTFs who take an “intersession” course.
· The University agreed to cover the matriculation fee assessed to all new GTFs in the fall who have a GTF assignment. Currently new fall GTFs to the University pay a $250 onetime fee. This contract would mark the end of GTFs paying this fee.
· Two weeks of paid vacation for GTFs with at least a 9 month research position.
· The ability of GTFs to request a reassignment for positions in which they don’t feel safe.
· Increased access to supplies, computers, private meeting space, and office space for GTFs.
· Additional benefits will be described later.
The bargaining team is extremely happy with the progress that has been made and we are excited by the current proposal. Thank you for all of you support, only when we stood in solidarity were we able to reach such a momentous agreement. The current proposal includes benefit improvements that many of our member needed, including a significant reduction in fees, decent increases in the minimum salary and maybe most important a raise in the annual health care cap, a benefit that many of our members have unfortunately demonstrated the need for. With this raise in the annual cap, GTFs will have added protection from and unpredictable catastrophic events that often leads to significant financial and other hardships.
In Respectful Solidarity,
Mark Leymon, President GTFF
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
STRIKE FAQ
Q: Are we going out on strike?
A: No. Not this term. Not without several votes. Not until September at the very earliest and not feasibly until December.
Q: Why are the bargaining team and the GTFF talking about a strike now? Isn't it premature?
A: The bargaining team is not talking about a strike now. The bargaining team is discussing what would happen if a strike became necessary. The bargaining team is reacting to the UO's stated position that their proposals are not going to get any better and could get worse. When thinking about the bargaining process, the team realized that a strike could be a possibility a long way down the road, but that the bylaws, as currently written, are a major obstacle to even exploring that option.
We hope that if the GTFF did hold a strike vote, this would demonstrate to the UO that GTFs are serious about what they need to get at the bargaining table and the UO would be more reasonable in their proposals.
Q: Why even worry about the bylaws now, if a potential strike is so far off?
There is an officer election going on now. When the GTFF holds an election, it costs about $800 in postage and supplies, so it makes sense to do the two votes at the same time. Plus, the bylaws election is a way to gage the how strongly the membership feels about these issues. The bargaining team does not want to be out ahead of the membership when it comes to our position at the table.
Q: If the GTFF goes out on strike will I lose my tuition waiver, health care, and pay?
A: It is extremely unlikely. We do not want to make absolute promises about what might happen nine months from now, but when other graduate employee unions have gone out on strike, they have not lost their benefits.
It is not likely that the GTFF would ever engage in an indefinite strike. This is not a really practical way for graduate employees to demonstrate that the university needs their labor. Grad unions typically go out on strike for two days to a week, or go out on strike during finals, when their labor is needed most. These short, high-impact strikes have the benefits of a longer strike, without the drawbacks that GTFs fear.
Long-term strikes attempt to cost the employer more money than would be spent by meeting the workers' demands. This is not really practical in a university setting. Instead, our goal would be to disrupt the placid routine of the university, leveraging how much professors and students rely on GTFs to get them to put pressure on the university. Additionally, universities as a rule, and the UO in particular, hate negative publicity. This is a tool we would use.
Moreover, the university is not a centralized system. If you didn't go into work tomorrow, say you were sick, your professor might know, but the UO administration is not keeping tabs and they have no way of doing so. All this is by way of saying that if went out on strike for a week, the UO would have no way of knowing who went out and who did not, and no real way of punishing you for it. Not to say that this is a promise that it could never happen, but the UO would have to rely on individual professors and departments to report on their GTFs and this is not likely to happen.
Q: Isn't the bargaining team taking talk of a strike lightly?
A: No. Simply no. We recognize what a strike would mean. Even a short one. We are members just like you. We have families, mortgages, rent, car payments, dogs, and daughters. In short, lives. We have papers to grade, projects to finish, experiments to conduct, research to do. In short, jobs. In our spare time, we are also students.
We harbor no fantasies of revolution. We don't want to storm any barricades. We were charged with the job of getting GTFs what they need to live their lives. We were given priorities by the membership. We simply feel that the threat of a strike, a successful strike vote, and, ultimately, a member-approved strike are all tools that we could use to get those things. Higher wages, lower fees, adequate health care.
As the bylaws stand now, those tools are taken out of our hands. That is why were are starting a long conversation with a call to revise the bylaws.
Q: Can the leadership or the bargaining team just call a strike at any time?
A: No. Any strike would have to be called for by the membership. We are a very proud member-run union. The proposed bylaws changes would make a strike vote more plausible, but still hundreds of GTFs would have to vote to authorize a strike.
Also, even if hundreds of GTFs vote to authorize a strike, the Executive Board of the GTFF would still have to vote to do it. If the Board felt support was weak, even if they had legal authorization, they probably would choose not to call the strike. A strike no one honors is the worst possible outcome.
The state of Oregon also has many laws that regulate how and when a public employee union can strike. The two parities have to bargain for 150 days before either side can declare "impasse." Then there is a period of mediation. If mediation fails, there is a 30-day cooling off period. Only then could a public employee union strike. And, at the GTFF, only after the membership vote to authorize it and the Executive Board calls for it.
Lastly, it would never be in the interest of the GTFF to hold a stealth strike. Not only does a union need member support, but the threat of a strike is a tool at the table and we would be talking very loudly if we were in a position when a strike was imminent.
Q: What is the process for going out on strike, should it become necessary?
A: Assuming the bylaws changes pass:
1. The bargaining team would have to believe that negotiations were at a standstill.
2. The Executive Board would have to agree and call for a strike authorization vote.
3. The Executive Council would have to agree and call for a strike authorization vote.
4. The membership would have to vote. At least 30% of the bargaining unit would have to cast ballots, with 55% voting 'yes.'
5. The Executive Board would have to vote to actually call the strike, but could only do so legally after all state laws are complied with. The Executive Board would have to weigh the number of votes cast, the strength of people's passion about the issues, the impact a strike would have, and whether they thought a strike would positively impact bargaining, which is the goal.
If the bylaws changes do not pass, then a strike authorization vote is highly unlikely.
Q: Has the GTFF ever gone out on strike?
A: No. The GTFF has never gone out on strike. In fact, the last time we can find evidence of a GTFF strike vote was 1977.
Q: Is threatening to go out on strike a tactic the GTFF uses all the time?
A: No. The bargaining team asked the E-Council to call for a strike vote in 2004, but the UO and the GTFF settled before there was much discussion of how a strike or strike vote would work. Other than that, 1977 is our best info on when the GTFF talked about striking.
Q: Aren't there other things we could do besides striking?
A: Yes. The bargaining team and the GTFF leadership will be exploring many ways to put pressure on the UO without resorting to a strike. Maybe it can't be said enough, no one wants to go out on strike. We will engage in a variety of actions and activities before any strike, or even before a strike vote is taken.
We find ourselves in the position of having to put pressure on the UO to get them to improve their proposals, so we will explore many avenues of pressure throughout the coming months.
Some things other grad unions have done:
1. Grade Strike: Withholding grades at the end of a term by even one day past the deadline demonstrates to the university how much they would lose if the grades were held permanently.
2. 'A' Strike: The idea here is to give all your students an 'A' for the term. The students are happy, you, technically, did your job, and the university, again, sees exactly how much they rely on GTFs to do a professional job, despite non-professional wages.
3. Informational Picket: Pretty self-explanatory. GTFs would walk picket lines and pass out info encouraging students, faculty, and classified staff to contact the administration and encourage them to work with the union to strike an acceptable deal.
4. 'Blue' Flu: Named for the police, but appropriate for our union, this would be an action where everyone called in sick one day.
5: Empty Campus Day: We did this in 2004. We encouraged all of our summer GTFs to teach their classes off campus. It caused a certain amount of disruption at the university and they settled with us the next day.
6: 'Credit' Strike: We threatened to do this in 2000. The state pays the university by the number of credit hours students sign up for. Most departments on campus encourage GTFs to sign up for a full load of 16 credits. GTFs are only required to sign up for 9 credits. The university would stand to lose a significant sum of money if GTFs only signed up for the required none credits. This action is tough though, because once the money is lost, there is no getting it back. Departments suffer as well, and we want to keep the profs on our side.
There are a number of tactics we will discuss and explore. A strike is a last resort option. It would only happen after other things have been tried. Moreover, we sincerely hope that the threat of a strike would be enough to help the UO see that compromising with the GTFF is in their interest.
Q: Are there compromises at the table that could be made that would make a strike unnecessary?
