GTFF Bargaining Blog

Issues that Remain

2010-07-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

[We wanted to get you all information as soon as possible, so this post is being put up as we write it. Forgive its partial nature and be sure to check back for updates. You can click on (most of) the links for a more in depth discussion of the issue.]

Despite bargaining being stalled, we have made some progress at the table, both in the economic realm and on non-economics.

There are still eight issues on which the UO and the GTFF do not agree. There are four things we want and four things they want.

What the GTFF wants:

Objective Criteria for Satisfactory Academic Progress: Departments would be required to use only objective criteria for firing or refusing to hire a GTF based on academic progress. The UO wants to retain their right to use subjective judgments to fire and/or refuse to hire GTFs.

Fees: A $25 reduction of the amount we pay for the incidental fee and the elimination of course fees. The UO's proposals would not change the current language on fees. No reduction of the incidental fee, no change to the policy on course fees.

Contract Enforcement: Access to departmental rankings lists for the purposes of prosecuting grievances. The UO does not accept our language.

Maximum Class Size: Departments would be required to state in the GDRSes the maximum number of students assigned to a teaching GTF. The UO rejects this proposal.

What the UO wants:

Loss of Summer Insurance: GTFs who graduate in Spring term would no long be eligible for the summer subsidy. We say no to this take-back.

Future of GTFF Health Insurance: The UO would like to form a joint committee to explore the future of GTFF health insurance behind closed doors. We have rejected this proposal as unnecessary.

Health Care Costs: The UO wants to pay only 90% of the first 10% increase in the cost of health insurance costs and 100% of all costs increases over 10%. We propose that they pay 95% of the first 10% increase in the cost of health insurance costs and 100% of all costs increases over 10%.

More Bargaining, More Costs: The UO would like the parties to meet in the summer of 2011 to bargain over splitting cost increases that result from changes to our health insurance plan mandated by Congress through health care reform. We think these changes should be considered part of the base plan and fall under our other health care agreement.

Objective Criteria for Satisfactory Academic Progress

2010-07-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

Last year, some of our colleagues in the Art Department came to the GTFF with a complaint about how the Art Department had conducted the hiring for the 2010-11 academic year. Art had pledged to give preference to students more advanced in the program, but had not offered GTF appointments to several third-year Art students in favor of giving appointments to newer students instead.

The GTFF, on behalf of the Art students, filed a grievance that basically said "What the hey?" After weeks of back-and-forth with the University, they finally decided that they did not give appointments to three or four of our brothers and sisters because they were not making satisfactory academic progress (SAP). Most departments reserve the right to not give appointments to students who are not making satisfactory academic progress. This is all well and good. We did, however, ask that the Art Department prove that these students we're not making satisfactory academic progress. Tthe University counter-asserted that they didn't have to prove anything, as the Art GDRS stated that SAP would be based on a subjective judgment of the supervising faculty member.

In essence, the UO claimed that departments could either fire or refuse to hire GTFs based on the subjective judgment of the faculty and the GTFF had no right to ask for proof of lack of SAP. We feel that this is unacceptable. We do not believe that any worker at the UO should be fired or any student have their application refused without some sort of rational explanation.

We have remained steadfast in our proposal that departments be allowed to only use objective criteria - gpa, limits on the number of incompletes, exam completion by a certain time, etc. - when determining if a student is making satisfactory academic progress. Only by having stated measurements that all parties can know can a GTF know if their job is at risk and that they will be treated fairly.

The UO, conversely, believes that departments should have every right to make subjective judgments and reject any argument from us that implies that any department or professor might act from anything but purely academic motives. They strongly feel that our proposal would encroach on their academic prerogatives - in this case the ability to fire someone without explanation based on subjective judgment.

This is a very contentious issue, as it comes down to a fundamental conflict in labor-management relations; the University wants to reserve the right to fire or refuse to hire GTFs and use the excuse of lack of satisfactory academic progress, while the Union wants to protect the workers from the potentially random decisions of their bosses.

Bargaining in Summer 2011

2010-07-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

In addition to the health care cost increases that GTFs will almost certainly face over the next two years, the UO would also like us to go back to the table in the summer of 2011 to bargain over more cost increases.

Right now, our health care plan covers, well, everything that our health care plan covers. We call this the "base plan." Each year, the GTFF Trust has PacificSource price out the costs of various benefit improvements. Even though we go through this process, we rarely ask for them at the table, as they cost "additional" money and the University has been very reluctant to pay for "additional" items.

One thing we did fight for recently was an increase to our low annual cap on total benefit costs. You may remember that we tried to raise our annual cap from $150,000 to $1 million - so that the GTFF plan was good enough to allow people to apply for a federal subsidy for children - but no dice, we were only able to raise the cap to $250,000.

Well, this year, as you know, Congress passed the health care reform and some of the provisions of the law will impact our health insurance plan. The most obvious one being an elimination of annual caps on benefits. There may be others. Interpretation of the law is still being done and it is safe to say that no one really knows what is going to happen and, more importantly, how much it will cost.

The UO wants us to sit down in the summer of 2011, when we'd ideally know how much the changes to our plan that have mandated by Congress are going to cost, and bargain over which party pays what. The UO thinks this would only be fair, given that we traditionally only bargain over the cost of the "base plan" and additional changes are usually seen as costs over-and-above the base plan.

We, however, feel strongly that the GTFF is already agreeing to pay additional cost for health insurance next year and we cannot enter into an agreement that guarantees that we will have some unknown, but fixed, amount in increased costs AND some unknown and unfixed amount of increased costs.

We feel that any changes to the plan mandated by Congress be considered part of the "base plan" as neither party is necessarily asking that they be included in the plan.

We feel strongly that a two-year deal should be a two-year deal and GTFs have some security. The UO's proposal would be unsecure and almost require that GTFs have some unknown cost increases to health care coming their way in the 2011-12 academic year.

