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.