A: There very likely are several avenues of compromise that can be explored. The GTFF bargaining team has tried to make it clear to the UO that we want to explore these options. At this time, the last word from the UO is that they are unwilling to explore compromises.
Q: Isn't a million dollar annual cap really high, couldn't it be something less?
A: The bargaining team is fighting for the $1 million cap so that GTFs will qualify for state assistance for dependent payments through the Family Health Insurance Assistance Program (FHIAP). Unfortunately, FHIAP requires that insurance plans have a $1 million cap before people can qualify. Settling for less than $1 million would put much needed assistance out of reach for hundreds of GTFs.
As it is, we have only asked to increase the annual cap to $500,000 next year. The UO said no to this proposal.
Also, the difference that PacificSource would charge for a $250,000 annual cap is not that much different than for a $500,000 annual cap.
Lastly, the UO flat out said 'no' to our proposal. They did not explore ways to increase the annual cap at all. The rejected the idea and indicated that they were not willing to compromise.
Q: As teachers, don't we have an obligation to our students and doesn't that obligation outweigh any consideration of benefits?
A: Everyone takes their obligation to students seriously. If, however, we let that obligation outweigh all others, then the university really has us in a pickle. We will have to accept whatever they put on the table, no matter how poor it is. It is also important to ask what obligation the university has to its workers. As it stands now, GTFs earn sub-poverty wages, pay back 6% of their salaries in fees, and increasingly face the possibility of financial ruin if something dreadful should happen to them medically.
Each GTFF member would have to weigh their obligation to their students, their professor, their research, their department against their obligations to themselves, their colleagues, their fellow workers, and future generations of GTFs.
There are no easy answers. There are possibly no 'right' answers. That's why we have votes and that's why we take these issues seriously.
Q: Could international students get in trouble for striking?
A: No. Strikes are legal in Oregon. The GTFF will only conduct a legal strike, if the membership votes to authorize one. We, do, however, recognize that international students have particular concerns and will seek to address them as challenges arise.
Q: Will research assistants have to abandon their research and experiments if the union goes on strike?
A: Again, we can't know what might happen months from now, but the leadership recognizes that research GTFs are often working on their own dissertation materials and would have extra incentives to not abandon that work.
Other grad unions that have faced these issues have issued "campus passes" in exchange for volunteering for picket duty or other vital work. The GTFF would probably attempt to arrange a similar system.
Q: Would there be some sort of strike pay?
A: Hopefully a long strike would not be necessary, as it is not practical, so no one would have to worry about lost pay, but it not really feasible for the GTFF to promise any sort of strike pay. We don't have the resources.
A: No. Not this term. Not without several votes. Not until September at the very earliest and not feasibly until December.
Q: Why are the bargaining team and the GTFF talking about a strike now? Isn't it premature?
A: The bargaining team is not talking about a strike now. The bargaining team is discussing what would happen if a strike became necessary. The bargaining team is reacting to the UO's stated position that their proposals are not going to get any better and could get worse. When thinking about the bargaining process, the team realized that a strike could be a possibility a long way down the road, but that the bylaws, as currently written, are a major obstacle to even exploring that option.
We hope that if the GTFF did hold a strike vote, this would demonstrate to the UO that GTFs are serious about what they need to get at the bargaining table and the UO would be more reasonable in their proposals.
Q: Why even worry about the bylaws now, if a potential strike is so far off?
There is an officer election going on now. When the GTFF holds an election, it costs about $800 in postage and supplies, so it makes sense to do the two votes at the same time. Plus, the bylaws election is a way to gage the how strongly the membership feels about these issues. The bargaining team does not want to be out ahead of the membership when it comes to our position at the table.
Q: If the GTFF goes out on strike will I lose my tuition waiver, health care, and pay?
A: It is extremely unlikely. We do not want to make absolute promises about what might happen nine months from now, but when other graduate employee unions have gone out on strike, they have not lost their benefits.
It is not likely that the GTFF would ever engage in an indefinite strike. This is not a really practical way for graduate employees to demonstrate that the university needs their labor. Grad unions typically go out on strike for two days to a week, or go out on strike during finals, when their labor is needed most. These short, high-impact strikes have the benefits of a longer strike, without the drawbacks that GTFs fear.
Long-term strikes attempt to cost the employer more money than would be spent by meeting the workers' demands. This is not really practical in a university setting. Instead, our goal would be to disrupt the placid routine of the university, leveraging how much professors and students rely on GTFs to get them to put pressure on the university. Additionally, universities as a rule, and the UO in particular, hate negative publicity. This is a tool we would use.
Moreover, the university is not a centralized system. If you didn't go into work tomorrow, say you were sick, your professor might know, but the UO administration is not keeping tabs and they have no way of doing so. All this is by way of saying that if went out on strike for a week, the UO would have no way of knowing who went out and who did not, and no real way of punishing you for it. Not to say that this is a promise that it could never happen, but the UO would have to rely on individual professors and departments to report on their GTFs and this is not likely to happen.
Q: Isn't the bargaining team taking talk of a strike lightly?
A: No. Simply no. We recognize what a strike would mean. Even a short one. We are members just like you. We have families, mortgages, rent, car payments, dogs, and daughters. In short, lives. We have papers to grade, projects to finish, experiments to conduct, research to do. In short, jobs. In our spare time, we are also students.
We harbor no fantasies of revolution. We don't want to storm any barricades. We were charged with the job of getting GTFs what they need to live their lives. We were given priorities by the membership. We simply feel that the threat of a strike, a successful strike vote, and, ultimately, a member-approved strike are all tools that we could use to get those things. Higher wages, lower fees, adequate health care.
As the bylaws stand now, those tools are taken out of our hands. That is why were are starting a long conversation with a call to revise the bylaws.
Q: Can the leadership or the bargaining team just call a strike at any time?
A: No. Any strike would have to be called for by the membership. We are a very proud member-run union. The proposed bylaws changes would make a strike vote more plausible, but still hundreds of GTFs would have to vote to authorize a strike.
Also, even if hundreds of GTFs vote to authorize a strike, the Executive Board of the GTFF would still have to vote to do it. If the Board felt support was weak, even if they had legal authorization, they probably would choose not to call the strike. A strike no one honors is the worst possible outcome.
The state of Oregon also has many laws that regulate how and when a public employee union can strike. The two parities have to bargain for 150 days before either side can declare "impasse." Then there is a period of mediation. If mediation fails, there is a 30-day cooling off period. Only then could a public employee union strike. And, at the GTFF, only after the membership vote to authorize it and the Executive Board calls for it.
Lastly, it would never be in the interest of the GTFF to hold a stealth strike. Not only does a union need member support, but the threat of a strike is a tool at the table and we would be talking very loudly if we were in a position when a strike was imminent.
Q: What is the process for going out on strike, should it become necessary?
A: Assuming the bylaws changes pass:
1. The bargaining team would have to believe that negotiations were at a standstill.
2. The Executive Board would have to agree and call for a strike authorization vote.
3. The Executive Council would have to agree and call for a strike authorization vote.
4. The membership would have to vote. At least 30% of the bargaining unit would have to cast ballots, with 55% voting 'yes.'
5. The Executive Board would have to vote to actually call the strike, but could only do so legally after all state laws are complied with. The Executive Board would have to weigh the number of votes cast, the strength of people's passion about the issues, the impact a strike would have, and whether they thought a strike would positively impact bargaining, which is the goal.
If the bylaws changes do not pass, then a strike authorization vote is highly unlikely.
Q: Has the GTFF ever gone out on strike?
A: No. The GTFF has never gone out on strike. In fact, the last time we can find evidence of a GTFF strike vote was 1977.
Q: Is threatening to go out on strike a tactic the GTFF uses all the time?
A: No. The bargaining team asked the E-Council to call for a strike vote in 2004, but the UO and the GTFF settled before there was much discussion of how a strike or strike vote would work. Other than that, 1977 is our best info on when the GTFF talked about striking.
Q: Aren't there other things we could do besides striking?
A: Yes. The bargaining team and the GTFF leadership will be exploring many ways to put pressure on the UO without resorting to a strike. Maybe it can't be said enough, no one wants to go out on strike. We will engage in a variety of actions and activities before any strike, or even before a strike vote is taken.
We find ourselves in the position of having to put pressure on the UO to get them to improve their proposals, so we will explore many avenues of pressure throughout the coming months.
Some things other grad unions have done:
1. Grade Strike: Withholding grades at the end of a term by even one day past the deadline demonstrates to the university how much they would lose if the grades were held permanently.
2. 'A' Strike: The idea here is to give all your students an 'A' for the term. The students are happy, you, technically, did your job, and the university, again, sees exactly how much they rely on GTFs to do a professional job, despite non-professional wages.