Maximum Class Size

2010-07-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

The GTFF would like departments to state the maximum number of students that can be assigned to a teaching GTF. This is a pretty milquetoast proposal. We are not trying to set limits, we are just asking that departments set limits.

We firmly believe that as enrollment grows and money declines, there will be a natural inclination by departments to increase the number of students per class. While this is not an ideal situation for any of the teaching faculty, we believe that there is not much difference lecturing to a class of 100 or 150. There is a tremendous difference between grading for 100 students and grading for 150. There is a tremendous difference between having 30 students in your lab and 50 students. There is a big difference between a "discussion" section that actually has numbers to discuss something and having 50 students in your section.

The University has asserted several arguments to counter our basic assertions. They have argued that GTFs are limited to a certain number of hours based on their FTE, so they don't need to worry about the number of students they are assigned. They have argued that the essential mission of the university is to educate undergraduates, therefore it is implausible to think that a department would ever assign a GTF more students than he or she could properly educate within the hours limits. They have argued that, in reality, the number of students per GTF in the College of Arts and Science has been going down(!) over the last few years (the UO was asked to prove this assertion. To date, they have not done so.)

Unfortunately, we feel that these assertions and the UO's flat refusal to even consider that a department be required to come up with their own limits further demonstrates that the UO has no idea what being a GTF at the UO is like.

We hope that our proposal will spark a discussion within departments about the proper limits for GTFs. We recognize that every department is different and a one-size-fits-all approach would not work. The UO, so far, is unwilling to even begin to engage in a reasonable way on this issue.

Health Insurance Costs

2010-07-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

Over the last 10 years, the cost of health insurance has risen dramatically. In the summer of 2000, the UO and the GTFF reached an agreement where the UO would pay the vast majority of the health insurance costs which had risen to ~$1 million. Today, the health insurance plan costs closer to $5.5 million. The UO has paid for all of the increase over the years. The rates to GTFs for summer coverage and dependents have not increased since the Fall of 2000.

We knew going into bargaining that it was time for GTFs to share in some of the pain of the increasing health care costs. We indicated to the UO that this was our intention going into bargaining. The proposals from both parties have centered on how much of an increase GTFs would see and how it would be calculated.

One of the major hurdles both parties face is that we have to figure out a way to bargain how much each party will pay of an increase when we don't yet know what that increase will be. This makes bargaining health care, understanding what's happening in bargaining, and (believe you me) explaining what is happening with health care bargaining rather complicated.

The framework in which the two parties are bargaining is something like this:

The UO will pay x percentage of the first 10% increase in the cost of health insurance costs and 100% of all costs increases over 10%.

0r put another way:

The current cost of the heath care plan is $5.5 million. If costs go up 10%, then the two parties will need to come up with an additional $550,000 next year to maintain benefits. We are bargaining over how much of that $550,000 each party will contribute. Anything over a 10% increase will automatically be paid by the University.

The UO has proposed that they pay 90% of the first 10% increase, or $495,000 of the $550,000, leaving $55,000 for GTFs to pay.

The GTFF has proposed that the UO pay 95% of the first 10% increase, or $522,500 of the $550,000, leaving $27,500 for GTFs to pay.

Both parties, at this point, want this to be a two year agreement. This means that if costs rise again next year there will be additional costs for GTFs.

While the differences between the proposals may seem small, it is important to keep in mind that we are talking about taking money out of GTF pockets. Any money subtracted from net take home pay is a detriment to our brothers and sisters.

Committee to Explore the Future of GTFF Health Insurance

2010-07-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

Contract Enforcement

2010-07-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

Currently, our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the UO requires that all departments create criteria by which all applications will be judged. Applicants are supposed to be ranked according to these criteria and GTF positions awarded to the applicants that best match the criteria. Only after the GTFs are awarded are departments supposed to try to match successful applicants with the actual class/job they are best suited for.

We at the GTFF strongly believe that this process is honored more in the breach than in the practice. Almost every department has a different way of applying their criteria and many ignore them altogether. We don't need to tell you that not all GTF positions are handed out according to a neutral set of criteria. You know how your department works. Some professors have more influence, some sub-disciplines get more funding than others, some grads don't get positions because they are unpopular/disruptive/(dare we say it?)women/minorities/any other extraneous excuse departments come up with.

We strongly believe that we must work to end these practices and get departments to adhere to contract language that already exists.

In the beginning we ask for two things, that graduate students who apply for positions in a department, but fail to get them, be allowed to know their rank in the applicant pool and get a written statement as to why they were unsuccessful in obtaining an appointment.

Our goal was twofold. If a department knew that applicants could ask for their rank and a statement, they would be forced to actually do the ranking instead of handing out GTF jobs to the favored few. Moreover, graduate students could know if they stood any chance of getting a job in the coming term (if one GTF leaves or declines an appointment, then the job should go to the next person on the list. Assignments (actual classes) can be juggled for best fit, but the GTF award itself should go to the next ranked applicant) and could plan accordingly. The requirement that the department give them a written statement would put departments on record as to their reasons for their ranking and could be evidence should a grievance arise.

The UO rejected our initial proposals. They argued that to tell applicants their rank would be a violation of FERPA, as knowing your rank could lead you to guess other people's rank. They rejected the idea that applicants could get a written statement as unnecessary, given that graduate students could simply ask their professors why they did not get a GTF position and then could have a good talk about ways to be a better graduate student.

Unfortunately, this incident did more to expose that the GTFF and the UO have fundamentally different understanding of how graduate school and GTF positions at the UO work than anything else.

Over time, we have shaved the proposals down to giving failed applicants the right to talk with the department head about their application and the GTFF's right to request the rankings list of a department, should a grievance about the hiring procedure in a department come up. Because we make it a policy not to file extraneous grievances (and have a good history to back that up), we believe that this request is reasonable. Plus, it will still help us accomplish our goal of making departments actually do the rankings and have a list on file should it become an issue.

