A "Toby Prompts Me to Work" Post

So we wheeled, we dealed. Nothing much happened.

I won't recap (see below), but will narrate.

The UO came in and offered us a deal whereby they would agree to give the GTFF $150,000 a year so that we can buy an increased annual cap. If you're saying to yourself, "But wait! Doesn't the GTFF believe that there is already contract language that requires the UO to give us $250,000 a year to buy mare cap?" then you are on the ball and a candidate for the next bargaining team.

We politely declined their offer and told them we were not interested in pursuing an agreement along these lines, as we are pretty confident that we are going to win a grievance that will require them to pay us $250,000. We also pointed out that it would take roughly three years to hoard enough money to be able to purchase a cap increase.

We counter-offered with the idea that they would automaticaly cover any increase up to 13% next year and 85% of any increase after that. They seemed genuinely interested. They asked us to go back to the office and write something up. We did. They asked us many questions about our proposal and went for a long caucus.

We got to thinking that maybe, just maybe they were thinking about accepting our proposal.

No such luck.

They came back and told us that they would be more interested in something like a 5% guarantee and then, if the renewal next year went over that, we could just agree to bargain. Or maybe split increase over 5% halvsies.

Given that this was the least we would expect to get in bargaining next year, it doesn't seem like reason to drop our grievance and give up $250,000 this year.

We are pursuing the grievance. We had our meeting with the UO's greievance officer and it went fine. We await his ruling.