3. Informational Picket: Pretty self-explanatory. GTFs would walk picket lines and pass out info encouraging students, faculty, and classified staff to contact the administration and encourage them to work with the union to strike an acceptable deal.
4. 'Blue' Flu: Named for the police, but appropriate for our union, this would be an action where everyone called in sick one day.
5: Empty Campus Day: We did this in 2004. We encouraged all of our summer GTFs to teach their classes off campus. It caused a certain amount of disruption at the university and they settled with us the next day.
6: 'Credit' Strike: We threatened to do this in 2000. The state pays the university by the number of credit hours students sign up for. Most departments on campus encourage GTFs to sign up for a full load of 16 credits. GTFs are only required to sign up for 9 credits. The university would stand to lose a significant sum of money if GTFs only signed up for the required none credits. This action is tough though, because once the money is lost, there is no getting it back. Departments suffer as well, and we want to keep the profs on our side.
There are a number of tactics we will discuss and explore. A strike is a last resort option. It would only happen after other things have been tried. Moreover, we sincerely hope that the threat of a strike would be enough to help the UO see that compromising with the GTFF is in their interest.
Q: Are there compromises at the table that could be made that would make a strike unnecessary?
A: There very likely are several avenues of compromise that can be explored. The GTFF bargaining team has tried to make it clear to the UO that we want to explore these options. At this time, the last word from the UO is that they are unwilling to explore compromises.
Q: Isn't a million dollar annual cap really high, couldn't it be something less?
A: The bargaining team is fighting for the $1 million cap so that GTFs will qualify for state assistance for dependent payments through the Family Health Insurance Assistance Program (FHIAP). Unfortunately, FHIAP requires that insurance plans have a $1 million cap before people can qualify. Settling for less than $1 million would put much needed assistance out of reach for hundreds of GTFs.
As it is, we have only asked to increase the annual cap to $500,000 next year. The UO said no to this proposal.
Also, the difference that PacificSource would charge for a $250,000 annual cap is not that much different than for a $500,000 annual cap.
Lastly, the UO flat out said 'no' to our proposal. They did not explore ways to increase the annual cap at all. The rejected the idea and indicated that they were not willing to compromise.
Q: As teachers, don't we have an obligation to our students and doesn't that obligation outweigh any consideration of benefits?
A: Everyone takes their obligation to students seriously. If, however, we let that obligation outweigh all others, then the university really has us in a pickle. We will have to accept whatever they put on the table, no matter how poor it is. It is also important to ask what obligation the university has to its workers. As it stands now, GTFs earn sub-poverty wages, pay back 6% of their salaries in fees, and increasingly face the possibility of financial ruin if something dreadful should happen to them medically.
Each GTFF member would have to weigh their obligation to their students, their professor, their research, their department against their obligations to themselves, their colleagues, their fellow workers, and future generations of GTFs.
There are no easy answers. There are possibly no 'right' answers. That's why we have votes and that's why we take these issues seriously.
Q: Could international students get in trouble for striking?
A: No. Strikes are legal in Oregon. The GTFF will only conduct a legal strike, if the membership votes to authorize one. We, do, however, recognize that international students have particular concerns and will seek to address them as challenges arise.
Q: Will research assistants have to abandon their research and experiments if the union goes on strike?
A: Again, we can't know what might happen months from now, but the leadership recognizes that research GTFs are often working on their own dissertation materials and would have extra incentives to not abandon that work.
Other grad unions that have faced these issues have issued "campus passes" in exchange for volunteering for picket duty or other vital work. The GTFF would probably attempt to arrange a similar system.
Q: Would there be some sort of strike pay?
A: Hopefully a long strike would not be necessary, as it is not practical, so no one would have to worry about lost pay, but it not really feasible for the GTFF to promise any sort of strike pay. We don't have the resources.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The Work Starts Now
At the General Membership Meeting last night, over 100 members of the GTFF voted to send an important proposed bylaws change to the full membership for a vote. Our current bylaws make it practically impossible for the GTFF to hold a strike authorization vote. The regulations require a 65% quorum on an authorization vote. The extremely high quorum would essentially mean that a strike authorization would need a 65% 'YES' vote in order to pass, as unions never assume any kind of 'NO' vote turning out. The high quorum may have made sense when the GTFF had 400 full members, but we now have close to 1000 and getting 650 GTFs to vote at all would be a herculean task.
Even if the proposed changes go through, however, there will be a lot of work ahead of us. First, we do need to get those changes made. The bylaws vote will serve to test our ability to turn out hundreds of votes. We need to get at least the same quorum we would need on a strike vote. This is will probably be the biggest test for the GTFF in my time there.
Of course, none of this would be necessary if the UO hadn't essentially declared themselves done bargaining. At least, they declared themselves done putting more money on the table. Just to review, the UO has put enough money on the table to raise the minimum wage by 4% each of the next two years OR reduce fees by $90 per term (with no cap on future increases) OR raise the annual cap on health insurance.
The bargaining team finds the UO's proposals unacceptable. GTFs deserve all three and more. We understand that it might not be possible to get everything, but that GTFs cannot settle for this little.
The UO is betting that GTFs are willing to settle for very little, rather than doing the work that it necessary to show them that this is unacceptable. They are banking on the fact that you are busy, that grad school is hard enough, and that, in the end, we are not a union, but just grad students who will take whatever they are offered and be grateful for it.
Even if the proposed changes go through, however, there will be a lot of work ahead of us. First, we do need to get those changes made. The bylaws vote will serve to test our ability to turn out hundreds of votes. We need to get at least the same quorum we would need on a strike vote. This is will probably be the biggest test for the GTFF in my time there.
Of course, none of this would be necessary if the UO hadn't essentially declared themselves done bargaining. At least, they declared themselves done putting more money on the table. Just to review, the UO has put enough money on the table to raise the minimum wage by 4% each of the next two years OR reduce fees by $90 per term (with no cap on future increases) OR raise the annual cap on health insurance.
The bargaining team finds the UO's proposals unacceptable. GTFs deserve all three and more. We understand that it might not be possible to get everything, but that GTFs cannot settle for this little.
The UO is betting that GTFs are willing to settle for very little, rather than doing the work that it necessary to show them that this is unacceptable. They are banking on the fact that you are busy, that grad school is hard enough, and that, in the end, we are not a union, but just grad students who will take whatever they are offered and be grateful for it.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Statement Not Given
The following the text of a speech/statement that was written for our last bargaining session with the UO (Monday, 3/17/08). The team debated whether or not to make this statement. Some felt it could come off as childish and/or whiny. Others felt that it made a powerful statement and could get the membership fired up. In the end, Dean Linton preempted any statement by opening the session telling us that the UO had put all the money it was going to on the table already and nothing we had to say was going to change that. So we didn't give any statement at all, but instead made it clear (hopefully) to the UO that their proposals were unacceptable and the GTFF felt compelled to move on to the "action" phase of bargaining.
So here is the statement that we didn't deliver to the UO. While the team did debate whether or not to give it in bargaining, I think it is a decently fair representation of the frustrations that team, and many members, feel about bargaining so far.
So here is the statement that we didn't deliver to the UO. While the team did debate whether or not to give it in bargaining, I think it is a decently fair representation of the frustrations that team, and many members, feel about bargaining so far.
Looking at your proposals from Friday made one thing very clear. You just don’t think that GTFs are important.
You say that GTFs are unimportant when you offer wages that would keep GTFs below the poverty line. When those wages are below average with our comparators.
You let us know that you think GTFs are unimportant when you ignore all of our presentations on fees. You have not responded to a single one of our arguments about fees. GTFs returning 6 to 26 percent of their pay to the university? Unimportant. Half of GTFs seeing a reduction in real income? Unimportant. GTFs paying different rates of fees than undergrads? Unimportant. This bargaining team telling you that fee elimination was our top priority? Unimportant.
We brought you the issue of timely pay. As far as we can tell, GTFs are the only group of employees on this campus that routinely get paid late. We all know why. We’re unimportant. Our paperwork gets shuffled to the bottom of the stack. If it was important to the UO that GTFs get paid on time, you’d do it. Instead you proposed a committee to look into the situation and make non-binding “recommendations.” We’ve seen the university's non-binding recommendations in action and we want no part of it. Not that we were important enough to be invited to be on the committee mind you. In all honesty, we hope your committee works out. We hope that GTFs all get paid on time next Fall. And this way you can avoid paying the late remedy penalty of $100 to any GTF and everyone will be happy. We understand that we are not important enough to actually have a seat at the table, but we have no interest in legitimizing that process by pretending a Q&A session is going to make anything better.