Oddly enough (or not, if you follow bargaining closely), the UO argues that our proposal is unnecessary because departments are already required by Oregon law to make and keep these very types of lists. Why the UO cannot accept our language just to make us happy remains a mystery.

(We recognize that this explanation of why the UO won't accept our language is unsatisfactory. You don't have to tell us, but this is the best they can offer. We have proposed language that says "Each department and employing unit will keep a copy of the applicant rankings on file. In the event of a grievance related to hiring procedures, this document will be made available to the Union and the University." The University has proposed, "Each department and hiring unit must maintain GTF search records in accordance with Oregon Administrative Rules governing personnel files for student employees."

Now, they tell us there language is just as good as our language and the OARs totally require them to maintain the rankings lists and that they will have no problem sharing it with us, respecting the FERPA law. We, however, believe that our much more direct and specific language is better.

If this seems like an issue that has a reasonable solution just sitting there, well, then, we can't really disagree, but sometimes these things are harder than they look.)

Spring GTFs Off of Summer Insurance

2010-07-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

As it stands now, if a GTF has summer insurance, he or she is eligible for the summer tuition subsidy. It has been this way for at least the last 10 years.

In negotiations, the UO has asserted that GTFs who graduate in the Spring term were never meant to be eligible for the summer insurance subsidy and that the last 10 years have just been an administrative error.

The UO has produced absolutely no evidence that GTFs who graduate in the summer were ever not meant to be eligible for the summer subsidy, despite repeated requests from us that they do so.

About 200 GTFs who graduate in the Spring term receive the summer subsidy. At about $600 each, that would be about $120,000 the UO would like to take out of the pockets of newly minted Doctors and Masters and put into their own.

We have resisted the UO's proposals to end this subsidy on multiple grounds, including the paperwork issues that would be involved, the incentive it would create for GTFs to delay their graduation until the Summer term, and, well, we just can't see a reason to take money out of the pockets of people who earn poverty-level wages.

Fees

2010-07-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

Incidental fees: Over the past 10 years the GTFF was been working to eliminate the amount we pay in fees. We believe that there should be a true tuition waiver that fees are just tuition by another name. We recognize that demanding the immediate elimination of fees would be too big of a financial burden for the UO, so we have been chipping away at fees, moving from putting a cap on how much they could grow in 2002 (the cap was at $275 per term) down to today's level of $150 per term.

Course fees: While the GTFF has no major issue with departments charging fees for materials that are used in the class itself, we believe that many departments are charging fees that have nothing to do with materials and are just a way to get a little bit of extra money out of the pockets of graduate students. For instance the College of Education was charging a $100 per credit for to take research credits.

To their credit, the UO listened to us during bargaining and seems to have initialed something of a crack down on departments who were charging extraneous fees. Still, we believe that fees are part of tuition and should be included in the tuition waiver.

Economic Progress

2010-07-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

So far we have agreed with the University on a few economic issues. The two parties have no signed off on these issues, so technically they are open for discussion/modification although neither party has indicated that they want to disturb the issues on which we are in agreement.

Wages: We have agreed that there should be a 1% raise to the minimum wage next year and a 3% raise to the minimum wage in the 2011-12 academic year.

Not all GTFs will receive this raise, as about 50% of GTFs work in departments that pay more than the minimum wage. Although it is our understanding that departments receive the amount of the minimum wage from the University, which includes the annual raise amounts, the departments that pay above the minimum are under no obligation to pass along this raise and many choose not to.

Thus, when we calculate how much it will cost the UO to raise the minimum wage 1%, we calculate how much more the UO will be obligated to put in the pockets of GTFs. The cost of a 1% raise is roughly $80,000 a year.

Fees: The two parties have agreed to eliminate resource (aka departmental) fees in the coming year.

This was the GTFF's number one goal for this round of bargaining, so this is a big achievement. It was accomplished because the UO is moving to a model where colleges and/or departments will be able to set their own tuition rates. The resources fees will now be included in tuition and will be waived for GTFs.

Even though both parties have agreed that there will be no more resource fees, we have a major disagreement about what this agreement will cost the UO. We calculate that GTFs paid roughly $88,000 in resource fees last year, so eliminating resource fees for GTFs cost the UO $88,000.

The UO argues that all the new tuition levels above the base rate of tuition this year should properly be considered fees that might have been imposed on GTFs this year, but are not because of the new tuition model. Therefore, they calculate that GTFs are going to be receiving on the order of $750,000 worth of new benefits. We strongly reject this argument.

Side note on increased hc costs

2010-07-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

How this would be split between dependents and summer is yet to be determined, but roughly 50%-50% is most likely. There are 1000 GTFs on the health insurance in the summer, so figure a $27.50 increase in the cost of summer coverage.

Strike FAQ

2010-07-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

Q: Are we going out on strike?
A: No. Not this summer. 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 stale nature of bargaining and the UO's seeming reluctance to engage with us. When thinking about the bargaining process, the team realized that a strike could be a possibility a way down the road.

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: 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 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.

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. 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?
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 60% 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.

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: 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 nine 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: 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.

Progress?

2010-06-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

It has been a crazy few weeks for the bargaining team. Please forgive the lateness of this update.

First, we'd like to thank all the GTFs who filled the bargaining rooms the last two sessions. I have no doubt that the University got the message that GTFs are not giving up on bargaining just because the term is ending.

Second, the team has decided to have one last-ditch session with the University to see if we cannot wrap up bargaining before we are forced to call for a state mediator to help us resolve our disputes.

As for the last couple of sessions...the UO did make some movement on some of the issues that still divide the two sides, but they also re-emphasized that they believe that with the tight UO budget, their offers have been generous. Unfortunately, we do not share their view on this.

