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.

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.