On the subject of vacation, I don’t know if you exactly think research GTFs are unimportant, but you certainly showed that you think this bargaining team is stupid. The first time you responded to our vacation proposal you tried the phrase “shall have the opportunity to be granted up to 10 days of vacation.” The second time you responded you tried “shall be allowed up to 10 days.” Allowed implies permission. Permission that can be granted or not granted, depending on whim.
Of course, nothing demonstrates how little you care for the lives of your GTFs than your rejection of our proposal to increase the annual cap on health insurance. We are sickened that the University can be cold to its employees. We are stunned that your proposal could allow the same thing that happened to Stephano to happen to any other GTF. We know it will happen. Apparently the UO is fine with the proposition that a certain number of GTF’s lives will be destroyed by its out-moded health care plan, but, like Stephano, that’s apparently unimportant and easily ignored.
We understand that if we could throw long passes, hit a three point jumpers, break records on the track, or play baseball that someone at this university would find a way to get us what we need, but we don’t. No one lines up to watch us work. We don’t pack ‘em in. We do however, work 30% of the instructional FTE on this campus. We lead your discussion sections. We lead your labs. We grade your papers. We hold office hours. We respond to e-mails. We teach the first term freshman what a thesis statement is. We stay over night in the lab monitor experiments. We do all the academic shit work on this campus that you are too good to do. We believe that this university cannot function without us.
To accept your proposals would be to agree with you that we are unimportant. We reject that proposition and we reject your proposals.
Here are our proposals exactly as you saw them last time. We want to make progress on the contract. We are desperate to make progress. But we cannot make progress that would hurt us in the long run. Unfortunately, accepting the proposition that we should be earning less than our comparators is not progress. Accepting an elimination of the cap on fees is not progress. Accepting continually stagnant benefits is not progress. Accepting that health care cannot be updated is not progress. And accepting that 8% of the cost of health care is all the benefits that GTFs should expect, is the exact opposite of progress.
If you honestly feel that we are unimportant and you can live without our labor on this campus, I guess we’ll find out. I hope this is not the case and that your proposals will look much better the next time we meet.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
human cost = financial cost
I think it is safe to say that bargaining yesterday with the University was at the very least disappointing or at the very most insulting. So much of it was utterly frustrating and unexpectedly cold. I'm not sure if it was the fear caused by so many GTFs in the room (thanks for coming out! the Union is only strong when we all stand together), the uncomfortable heat and stuffiness, a calculated bargaining tactic, or their lack of comprehension. My biggest frustration in the process is the University's continual approach of ignoring our arguments. When they come with concerns about our proposals, we consider them and make specific responses to them. Sometimes we attempt to accommodate them, and yes sometimes we outright reject them as unsubstantiated. But when they come back to us on our proposals, they never actually refer to our arguments with specific counterarguments or logic. We just get vague, "the University has done all it can do."
No other point spells out our frustration more than their response on Health Insurance. As many of you know we have an acute need to raise the cap on yearly individual costs. Last session we gave a 45 minute presentation on the importance of our insurance and the need to make improvements in the light of higher costs. The presentation included a tearfully moving all-too-personal narrative from one of our members about his painful experience and how his child's coverage was cut off during their greatest need. Yesterday they never mentioned the human cost of not raising the cap and gave no arguments against the urgency of raising the cap NOW. Instead we heard arguments about the financial shock at the high costs of renewing the current plan and the financial burden the University could not take on if they raised the cap, a cost of about 300K. So while the University has a 450 million dollar operating budget per year and is about to build a new 250 million dollar arena, they can't help the GTFs who will have to choose between going into financial ruin or not seeking medical care (with life-altering consequences) because they can't afford it. While the University may be comfortable with ignoring human costs in favor of financial costs, the GTFF doesn't have the stomach for it.
No other point spells out our frustration more than their response on Health Insurance. As many of you know we have an acute need to raise the cap on yearly individual costs. Last session we gave a 45 minute presentation on the importance of our insurance and the need to make improvements in the light of higher costs. The presentation included a tearfully moving all-too-personal narrative from one of our members about his painful experience and how his child's coverage was cut off during their greatest need. Yesterday they never mentioned the human cost of not raising the cap and gave no arguments against the urgency of raising the cap NOW. Instead we heard arguments about the financial shock at the high costs of renewing the current plan and the financial burden the University could not take on if they raised the cap, a cost of about 300K. So while the University has a 450 million dollar operating budget per year and is about to build a new 250 million dollar arena, they can't help the GTFs who will have to choose between going into financial ruin or not seeking medical care (with life-altering consequences) because they can't afford it. While the University may be comfortable with ignoring human costs in favor of financial costs, the GTFF doesn't have the stomach for it.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Trembling at the Sound of Their Silence
On Tuesday, we once again played our dangerous game with our old adversary....the University. It reminded me of the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin all right.
Tuesday's session was weird, but, unfortunately, all part of the bargaining game. The GTFF gave the UO our counter-proposals on non-economic issues - vacation, office space, faculty training, catering, safety - the UO sat passively looking pissy about everything we said, received our proposals without much comment, caucused for about 15 minutes, then informed us they had nothing further to say and we could all go home.
Anybody who witnessed this session and was not familiar with the bargaining game might have thought that we were very far apart on these proposals and that things were not going well. In truth, we're pretty close on these proposals and we probably could have hammered out any differences between the two parties in about 15 minutes of serious negotiation.
So, why the disparity between reality and pose? It goes something like this:
At the end of bargaining on Friday, I mentioned to the UO that we would be bringing non-economic proposals that the GTFF thought would get us really close to settling. The UO expressed pleasure. But, when we made the proposals on Tuesday, the UO had to act all pissed off about them. You see, by reacting negatively, the GTFF is put in a position where we start to wonder that we did "wrong." Why don't they like our proposals? Isn't this what they said they wanted? Could we have done better? What can we do so that they like them next time? These are all the questions that pop up in your mind when you give someone something that you think they are going to like, but they don't. Now we have 10 days to sit and stew and wonder and try to figure out how we can please the other side next time.
Also, now I am in a position of discomfort. Because the UO proposes next, I should have 10 relatively peaceful days of just waiting to hear their response. By reacting negatively to my proposals, my 10 days just transformed into 10 days of worry about what they might be bringing. How bad can it get? What didn't they like? Not knowing what it was they didn't like, my mind races around trying to come up with compromises to the dozens of different possible objections.
And then, days from now, they can walk in the room and agree to almost everything we proposed. Relief! Joy! Gratitude! Now, I have forgotten that it was actually our compromises that got us to agreement and I am grateful to the UO for not doing all the horrible things I have been brooding on for 10 days. They are heroes! We got what we wanted! Maybe we should go easier on them on the economic stuff, no? Isn't great to agree! Even if they modify our proposals to benefit them, I am still glad, because their proposals are not as bad as we imagined they might be.
So this is the game. Hopefully, knowing the game helps me avoid falling in the trap. We'll find out I guess. Maybe by writing this, I am changing their strategy. Maybe I was wrong all along and they hate the proposals and we in for some fighting. We'll find out next Friday. In the meantime, I think I'll just sit back and listen to the rock and roll.
Tuesday's session was weird, but, unfortunately, all part of the bargaining game. The GTFF gave the UO our counter-proposals on non-economic issues - vacation, office space, faculty training, catering, safety - the UO sat passively looking pissy about everything we said, received our proposals without much comment, caucused for about 15 minutes, then informed us they had nothing further to say and we could all go home.
Anybody who witnessed this session and was not familiar with the bargaining game might have thought that we were very far apart on these proposals and that things were not going well. In truth, we're pretty close on these proposals and we probably could have hammered out any differences between the two parties in about 15 minutes of serious negotiation.
So, why the disparity between reality and pose? It goes something like this:
At the end of bargaining on Friday, I mentioned to the UO that we would be bringing non-economic proposals that the GTFF thought would get us really close to settling. The UO expressed pleasure. But, when we made the proposals on Tuesday, the UO had to act all pissed off about them. You see, by reacting negatively, the GTFF is put in a position where we start to wonder that we did "wrong." Why don't they like our proposals? Isn't this what they said they wanted? Could we have done better? What can we do so that they like them next time? These are all the questions that pop up in your mind when you give someone something that you think they are going to like, but they don't. Now we have 10 days to sit and stew and wonder and try to figure out how we can please the other side next time.