They are offering a 1% raise next year and no reduction of incidental fees. They are willing to cover 90% of the first 10% increase in the cost of health insurance and 100% of any increase over that. This would mean that costs for dependents and summer coverage would go up next year. (Exactly how much they would go up is up to the Health Care Trust). The real hurdle we face is that they want to offer us the same deal for next year, but have the two parties come back to the table and bargaining over how much we share of the cost of increases incurred by change to the plan forced by Health Care Reform.

Accepting these proposals almost certainly means that some GTFs will see an overall reduction in their take-home pay over the next two years. We think this is unacceptable and counter to one of the only things the two teams have been able to agree on -- that money in the pockets of GTFs is a good thing.

Additionally, the UO still insists that GTFs who graduate should not have access to subsidized insurance in the summer following their graduation. We continue to resist their attempts to eliminate this benefit. The elimination of this benefit would create huge paperwork problems for Lisa. Additionally, we feel that after years of service to the UO at poverty wages, one "extra" term of insurance subsidy is not too much to ask, especially given that the profession the UO trained you to go into has a built-in lag time between graduation and employment.

On the non-economic front, the UO offered some minor changes to their proposals, but remain firm on the proposition that departments should be allowed to fire or refuse to consider the applications of GTFs that they deem to be not making sufficient academic progress based on subjective judgments of individual faculty. In other words, they reject our proposition that departments must use objective measures when saying that GTFs are not making sufficient academic progress and taking away their jobs. The University still has not offered a credible reason why subjective, instead of objective, criteria is just, fair, or sensible, but they have made it clear this is something they are not going to bend on willingly.

They are also still resisting our proposal that departments have policies regarding the maximum number of students assigned to a teaching GTF. Unfortunately, the UO's argument against this proposal basically boils down to "it would be a pain in the ass for departments." This is an argument that we are reluctant to accept.

Lastly, the UO seems to be in complete agreement with us that departments have to follow the Collective Bargaining Agreement and rank all applicants based on the written criteria published in the departmental GDRSes. They seem to agree that these rankings lists should exist and be kept on file. They do not agree, however, that these ranking lists should be available to the GTFF should we feel that we need to file a grievance over the hiring practices of a department. They claim that an individual applicant's ranking in the hiring pool is part of their student record and unavailable to a third party such as a union. When we point out that this means we have no mechanism for enforcing the contract we all agree is right and good, they sort of shrug their shoulders and give us the ol' "whatareyougonnado?"

So what we have in the end is two sides that seem to have issues on which they are going to be extremely reluctant to bend. What this means for how this entire session gets wrapped up I do not yet know, but it should be interesting to say the least.

What's going on with bargaining

2010-05-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

I wish there was a lot to say, but there is not.

We've met with the UO twice since the break, to hear their proposals on both the economic articles and the non-economic articles.

Coming out of our firey pre-break session, the UO has been more willing to concede that we might have a point about some of the problems here at the UO, but they don't seem terribly interested in accepting our language or proposing new language to help solve the problem.

For instance, the UO is now willing to acknowledge that some GTFs might be asked/expected to overwork. In fact, they tell us some departments were already looking into the problem and still others agreed that it could be a problem. The UO's bargaining, however, would only go as far as saying that it was certainly a worthy topic of conversation and that perhaps more contract education at the departmental level would be in order.

They rejected our proposal that each department have a policy regarding the maximum number of students that can be assigned to a teaching GTF. They said they did so because our proposal would be an imperfect way to solve the problem, but, again, offered absolutely no alternative ways to approach the issue.

The UO took roughly the same approach to on the issue of criteria for satisfactory academic progress. Since December, we have been telling that UO that we think it is vital that the criteria for deciding whether a GTF is making satisfactory academic progress must be "specific and objective." As failure to maintain satisfactory academic progress is one of the very few reasons a GTF can be unilaterally fired and/or not have their application for work considered, we believe it is vital that these criteria be clear and straightforward.

Additionally, we have an experience from last year where a department on campus was leaving satisfactory academic progress up to the individual GTF's professor. Which could be theoretically fine, but it turns out that the department in question violated the heck out of their own hiring procedures and when called on it by the union, proceeded to claim that they were refusing to give work to certain graduate students because of lack of "satisfactory academic progress." The university asserted that since the determination as to whether the graduate student was making satisfactory academic progress was up to the advising professor, and it was an academic not labor decision, the GTFF could not question it. We were eventually successful in the grievance process, but we would, naturally, like to close this giant loophole in the hiring process.

The UO has no such desire. While they say that they, too, have no interest in making it possible for a department violate the contractual hiring procedures, then claim satisfactory academic progress, they have proposed no mechanism for doing so.

As far as economics, well, we don't really know what to say. The UO offered us raises of 1% and 3% over the next two years - which is what we proposed - no improvement on fees, and a health care proposal that was slightly better than their last proposal. The offered these proposals as a package, so we'd have to accept all or none. The they added a giant "BUT" into the conversation by letting us know that they were aware that Congress had passed health care reform and if that law had any impact on our health care plan, then their proposal would be null and void, even if we had already accepted it. In other words, we had to accept the entire package of proposals, but one part of their proposal might be void next fall and we'd need to re-bargain it.

As you can imagine, we did not accept this proposal and barely considered it a proposal at all.

Pre-Break Bargaining

2010-03-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

We met with the UO last Thursday to discuss our proposal on non-economic and economic articles. The session ended with some fireworks and I thought I'd fill you in.

One of the proposals we have been discussing with the university is our proposal that departments have a policy about the maximum number of students that can be assigned to a teaching GTF. We have made it clear that we are asking for this language because we think that some departments are giving GTFs more students than can reasonably be handled in the number of hours GTFs are assigned to work. We think that if departments have to set a policy on the number of students assigned to a GTF, then departments will be less likely to slowly raise the number of students or have one or two classes with super high enrollment.

Over the last four months, the UO has rejected our proposed language on the grounds that the maximum hours provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreement provide protections against overwork. When we have suggested that departments and professors routinely expect GTFs to go over the hours limits or rely on them to violate the hours provisions in the interests of providing the undergraduates with a decent education, the UO's team expressed deep skepticism that such a thing ever happens. They suggested that if a GTF feels like he or she is going to go over their hours, they should talk with the supervisor about it. When we ask what GTFs should do if that doesn't work (because in our experience it doesn't), the UO said that GTFs should file grievances. We tried to explain why it was that GTFs feared filing grievances - retribution, the desire to avoid being labeled a troublemaker, desire to maintain harmonious relations with the professor who could be important later, the difficulty in proving overwork, etc. - but the UO's team seemingly dismissed these fears. They reiterated their deep skepticism that GTFs were ever asked to overwork - citing the UO's mission statement that asserts that undergraduate education is the UO's #1 priority, therefore making the possibility that a department would assign a GTF too many students an unlikelihood - and also reiterated that GTFs should file grievances if they have overwork complaints.

We found it shocking and surprising that the UO's bargaining team was unwilling to acknowledge that GTFs were often expected to overwork their hours. Two weeks ago, we asked your stewards to solicit anecdotes about overwork in your departments. We complied a 12 page document that detailed overwork situations at the UO. We gave this document to the UO at the table on Thursday as part of an effort to express to them that we believe that this is a serious issue and hopefully move them past their insistence that overwork by GTFs was a rare thing.

Unfortunately, their only response to the document was to ask us if we planned to give them the names of the GTFs who had overwork complaints or the names of the professors and/or classes. We said that we were not and reiterated our points about the fears GTFs feel around this issue.
The UO said that they wanted to be able to verify that these stories were true and that there were two sides to every story. The UO went into their caucus leaving it at that.

At the end of bargaining, as things were wrapping up, we tried again to get them to acknowledge that overwork by GTFs was a problem on campus, but they declined to do so. The best that they could do was to say that they would not want any GTF to overwork, but they also reasserted that we had not presented them with any evidence that any GTF has ever been asked to overwork, as they couldn't verify anything without specific names of GTFs.

We were very disappointed by the UO's response and asserted that pretty strongly. We cannot see how the UO will ever be willing to do anything about GTF overwork - and we are only asking for a very bare minimum, departments setting their own maximums - if they are unwilling to acknowledge that there is a problem and so far the UO has made it clear that they do not think overwork is an issue on this campus.

So far the UO is sticking by its assertion that the only solution to overwork on campus is to file grievances. With this in mind, we are asking all Spring term GTFs to keep careful track of their hours. If you feel that you are going over the hours total for the term,
(http://gtff.net/wiki/index.php/GTFF_CBA_2008-2010#ARTICLE_21_SALARY) let your supervisor know - you have every right to ask for a written response to your concerns - if your concerns are not meet, please contact me (dave@gtff.net) or Dan (andersen@gtff.net) to talk about solutions. The same is true if you are expected to work more than 15% of your FTE in any one week (like grading papers and a final in one week).

More bargaining information will be presented at the GMM on April 2nd and in future e-mails. You can read all proposals here: http://gtff.net/wiki/index.php/Resources#bargaining_articles

Overwork at the UO Anecdotes Compiled by the GTFF

2010-03-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Overwork at the UO Anecdotes Compiled by the GTFF

I think my response might be totally useless for what you want.
Sorry to be so long winded. I don't have time to edit this down - just sending it as is.
AND I am VERY worried that these concerns might somehow filter back to my boss.
That would not be okay.
So please use anything you like from this ramble - but be very cautious to protect my boss' identity and thus my relationship with him.

I know I can count on your confidentiality.
One point to bring up at the start is -
We NEED our GTF to survive.
We do NOT piss off the professor by complaining.
We just DO what they want and bitch amongst ourselves.
The power differential here is tremendous.
There is NO WAY that I want even a HINT of this getting back to my personal professor.
I value my GTF beyond measure.
So you can see I cannot afford for him to get any hint of discontent from my direction.

Also - he is a gifted lecturer and fine human being.
When I try to let him know that he is making life inconvenient for me - he just doesn't seem to get it.
He lives in his own world and he is a very important man, for real reasons.

• I'm a GTF in a large lecture class (140 students), and I ran into a labor issue at the beginning of the quarter. I felt we were being overworked (there are several GTFs in the class), and if the work load had continued at that pace, we eventually would have run out of hours before the quarter ended. As a way to reduce labor hours, the instructor claimed we didn't have to come to lectures and we could basically not grade so thoroughly. As a result, when asked some questions from my students in regards to class assignments, I rarely know what they're talking about, and have a hard time assisting them because I don't know what's going on in class, because I don't attend it. In terms of grading, I can only give minimal comments on assignments. Unless I give extensive comments, which is time consuming but would actually help the students to improve on a variety of skills, they get very little in terms of feedback. All of these compromises are the result of being overworked, and the technique of cutting corners to make the hours fit is a bad compromise. In the end, it's the students who suffer from all of this.

• A professor for a class would not return emails when asked for a grading rubric (and we couldn't grade until we were given the rubric). Two days before three assignments' grades were due, the professor finally sends grading rubrics and reminds us that the grades are due in a couple of days. This required hours upon hours of grading in addition to two 2-hour labs, two one and a half hour classes, two office hours, and a weekly one-hour meeting. When told that it would be nearly impossible to get the grading done in that short of time, I was told that I could have one more day--which I took. I spent three solid days grading. This, of course, was in addition to my course load. This happened more than once over the course of the term.

• As a GTF, I was routinely expected to grade between 50 and 100 finals in a three or four day period. At .40FTE, I would only have 26 hours or so to grade the finals without going over my 15% in one week. I chose to go over.

• In a social science department, a GTF reports having a .40 FTE for 108 students with the usual requirement to grade midterms, paper, and finals. With just three assignments per student, this is 324 assignments for one GTF to grade. The instructor of the class was also a GTF so s/he agreed to grade some of the papers, even though this put he/r over his/her hours for the term.