Also, now I am in a position of discomfort. Because the UO proposes next, I should have 10 relatively peaceful days of just waiting to hear their response. By reacting negatively to my proposals, my 10 days just transformed into 10 days of worry about what they might be bringing. How bad can it get? What didn't they like? Not knowing what it was they didn't like, my mind races around trying to come up with compromises to the dozens of different possible objections.
And then, days from now, they can walk in the room and agree to almost everything we proposed. Relief! Joy! Gratitude! Now, I have forgotten that it was actually our compromises that got us to agreement and I am grateful to the UO for not doing all the horrible things I have been brooding on for 10 days. They are heroes! We got what we wanted! Maybe we should go easier on them on the economic stuff, no? Isn't great to agree! Even if they modify our proposals to benefit them, I am still glad, because their proposals are not as bad as we imagined they might be.
So this is the game. Hopefully, knowing the game helps me avoid falling in the trap. We'll find out I guess. Maybe by writing this, I am changing their strategy. Maybe I was wrong all along and they hate the proposals and we in for some fighting. We'll find out next Friday. In the meantime, I think I'll just sit back and listen to the rock and roll.
Monday, March 3, 2008
In The Event of An Earthquake, Your Contract May Be Void
We met with the university on Friday. The GTFF gave them our second round of economic proposals. Unfortunately, the UO's economic proposals were so bad, we were kind of forced to go with the same proposals as we had previously put forward. In bargaining we have a phrase, "bargaining against myself," which comes up with the other party gives you a null proposal. The phrase is usually used in conjunction with "I'm not going to." In other words, if we propose something and the other team just says "no," we're not going to come back with anything new, as we'd be bargaining against ourselves, throwing out proposals until we found one the university could live with. So, refusing to bargain against ourselves, we came with much the same stuff as last time.
To save your scrolling finger, I'll summarize.
We started with fees. We asked for a complete elimination of all fees that graduate employees pay. Well, before we asked, we did a little presentation where we reviewed some of the reasons fees is agenda item #1 and gave them several reasons for rejecting their proposal. I thought it went well. At least they can't walk away from the table without knowing we're pretty serious about fees.
We then moved on to health care. This past week has not been a good one for the GTFF health care plan. The increase to the cost next year will be high. Plus, we were in the unenviable position of having to ask for new benefits, or, as I like to call them, "updates to the plan." As some of you are learning, the cap on annual insurance benefits on our plan is an all-too-low $100,000. One of your colleagues gave a very moving presentation about what can happen when you or your dependent hits that cap in the middle of a hospital stay. Additionally, we let the UO know that we had to change the birth control benefit so that they are free for GTFs again. The renewal is a lot of money though. We're going to have to see what happens on this.
We hit wages next. We lowered our proposed increase to the minimum from 10% over two years to 8% over two years. This matches the UO proposal. There is a decent chance that this figure could change, however, given that we are so far apart on fees.
We also gave them a little grief for ignoring our proposal on the issue of timely pay. Awhile back, we explained to the UO that many, upwards of 100, GTFs were getting paid late. Of these GTFs, many had signed their contract well in advance of the coming academic year. We proposed that if a GTF signed their contract by September 1, but still got paid late, they would receive an automatic $100 "late-pay remedy." The UO did not like this proposal. They turned down the proposal cold by arguing that figuring out who would be eligible for the remedy would be complicated and that this problem was widespread and they are totally trying to fix it. On Friday, we let them know that we were not sympathetic to their problems, as GTFs getting paid late was more burdensome than figuring out who should get the remedy. We also argued that we could find no proof that anyone but GTFs were getting paid late, but even if the problem were widespread, we'd still offer our proposal as an inducement to fixing the problem.
That's when one of the UO team members raised a couple of objections to our proposal. First, he wanted to know, what happens if the UO is unable to pay GTFs on time through no fault of their own? What if, say, an earthquake prevented the payroll office from getting checks out? Would GTFs still get the bonus? And what if a GTF wasn't harmed by the late pay? In legal circles, you have to prove that you were harmed before you can collect any money. We shot back that if the UO wanted to write an "Act of God" exemption to this article, we'd take a look at it. We also let the UO know that we would just go ahead and consider the $100 a payment for pain and suffering, but if they thought that, say, $78 was a better figure, we'd be happy to look at that too.
That pretty much ended the show.
To save your scrolling finger, I'll summarize.
We started with fees. We asked for a complete elimination of all fees that graduate employees pay. Well, before we asked, we did a little presentation where we reviewed some of the reasons fees is agenda item #1 and gave them several reasons for rejecting their proposal. I thought it went well. At least they can't walk away from the table without knowing we're pretty serious about fees.
We then moved on to health care. This past week has not been a good one for the GTFF health care plan. The increase to the cost next year will be high. Plus, we were in the unenviable position of having to ask for new benefits, or, as I like to call them, "updates to the plan." As some of you are learning, the cap on annual insurance benefits on our plan is an all-too-low $100,000. One of your colleagues gave a very moving presentation about what can happen when you or your dependent hits that cap in the middle of a hospital stay. Additionally, we let the UO know that we had to change the birth control benefit so that they are free for GTFs again. The renewal is a lot of money though. We're going to have to see what happens on this.
We hit wages next. We lowered our proposed increase to the minimum from 10% over two years to 8% over two years. This matches the UO proposal. There is a decent chance that this figure could change, however, given that we are so far apart on fees.
We also gave them a little grief for ignoring our proposal on the issue of timely pay. Awhile back, we explained to the UO that many, upwards of 100, GTFs were getting paid late. Of these GTFs, many had signed their contract well in advance of the coming academic year. We proposed that if a GTF signed their contract by September 1, but still got paid late, they would receive an automatic $100 "late-pay remedy." The UO did not like this proposal. They turned down the proposal cold by arguing that figuring out who would be eligible for the remedy would be complicated and that this problem was widespread and they are totally trying to fix it. On Friday, we let them know that we were not sympathetic to their problems, as GTFs getting paid late was more burdensome than figuring out who should get the remedy. We also argued that we could find no proof that anyone but GTFs were getting paid late, but even if the problem were widespread, we'd still offer our proposal as an inducement to fixing the problem.
That's when one of the UO team members raised a couple of objections to our proposal. First, he wanted to know, what happens if the UO is unable to pay GTFs on time through no fault of their own? What if, say, an earthquake prevented the payroll office from getting checks out? Would GTFs still get the bonus? And what if a GTF wasn't harmed by the late pay? In legal circles, you have to prove that you were harmed before you can collect any money. We shot back that if the UO wanted to write an "Act of God" exemption to this article, we'd take a look at it. We also let the UO know that we would just go ahead and consider the $100 a payment for pain and suffering, but if they thought that, say, $78 was a better figure, we'd be happy to look at that too.
That pretty much ended the show.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Who Came Up With This Schedule?
So we bargained last Friday and have sessions this Friday and next Tuesday. I have been sick as a dog since last Thursday, so haven't had much time or energy for posting. But here goes.
Last Friday: The UO responded to non-economic proposals. I must admit, we were expecting to hear the word "No" a lot more than we actually did. While the UO certainly wasn't saying "Yes" either, they were saying that they could accept a lot of our ideas, but didn't like our language. Without being too positive, but probably being too cryptic, I think we can expect to see deals made on vacation rights for research assistants, a GTFF presence at some faculty trainings, some improvements to the workspace/work environment language, the ability for GTFs to ask for reassignment if they have security concerns, and an improvement to our grievance procedures.
This Friday: The GTFF will hit the UO with our counters to their monetary proposals. A brief recap -- we asked for a 10% raise to the minimum wage over 2 years, they offered an 8% increase over 2 years. We asked for a complete elimination of all fees GTFs currently pay. The UO proposed increasing fees GTFs pay and removing the cap on fees. And on health care the UO offered to extend the deal we currently have and lower the cost of adding children to the plan by $100 a term (instead of a $100 child care benefit). We respond on health care this week.
Next Tuesday: We have to come back on all the non-economic proposals.
This is a busy week coming up. If you can make to these sessions, we'd really appreciate it. The team loves to know that people care about what is happening in bargaining.
Last Friday: The UO responded to non-economic proposals. I must admit, we were expecting to hear the word "No" a lot more than we actually did. While the UO certainly wasn't saying "Yes" either, they were saying that they could accept a lot of our ideas, but didn't like our language. Without being too positive, but probably being too cryptic, I think we can expect to see deals made on vacation rights for research assistants, a GTFF presence at some faculty trainings, some improvements to the workspace/work environment language, the ability for GTFs to ask for reassignment if they have security concerns, and an improvement to our grievance procedures.