A GTF was told by his supervisor that the supervisor did not think that the .20FTE the GTF was assigned would be enough for the class. The professor told the GTF to keep track of his hours and report to the professor when he reached 88 hours. The professor told him there would be no additional FTE for the GTF that term, but the report would help the professor get additional FTE in future terms.

• A professor had the class of 100 students make notes on all their readings in a notebook. He also had them write their papers and take their exams in the notebook. After the Friday midterm, the GTF was expected to have the papers and exams graded for all 100 students over the weekend so the professor could return the notebooks on Monday.

• I exceeded my .49FTE on courses I taught for the first time, often in time spent on preparation alone, and certainly when combining prep time with the actual hours devoted to teaching. I have been told this is a more or less universal experience among GTF instructors in our department when doing "new preps" for courses we have not previously taught.

• When a GTF complained to the Department Head about overwork in a social science class, the GTF was told that the professor they were assigned to work for was an older gentleman who just could not be made to understand the hours provision of the CBA, so the department makes an exception for him. The GTF was just unlucky to have this professor, but the GTF might, in the future, have an assignment that did not require all the hours, so it would all balance out.

• My first term at UO I worked almost twice the hours limit. My professor claimed that I wasn't grading exams and papers as quickly as he allotted, and that I should speed up. I knew that if I graded any faster I would be doing a bad and unprofessional job, so I made the decision to grade at a reasonable pace and not tell the professor that I worked almost twice the hours limit.

• In an Education program, the Department Head tells the GTFs that they are paid to work an assignment, not by the hour. If a GTF complains, they are told that it is the job of a teacher to be dedicated to the students and if they don’t think of it that way, then perhaps education is not the field for them.

• I was assigned to teach a 300 level course with sections. There were five sections with two sections at the same time and another two at the same time. I was assigned one GTF at .40FTE. We have never had to cover more than three sections at once and functionally the GTF could not cover two sections at once. So instead of assigning another GTF to cover the sections, the department had me cancel sections to make the other sections bigger than they would be under normal circumstances. I knew there was no way my GTF could do that much work, but there was nothing I could do about it.

• In my department, GTFs are asked to teach 3 sections (3 hours) and attend lecture (3 more hours). We are also asked to have 2 hours of office hours. This is already about half of our assigned hours for the week.

In addition to these 8 hours, we are expected to manage almost 100 students. This includes grading papers, tests and quizzes. The hours for this part of the job varies based on the professor but I know one professor (a few years ago) who had 5 writing assignments, in addition to a final and a midterm. This meant grading close to 100 papers, every other week. We are asked to keep attendance and manage grades, which means inputting them into Blackboard. Entering attendance and grades for 100 students each week, takes at least a half hour.

Besides the actual data management, there is the additional burden of simply communicating with this number of students. I know that I spent at least an hour per week (usually more) dealing with student emails.

Finally, and this is the real kicker, when all the visible work is done and accounted for, there is very little time left to actually prep your sections (reading the assigned course readings, coming up with lesson plans, looking for media resources or activities, etc). This is often times the only place where people can actually consolidate hours. But, what it means to NOT work over your hours is that you enter the classroom unprepared and your students get a watered-down version of an education. I know this is where many GTFs go over their hours. Most of us (at least in my department) want to get jobs in academia, which means teaching (at least to some degree). This is something that many people take seriously. I know that I would absolutely work over my hours to give my students a better learning experience.

• I'm seeing this issue come up more as the enrollment 'surge' has increased our class sizes, but for upper-division courses w/o discussion sessions there is no increase in the GTF FTE (since 2006, 300-level courses have gone from 90 enrollment max to up to 134 for some courses), and it is starting to become an issue, this term in particular.

• Anyone that doesn’t know that GTFs over work our hours doesn’t have the first effing clue how this university works. Have they ever been to graduate school?

• One professor told his GTF that leading three discussion sections did not equal 3 hours of work, but rather only 2.5 hours, as the classes were 50 minutes long. The professor said that he was not paying a GTF to walk from class back to their office.

• 4 gtfs have to teach 3 lab sections apiece with 20 students each. This is 12 hours of in class time a week. In the remaining hours they have to prepare lesson plans, make handouts/tutorials, answer emails, grade 60 projects 4 times a quarter, have office hours etc. To do a good job takes a minimum of 25 hours a week. Those that i talked to did not want to complain for fear of losing their assignments for the next year, as problems in the department indicate this is a possibility. (or the work being pushed on the adjunct instructor who is nice and not paid much more than they are.)

• One GTF in one of these 300-level courses has 123 students (though the max for the course 134). She has had to grade a ten-page midterm paper and a fifteen questions short answer (a paragraph) and essay midterm exam. She is just now finishing that grading. She will also have an even longer final and another 15 page final paper to grade, both during finals week. The prof didn't provide any guidelines for how to grade the papers and she had to spend some time creating a rubric. (She's an international student not used to how much of the decisions for grading are put on us and wanted a rubric to make sure she was consistent). She also has to grade a weekly quiz, go to class and hold office hours. When she asked for help in grading the final he said he was leaving town for break and wouldn't be able to help. I have no idea how she is going to finish the grading on time, much less even think about the final papers for her own seminars.

• I have a professor that tells me that if I answer student questions outside of office hours that I cannot count those hours toward my GTF assignment.

• My adjunct professor had the students turn in their papers right before he left for a week to do a job interview (he cancelled one class and had me ‘guest lecture’ one class). He gave me a rubric with which to grade the student’s papers. I thought it was a really tough rubric “I can’t see giving a student an ‘A’ if they have more than two grammar errors.” I graded all the papers and gave them back when I lectured. When he returned many of the students complained about the low grades. He announced to the class that they should bring their papers to my office so that I could re-grade them because I had done such a poor job. Neither the prep time for the guest lecture nor the re-grading was counted toward my GTF time.

• In our department, the GTFs were forced to collectively issue a statement pointing out that one particular class had more papers due than comparable classes in the department, twenty quizzes, a discussion board the GTFs were asked to monitor, study groups, surveys and more. Despite issuing a collective statement, they GTFs received no response from the department, although they were relieved to see that in future terms the course load was reduced.

• Professor E. wanted 6 papers of 6 pages each from the students with each GTF in the class responsible for approximately 90 students. We objected that this was a contract violation waiting to happen. The professor eventually agreed to reduce the number of papers to 5. The professor told us to spend no more than two minutes per page so that we would not go over our hours. This not only was not enough time to give feedback, it is barely enough to time to figure out what the students are saying.

When a student is telling you about escaping from a Russian orphanage and surviving on the streets of Moscow, it’s hard not to give feedback because time is up. Actually, I went over my allotted two minutes per page on that one.

• I spoke with a professor about going over my workload with a specific course - I had tracked hours and had gone far over, with weekly, two-part quizzes to grade and record for 60 students, 4 papers throughout the term, and several out-of-class obligations that we were required to keep attendance for, on top of regular GTF duties (lectures, sections, reading, emails, etc.). Upon hearing my concerns, she said she had never heard these complaints before (which was untrue), and that her course did not have more work than others of the same level.

The following year, she added more work for GTFs for the course, which included more out-of-class obligations (each GTF had to lead small group discussions, outside of sections, doing close reading with very difficult texts).

• At a department orientation my first year, it was noted that it takes longer to grade papers when one is new at it, so it was not encouraged to track work hours unless it was noted that you already felt like you were going way over. In that instance, tracking work hours was more for the benefit of cutting down time rather than adjusting any work levels for the course.

• For a class in which I had a FIG, I held two extra study sessions for them, independent of office hours and sections. Each of these lasted over two hours.

• A colleague of mine right now addresses an average of 5-7 emails a day from students. The course he's GTFing is notoriously hard, and most of the questions go to the GTF rather than the professor. On top of this, he has had to work through several difficult homework problems with students (both inside and outside of sections, sometimes in grading) only to find errors in the textbook which make the problems impossible to solve (or incorrect). It has fallen on him to contact the professor after reading dozens of frantic e-mails from students about the errors. He has also spent many extra hours in meetings with students, more than doubling his regular office hour commitments on several weeks (some weeks more than tripling them).

• In one course the GTFs were asked to use the professor's own rubric for grading papers. While helpful in some respects, it took a very long time to complete each paper this way: upon beginning the process I was working for an hour on each paper. The process improved, but I was still spending about 30 minutes per paper (and I was timing these so as not to go wildly over). So 40 students, 30 minutes per paper: 20 hours of grading. That was only one paper cycle: the course had two (and other, less involved grading processes). So 40 hours of grading, spent across 3 weeks (combined turnaround time). This is, of course, not including any other regular GTF work: 7 hours just in face-time (lecture, sections, office hours), many more hours in reading and prep.

• Last year, my professor had me turn around 124 (short answer/essay) finals in 5 days. I actually had to camp in the office for two days and one night in order to make the deadline @ 8 am (wasn't done till 5am.)

Although I think the numbers do a good job to quantify exactly how much I go over in hours per quarter, I can tell you a story too. The way this story has ended would give an example of exactly why it sucks to speak up to a professor and how I have lost any chance of a future letter of recommendation from them.

Fall quarter 2009 I was enrolled in 15 credits (my advisor's insistence, even though I expressed that it would be too much), involved with 2 research projects (1 project gave me 0.1 FTE), and with 0.2 FTE from teaching two labs and 0.15 FTE for a position that I had been given as the "lecture GTF" of a 230 person lecture class (to total .45 FTE). The area where my hours went ridiculously over was the lecture GTF position of 0.15 FTE. No contract was signed ahead of time that 15% of one quarter's total FTE would be assigned in any one week, and there were two weeks (midterm 1 and 2 grading) where I did an additional 9-10 hours on top of the hours already assigned for the course. The way the professor had figured the hours was that I would be present in lecture to deal with the homework, grade a portion of the homework, manage the TAs, manage student problems with the way the TAs had graded their work, and handle the grading and grade entry for the exams. This was assumed to happen in approximately 6 hours per week (.15 is 65.7 hours I believe...I am never sure since they do not put the actual hours in our contracts, but Dan thought that might be it). Attending lecture alone (coming early and staying late for homework issues with the 230 students) took 4 hours per week.

Grading my portion of the student's homework took 2 hours per week if I graded super-fast. This did not take into account the midterm grading (about 20 hours), questions and issues the TAs had, questions and issues the students had with the TA's grading of their work, the extra little assignments she sent my way (such as setting up a way to turn in assignments on Blackboard). There was no way on earth that .15 FTE covered this position, and I believe she knew this going into the quarter. Although I recognize I should have spoken up earlier, I had so much on my plate that I dreaded her wrath. Before the final exam I let her know I had well-exceeded my hours already, since according to my calculations I was at over 130 hours (yes, for a job that was allotted 65.7 hours per quarter). She was irritated that I had dumped this on her "at the last minute" and begrudingly and angrily did the final exam grading herself. She called me a "martyr" and said that she would have been able to fix things if I had spoken up sooner. Personally, I don't know what could have been fixed, the position was obviously more work than 0.15 FTE (more like 0.30 FTE).

Unfortunately, I still work with her, and we are still awkward in working with each other to this day. She teaches in the area I hope to teach in, so her letter of recommendation would have been very helpful to me.

• One particular issue we're encountering right now is what our department calls "Internships". As GTFs we are often assigned interns from the undergraduate teaching course to act as a TA in our classroom. We are expected to draw up a contract with them, meet outside of class, mentor them for potentially teaching our class, and then complete written evaluations for them on top of our own work for the class we teach. We are not compensated in our .fte or given academic credit for this. I typically meet with my intern 1-2 times every week for 45 minutes to 1 hour each. Including my own preparation to meet with her, and write up an evaluation (the content of this is yet to be clarified), this could easily equate to a .05 addition to my .fte, which would then be at a .45 fte.