This Friday: The GTFF will hit the UO with our counters to their monetary proposals. A brief recap -- we asked for a 10% raise to the minimum wage over 2 years, they offered an 8% increase over 2 years. We asked for a complete elimination of all fees GTFs currently pay. The UO proposed increasing fees GTFs pay and removing the cap on fees. And on health care the UO offered to extend the deal we currently have and lower the cost of adding children to the plan by $100 a term (instead of a $100 child care benefit). We respond on health care this week.
Next Tuesday: We have to come back on all the non-economic proposals.
This is a busy week coming up. If you can make to these sessions, we'd really appreciate it. The team loves to know that people care about what is happening in bargaining.
Monday, February 4, 2008
My Two Hats
For those who have been around the Union for a while and have had the pleasure of seeing a few bargaining sessions, you may remembered the once every two year rite of passage as Dean Linton would give his famed “two hats” speech. Sadly it didn’t happen this last Friday, though he did warn us to watch our rhetoric, we can say we got a different kind of two hats speech. The University opened with the old let’s talk about the “total package” that we fine GTFs get, remember now we’re the best and brightest, and how we should be thankful that while the University raised tuition they once again agreed to pay the extra costs. And after all, they reminded us, you have to talk about the tuition waiver because when a GTF is busy running labs, teaching discussion sections, and grading papers at a greatly discounted price, we can’t forget that the University suffered “lost” income when we didn’t pay tuition. Followed by a gripping presentation about how their wage proposal is commensurate with other EMPLOYEE groups on campus and than immediately followed by a presentation where the University reminded their EMPLOYEES that they are STUDENTS that should pay their rightful fees. We’ll forget the fact that they largely contradicted themselves by demanding that we pay large chunks of “STUDENT fees”, but also agreed to pay the “mandatory UNIVERSITY fees (some of which may actually be classified as student fees?).” Furthermore, they were quick to point out that if we wanted to we could just vote to lower those fees. That’s right, I remember now, I never voted on those fees in the first place and while I had no power over their creation, I certainly have the power to get rid of those pesky “student fees.” But even better, all I have to do is remember that I too have two hats and while I work for that poverty wage I can be happy to know that I also pay those “student fees” so I can stand in solidarity with my fellow students. Because when I think of it like that, I don’t mind giving back 9% of my salary. Wait, I think I remember something about how we shouldn’t be taxed by place that we work for, but I would have to put on my EMPLOYEE hat to think like that.
helping bring up the social class rear,
Mark
GTFF Bargaining in the News
If you missed it, you can catch the Emerald article about bargaining here. It's pretty accurate.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Getting Fired Up
[Read the post before this one for a summation of the UO's offers on economics, then come back here.]
[UPDATE: When I first posted this, I relied on some back-of-the-envelope calculations that have proved less than accurate. I originally estimated that the UO spent around $13M a year on GTF compensation. I now believe that $18M is a closer figure. So, when I was using the $13M figure, I believed that the UO's economic offer of an additional $300,000 in wage compensation was 2.3% of their total outlay for GTFs. Of course, if the UO spends $18M on GTFs, then the $300,000 represents only a 1.67% increase to GTF compensation. I have corrected the post below.]
The more I think about the UO's offers, the more pissy I get. They offered a 4% raise to the minimum in the first year. According to my calculations, this will cost them about $300,000. They offered to pay $100 a term for children's health care. I estimate this will cost them about $16,000 per year. So $316,000 in new benefits.
But they proposed raising fees on aprox. 1330 GTFs by $2 per term. This is $8000 a year in money back to them. They also proposed lowering the amount of money they pay for COBRA administration by $10,000. So in their proposal, they save $18,000.
They did also offer to pick up health care increases up to 20%, but we won't know how much money that is, if any, until May at the earliest, so that's a wash for now.
So they offered to increase total GTF compensation by around $300,000. They currently spend approximately $18 million on GTF compensation (wages, fees, health care). So their proposal would increase total GTF compensation by 1.67%.
1.67%.
GTFs teach 30% of the instructional FTE on campus. GTFs do the shit academic work on campus. We grade papers, spend all night in labs, lead discussion sections, file paperwork. We do all the jobs that professors don't want to do, freeing them up for the research, conferences, and all the good parts of an academic career. The UO gets all of the shit work done for about $18 million dollars a year. That's on an institutional budget of $400,000,000.
So when they walk in and say that $300,000 and 1.67% is all they have for us -- and then pat themselves on the back for their generosity--I start to get fired up.
Hope you do, too.
[UPDATE: When I first posted this, I relied on some back-of-the-envelope calculations that have proved less than accurate. I originally estimated that the UO spent around $13M a year on GTF compensation. I now believe that $18M is a closer figure. So, when I was using the $13M figure, I believed that the UO's economic offer of an additional $300,000 in wage compensation was 2.3% of their total outlay for GTFs. Of course, if the UO spends $18M on GTFs, then the $300,000 represents only a 1.67% increase to GTF compensation. I have corrected the post below.]
The more I think about the UO's offers, the more pissy I get. They offered a 4% raise to the minimum in the first year. According to my calculations, this will cost them about $300,000. They offered to pay $100 a term for children's health care. I estimate this will cost them about $16,000 per year. So $316,000 in new benefits.
But they proposed raising fees on aprox. 1330 GTFs by $2 per term. This is $8000 a year in money back to them. They also proposed lowering the amount of money they pay for COBRA administration by $10,000. So in their proposal, they save $18,000.
They did also offer to pick up health care increases up to 20%, but we won't know how much money that is, if any, until May at the earliest, so that's a wash for now.
So they offered to increase total GTF compensation by around $300,000. They currently spend approximately $18 million on GTF compensation (wages, fees, health care). So their proposal would increase total GTF compensation by 1.67%.
1.67%.
GTFs teach 30% of the instructional FTE on campus. GTFs do the shit academic work on campus. We grade papers, spend all night in labs, lead discussion sections, file paperwork. We do all the jobs that professors don't want to do, freeing them up for the research, conferences, and all the good parts of an academic career. The UO gets all of the shit work done for about $18 million dollars a year. That's on an institutional budget of $400,000,000.
So when they walk in and say that $300,000 and 1.67% is all they have for us -- and then pat themselves on the back for their generosity--I start to get fired up.
Hope you do, too.
Did Not See That Coming
The UO's initial offer on fees is a fee increase.
Not a huge increase mind you, $2 a term, but we'd also lose the cap on fees, so they could go up at any time. The UO suggests that if you want fees to go down you should take over the student government and vote them down.
That's right, in addition to working one third of the instructional hours at the UO, going to graduate school, getting your research done, finishing in 7 years, and trying to have some sort of life, you should also plan on running for student government. You know, a little something to do in your spare time.
Dean Linton warned me to watch my rhetoric on this issue. Which is kind of funny, because if he wanted me to watch my rhetoric, you'd think he would have come with maybe a fee decrease instead of an increase. But I will honor the man's request and watch my rhetoric.
The UO offered a fee increase for all GTFs.
If you do not earn the minimum wage or have children, your benefits in the next two years would get worse under the UO's proposals.
The UO proposed to take away the absolute cap on fees that is currently in place and replace it with a cap only on the fees they control. Your fees would go up if the ASUO votes to increase fees. (Maybe to help pay for a new arena?)
This offer sucks.
/watch
On wages, they offered to raise the minimum wages by 8% over two years. This isn't a bad offer at all. It's what they started out offering last year. It would cost them about $1 million over two years. I think. They weren't too terribly clear on how they got that figure. They basically admitted they made a semi-informed guess.
As far as wage offers go, I've seen worse. I've seen better mind you, but I have seen worse. Unfortunately, any goodwill engendered by the wage offer was more than wasted by the fee offer.
On the issue of "timely pay," the UO said "no." Oddly enough, they said no because the problem is so widespread they can't solve it for us because they can't solve it for any other employee group. Make sense? When pressed to explain or elucidate exactly which employee groups were suffering from late pay like GTFs are, the UO was unable to do so. But trust them, this is a widespread problem. Too big to be fixed. Except they're working on it. How are they working on it? They can't say.
They did come up with a creative little solution to the child care problem. They offered to knock $100 off the cost of cost of adding a kid to the health insurance. It's not the same thing and we haven't really looked at potential problems, but at least they spent more than 5 minutes thinking about this issue. Unlike, say, fees or timely pay.
So there we have it. The opening positions are staked out. Where we go from here is the fun part. The UO tries to convince us that their "million dollar offer" is that absolute best they can do. It's our job not to buy that. Actually, it's their job to convince us that their offer is pretty close to their best offer, so that we feel like any improvement to their opening offer is a "victory" for us. It is our job to stay focused on the need to eliminate fees on GTFs and not get caught up in "making a deal." Believe me, it's harder than it sounds.
Not a huge increase mind you, $2 a term, but we'd also lose the cap on fees, so they could go up at any time. The UO suggests that if you want fees to go down you should take over the student government and vote them down.
That's right, in addition to working one third of the instructional hours at the UO, going to graduate school, getting your research done, finishing in 7 years, and trying to have some sort of life, you should also plan on running for student government. You know, a little something to do in your spare time.
Dean Linton warned me to watch my rhetoric on this issue. Which is kind of funny, because if he wanted me to watch my rhetoric, you'd think he would have come with maybe a fee decrease instead of an increase. But I will honor the man's request and watch my rhetoric.
The UO offered a fee increase for all GTFs.
If you do not earn the minimum wage or have children, your benefits in the next two years would get worse under the UO's proposals.
The UO proposed to take away the absolute cap on fees that is currently in place and replace it with a cap only on the fees they control. Your fees would go up if the ASUO votes to increase fees. (Maybe to help pay for a new arena?)
This offer sucks.
/watch
On wages, they offered to raise the minimum wages by 8% over two years. This isn't a bad offer at all. It's what they started out offering last year. It would cost them about $1 million over two years. I think. They weren't too terribly clear on how they got that figure. They basically admitted they made a semi-informed guess.
As far as wage offers go, I've seen worse. I've seen better mind you, but I have seen worse. Unfortunately, any goodwill engendered by the wage offer was more than wasted by the fee offer.
On the issue of "timely pay," the UO said "no." Oddly enough, they said no because the problem is so widespread they can't solve it for us because they can't solve it for any other employee group. Make sense? When pressed to explain or elucidate exactly which employee groups were suffering from late pay like GTFs are, the UO was unable to do so. But trust them, this is a widespread problem. Too big to be fixed. Except they're working on it. How are they working on it? They can't say.
They did come up with a creative little solution to the child care problem. They offered to knock $100 off the cost of cost of adding a kid to the health insurance. It's not the same thing and we haven't really looked at potential problems, but at least they spent more than 5 minutes thinking about this issue. Unlike, say, fees or timely pay.
So there we have it. The opening positions are staked out. Where we go from here is the fun part. The UO tries to convince us that their "million dollar offer" is that absolute best they can do. It's our job not to buy that. Actually, it's their job to convince us that their offer is pretty close to their best offer, so that we feel like any improvement to their opening offer is a "victory" for us. It is our job to stay focused on the need to eliminate fees on GTFs and not get caught up in "making a deal." Believe me, it's harder than it sounds.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Do you feel safe?
It's funny how the University can somehow find ways to look so foolish at the table. For example, they can argue that it isn't perfectly reasonable to expect that we work in a safe and healthy place, and that we have the tools and supplies needed to do the job THEY hired us to do. It's not that they don't think that these things are important in the abstract (well maybe they do and maybe they don't), but somehow they can find a way to simultaneously call us the "best and the brightest" and at the same time imply that we can't be trusted to be 'reasonable' in defining what is a safe and healthy space. "Surely" they argue "shouldn't their be some sort of objective standard by which we can say this person has made a reasonable determination that they feel unsafe." Huh, 'I feel unsafe,' now please tell me if my feelings are valid and have met the University-determined threshold so I can know if I am being 'reasonable' or not. Sounds perfectly logical to me.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
As a bargaining team member who has never done this before, I have to say last session was the most interesting one yet. I thought our economic proposals might have generated a stir from the University's side, but somehow our non-economic proposals caused more of a commotion. Dave has done a nice job describing it in vague terms. Needless to say I look forward to the session(s) where some of these topic will come up again. I would also like to mention how nice it is to have supporters come, especially when the University tries to say something outrageous.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Best and the Brightest
One of the advantages of not being over-the-top with our rhetoric or demands is that when the university goes over-the-top with their rhetoric, they look like asses. Oh, I am sure that we cross the line sometimes and I am sure that University administrators are so far removed that they honestly think that $8000 a year sounds like a perfectly reasonable wage. Our members, however, take a very different view don't believe that asking for, say fee relief, is over-the-top. But when University administrators start condescending, our members go nuts.
I think a key here is that many grad unionist are very new to the union (because of the constant turnover) and even newer to bargaining. Usually grad unionists are only familiar with unions from what they know in the popular culture and the popular culture has not been good for unions as of late, so they kind of expect the union to be all high demands, fiery rhetoric and strike talk from day one. In other words, they expect their union to be unreasonable. We very deliberately do not live up to these expectations. One of the ways we do this, of course, is by surveying our members to find out what they want from bargaining and what they think is reasonable, then not setting our opening bargaining proposals much above that. We also do a thorough job of presenting the rationale behind our proposals to our members. We say, yeah, a 10% raise sounds like a lot, but your comparators earn more, the average wage is below the poverty line, you qualify for food stamps, the UO financial aid office says it costs more than you earn to attend the university, and you do 30% of the instructional work on campus, but get only 15% of the instructional pay. We do the same for all of our proposals. We sum it up in the mantra, "Never put anything on the table you don't believe in."
So, while our proposals may ask for a lot and we may know they UO can't afford everything we ask for, the proposals make sense and they have a solid basis. The same with our rhetoric. We show that GTFs, on average, earn below the poverty line. We say that it is shameful that the UO cannot make sure that all of its employees are not living in poverty. We don't dwell on it and we don't accuse the actual people across from us as being at fault or not caring about this. Hell, I want them to agree with me that it is bad and help us fix it. What the GTFF does not do is make it out like GTFs are starving to death. GTFs are poor--yes. GTFs struggle financially--yes. GTFs make difficult financial choices--yes. GTFs are living in cardboard boxes under overpasses--no. We don't compare ourselves to sweatshop labor. We religiously avoid references to slavery. We keep third-world workers out of our bargaining table presentations.
We do all of these things so that when the University decides to unleash a little sarcasm, blithely dismiss our proposals, condescend to the point of mockery, then they, as I said before, tend to look like asses. And, as much fun as that can be, the important thing is that it gets the membership on our side and fired up. It literally can convert a union skeptic into a leader in one afternoon. And all those people go out and tell their friends and the next thing you know your union is organizing. We've all heard that the bosses are the best organizers. Definitely true, and that's why we love having members come to bargaining, because you never know when the other side is going to go ahead and do all your organizing work for you.
I think a key here is that many grad unionist are very new to the union (because of the constant turnover) and even newer to bargaining. Usually grad unionists are only familiar with unions from what they know in the popular culture and the popular culture has not been good for unions as of late, so they kind of expect the union to be all high demands, fiery rhetoric and strike talk from day one. In other words, they expect their union to be unreasonable. We very deliberately do not live up to these expectations. One of the ways we do this, of course, is by surveying our members to find out what they want from bargaining and what they think is reasonable, then not setting our opening bargaining proposals much above that. We also do a thorough job of presenting the rationale behind our proposals to our members. We say, yeah, a 10% raise sounds like a lot, but your comparators earn more, the average wage is below the poverty line, you qualify for food stamps, the UO financial aid office says it costs more than you earn to attend the university, and you do 30% of the instructional work on campus, but get only 15% of the instructional pay. We do the same for all of our proposals. We sum it up in the mantra, "Never put anything on the table you don't believe in."
So, while our proposals may ask for a lot and we may know they UO can't afford everything we ask for, the proposals make sense and they have a solid basis. The same with our rhetoric. We show that GTFs, on average, earn below the poverty line. We say that it is shameful that the UO cannot make sure that all of its employees are not living in poverty. We don't dwell on it and we don't accuse the actual people across from us as being at fault or not caring about this. Hell, I want them to agree with me that it is bad and help us fix it. What the GTFF does not do is make it out like GTFs are starving to death. GTFs are poor--yes. GTFs struggle financially--yes. GTFs make difficult financial choices--yes. GTFs are living in cardboard boxes under overpasses--no. We don't compare ourselves to sweatshop labor. We religiously avoid references to slavery. We keep third-world workers out of our bargaining table presentations.
We do all of these things so that when the University decides to unleash a little sarcasm, blithely dismiss our proposals, condescend to the point of mockery, then they, as I said before, tend to look like asses. And, as much fun as that can be, the important thing is that it gets the membership on our side and fired up. It literally can convert a union skeptic into a leader in one afternoon. And all those people go out and tell their friends and the next thing you know your union is organizing. We've all heard that the bosses are the best organizers. Definitely true, and that's why we love having members come to bargaining, because you never know when the other side is going to go ahead and do all your organizing work for you.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Long time, no post
It has been a long time, but bargaining really only got cooking last Friday.
The GTFF presented our economic proposals to the UO. It went about as can be expected. We gave them a little presentation, they asked questions, we gave them our proposals. It's possible that some of you think that perhaps bargaining is a no stop give-and-take of conversation studded with proposal, counter-proposal, and further counter-proposals until the two sides come to some agreement. It may work that way somewhere, but it does not work that way here at the UO. Here we propose, they caucus to ponder, they return to tell us that they need more pondering time, then next time we see them they inform us that our proposals were unacceptable. Well, sometimes they counter propose, but it is not really a two way engagement of ideas/rhetoric. We do the same to them though. It can be really frustrating to throw out four or five really good reasons why your proposal makes good sense, only to never have any of those ideas engaged with. But like I say, we do it to them as well, so I can't complain.
Our economic proposals were quite hefty. We asked for a lot. (but then GTFs deserve a lot, natch.)
For wages, we asked for 10% raises over two years. This is what GTFs got in the last contract and the contract in 2002 (I think it was 2002, prove me wrong). So, for us, a 10% raise request is not a huge deal. It may be to the UO, but not for us.
On fees, we went for it all. Complete fee relief. All fees for GTFs, gone. I must say the UO's reaction to this proposal was muted at best. I had hinted earlier in the session that it was coming, but I expected more out of them than the placidity than I got. Maybe that means they are already on board.
We also asked for a child care benefit. I gave some impassioned words about how we have had language in the contract for the last seven-and-a-half years where the University and the Union have totally agreed that child care is totally important and something must be done, but nothing has gotten done. I vowed that this would end this year and something would get done.
All-in-all, we asked for something more than a million and something less than 2 million dollars in new/expanded benefits. The UO currently spends roughly $14 million a year on GTFs, so a 10% or so increase. Not over the top.
We also proposed a neat little solution to the problem of GTFs getting paid late. We proposed that if a GTF signs his or her contract 10 working days before the start of the term and that GTF does not receive their check on time, then the GTF gets an automatic $100 credit in their student account and another $100 every 5 days the check is not available.
This Friday, we offer the rest of our proposals, then on February 1st the UO responds with their economic proposals. Keep an eye on the GTFF webpage for room and time.
Here's a copy of our presentation to the UO. This information helped inform our proposals.
The GTFF presented our economic proposals to the UO. It went about as can be expected. We gave them a little presentation, they asked questions, we gave them our proposals. It's possible that some of you think that perhaps bargaining is a no stop give-and-take of conversation studded with proposal, counter-proposal, and further counter-proposals until the two sides come to some agreement. It may work that way somewhere, but it does not work that way here at the UO. Here we propose, they caucus to ponder, they return to tell us that they need more pondering time, then next time we see them they inform us that our proposals were unacceptable. Well, sometimes they counter propose, but it is not really a two way engagement of ideas/rhetoric. We do the same to them though. It can be really frustrating to throw out four or five really good reasons why your proposal makes good sense, only to never have any of those ideas engaged with. But like I say, we do it to them as well, so I can't complain.
Our economic proposals were quite hefty. We asked for a lot. (but then GTFs deserve a lot, natch.)
For wages, we asked for 10% raises over two years. This is what GTFs got in the last contract and the contract in 2002 (I think it was 2002, prove me wrong). So, for us, a 10% raise request is not a huge deal. It may be to the UO, but not for us.
On fees, we went for it all. Complete fee relief. All fees for GTFs, gone. I must say the UO's reaction to this proposal was muted at best. I had hinted earlier in the session that it was coming, but I expected more out of them than the placidity than I got. Maybe that means they are already on board.
We also asked for a child care benefit. I gave some impassioned words about how we have had language in the contract for the last seven-and-a-half years where the University and the Union have totally agreed that child care is totally important and something must be done, but nothing has gotten done. I vowed that this would end this year and something would get done.
All-in-all, we asked for something more than a million and something less than 2 million dollars in new/expanded benefits. The UO currently spends roughly $14 million a year on GTFs, so a 10% or so increase. Not over the top.
We also proposed a neat little solution to the problem of GTFs getting paid late. We proposed that if a GTF signs his or her contract 10 working days before the start of the term and that GTF does not receive their check on time, then the GTF gets an automatic $100 credit in their student account and another $100 every 5 days the check is not available.
This Friday, we offer the rest of our proposals, then on February 1st the UO responds with their economic proposals. Keep an eye on the GTFF webpage for room and time.
Here's a copy of our presentation to the UO. This information helped inform our proposals.
Article 21 [Salary]
Almost there ~ Stay on target
Background facts:
Based on D-list given to the GTFF on
| | Month | Term | Academic Yr |
| Average GTF Minimum Wage | $923.65 | $2,770.95 | $8,312.85 |
| Average Wage | $1,142.69 | $3,428.07 | $10,284.21 |
| Average Minimum FTE | | .3673 | |
| Average FTE | | .4029 | |
| | | | |
| GTFs earning minimum | 558 | | |
| GTFs earning above minimum | 529 | | |
1. Comparator Data
GTF wages are roughly 9.5% behind those of our official comparators.
2. Poverty
The average GTF earns $10,284 or just above the poverty line. The average GTF earning the minimum wage earns $8,313 or $1897 less than the poverty line.
2007 HHS Poverty Guidelines
| Persons | 48 Contiguous | | |
| 1 | $10,210 | $12,770 | $11,750 |
| 2 | 13,690 | 17,120 | 15,750 |
| 3 | 17,170 | 21,470 | 19,750 |
| 4 | 20,650 | 25,820 | 23,750 |
SOURCE: Federal Register, Vol. 72, No. 15,
3. Food stamps
According to the State of
4. UO calculations
Based on information found at http://financialaid.uoregon.edu/Cost.htm
| | Monthly | Academic Year | Full Year |
| | | | |
| Monthly: Rent, $440, Food, $293, Utilities, $139 | $872 | $7,848 | $10,464 |
| Books and Supplies | $87.50 | $1,050 | $1,050 |
| Personal Expenses | $277 | $2,496 | $3,328 |
| Minimum Fees | $69 | $618 | $618 |
| Total | $1,306 | $12,012 | $15,460 |
| UO Recommended Laptop (Law students) | | | $1,650 |
The average GTF earns $163 less per month than the UO estimated cost of attendance. The average GTF who earns the minimum earns $382 less per month than the UO’s estimated cost of attendance. The average GTF who earns the minimum earns about half of the yearly cost of living for attending the UO.
5. Ratio of labor to pay
Based on information from 2006 found at: http://rm.uoregon.edu/pi_2006_sum_report
| | 03-04 | 04-05 | 05-06 |
| GTF FTE | 389.4 | 397.1 | 394.1 |
| Total Instructional FTE | 1226.3 | 1231.2 | 1242.2 |
| | 31.75% | 32.25% | 31.73% |
| | | | |
| GTF Salary | $8,975,282 | $9,174,258 | $9,286,078 |
| Total Instructional Salaries | $59,640,816 | $60,096,489 | $63,792,741 |
| | 15.05% | 15.27% | 14.56% |
Article 22[Fees]
Onerous ~ Burdensome
1. Membership
Fee relief was voted the number #1 goal of the membership of the GTFF in every survey we did.
In the past year, many departments that did not raise their wages because they did not have to. This means that hundreds of GTFs saw no increase in benefits, despite the fact that inflation caused real wages to go down by 3% or so.
2. Give backs
| Type of Fee | Fee |
| Resource Fee | $206 |
| Matriculation Fee | $250 |
| Studio-based Art & Architecture Fee | $125 |
| Non Studio-based Art & Architecture Fee | $75 |
| Computer Science | $125 |
| LCB | $600 |
| Music | $100 |
| Education | $50 |
Source: http://www.ous.edu/dept/budget/files/AY07%20Fee%20Book_Rev_072507.pdf
Our estimation is that GTFs pay roughly $1,033,000 in fees to the UO every year. These fees represent a return to the UO of approximately 11% of the total salary earned by GTFs.
The minimum amount of fees a GTF pays is $618 per year. This represents 6% of the average GTF’s annual salary and 7.4% of the annual salary of a GTF who earns the average minimum wage.
Fall fees are particularly burdensome because the first check most GTFs collect are half-checks. A new GTF who earns the minimum average would have a fee bill of at least $456 due October 1, while collecting a $462 check.
3. Fee Reform
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