As a third year, it seems natural that we are chosen to take on this task, however considering our teaching load, course load, and thesis work, the added work without a comparable compensation is quite frustrating.

• I'm assigned as a .2 GTF for a class that has roughly 60 students who turn in 2 assignments per week. I'm the only GTF assigned to this class. Since I've GTFed the class before, I suggested that I shouldn't attend class to get that extra 3 hours for grading, and the professor agreed. I can sometimes get the assignments graded in the 8 hours I have every week, but answering student emails often puts me over the top. Also, the feedback I give on the assignments is *very* minimal.

In all fairness, the professor I work for has told me before that he'd help out with grading if I was going over on my hours. But I know he doesn't want to, and he's on my dissertation committee, and I'm strongly trying to hit him up for a GTF position for this summer so I don't have to pay tuition. So even when I'm close to (or going over) my hours, I don't tell him. I don't think it would affect his efforts to get me the summer GTF, but I can't take that chance.

• In Spring of 2008, I taught my own class, a 300 level course with 90 students. Even though a GTF would normally be assigned for such a class, I wasn't given one. With no grading assistance I had to make a decision, I could either work over my hours, or I could cheat my students out of the educational experience they deserved, shown more movies, spent less time on lecturing. I could have cut back on the assignments I gave students, I could have cut back on the feedback that I gave on assignments. It was crucial that I worked over my hours. I wasn't willing to sacrifice my students education in order fulfill my own obligation to work under my FTE hours.

• Since my professor is going out of the country over finals week, the final is given to the students this Wednesday and he expects us to have it graded by Friday, with the final grades calculated by the following Monday morning. This also includes an assignment and quiz that they're giving us tomorrow. We also have a meeting at 7:15 tomorrow morning, and we still have labs to teach on Friday AFTER the final is given. Isn't that a fun dead week!

• In a large lecture class of 250 students , there are 2 .2 gtfs. They are required to attend 3 hours of class each week. The class has 9 weekly assignments and a final to grade, roughly 125 assignments to grade each week in 4 hours. When asking the adjunct professor how this was to be done, she said there was no more money and to get it done in the time. She recommended drinking a bottle of wine while grading to make it go quicker.

• In my GTF assignment, I lead two labs and have 30 students total. The class often has two assignments due within one week. That means I have 60 assignments to grade. I am supposed to spend 8 hours grading each week. To grade within 8 hours, I would have to spend only 8 minutes grading each assignment. Many assignments are audio or video assignments which require me to connect to the data server, open the individual student file, play the assignment, which is approximately 3 minutes in length, then enter the grade in my grading spreadsheet, enter the grade on Blackboard, enter the students scores on the grading rubric, provide brief written comments, and print or e-mail the grading sheet. This process simply cannot be accomplished in 8 minutes or less. I certainly cannot give a quality assessment of student grades within this timeframe.

If a GTF in my assignment will go over their hours due to grading, they are supposed to attend fewer than the required two lectures for the class each week. Due to the fact that I was going over hours in the first few weeks of class, I started attending fewer than two lectures to stay within my hours. I was then asked to meet with the instructor of the course and was told that it was important that I attend the lectures. When I said that I was going over hours, I was told to spend less time grading the assignments. If I spend only 8 minutes or less to assess each assignment, I will not do a quality job of providing feedback and accurately tracking my students' assignments.

There is also no extra room in the schedule for correspondence with students. The breakdown of my schedule is 8 hours per week grading, 3 hours per week in lecture, 4 hours per week leading labs, and 1 hour for office hours. If I spend any additional time responding to student e-mails, e-mailing students about files they have improperly submitted or missing assignments, I will go over my hours.

It is not possible to perform my job adequately within the 16 hours I am allotted. Therefore, I either go over my hours to perform a satisfactory job or I stay within my hours and do not keep up with grading assignments and providing quality written feedback.

• In large lecture classes there are 3 .2 FTE GTFs for 250 students, and 9 assignments, of a larger caliber. When asked of one of the professors, how to get the grading of a large video projects done in the hours, She rolled her eyes and responded she 'didn’t care, get it done. You are lucky you have a GTF at all,' and that she never had a GTF equivalent in her grad school.

• I worked a class on Demography and I had to grade 150 exams (short answer + essay, expected to give feedback) in a four day stretch, definitely worked more than 15% of my hours in a week.

• A GTF had a tech position for two years straight. The second year they increased her duties substantially adding additional labs she was to be responsible for. When she asked if her FTE could be increased they responded the department didn’t have the funds to do that. When she asked about the additional work, they told her something along the lines of she should consider the needs of her students, departments, and her recommendations upon leaving.

A Difference of Opinion

2010-02-05T09:17:00.000-08:00

As suspected, the UO started out their economic presentation by asserting that the total compensation that GTFs receive is very competitive, on the order of $60 and hour, and very, very generous. The UO then promised to give us an "exceptional offer" that would "elevate GTF compensation." The proposals were characterized as "generous" several times.

Wages:
Increases to the minimum wage of 1% for next year and 2% for the year after that.

Less than half of GTFs get paid the minimum wage. Some departments that pay more than the minimum wage also give their GTFs a raise, but most do not.

A 1% raise is about $95 a year, $31.67 per term, or $10.55 per month. It costs the UO approximately $80,000 a year to give GTFs who earn the minimum a 1% raise.

Fees:
The UO offered to pay the departmental - or resource - fee starting next year.

About 178 GTFs in the College of Education, the College of Music, the Lundquist College of Business, and Computer Science paid these fees this year.

The total amount they paid in fees this year is approximately $84,000.

Health care:
The UO proposed to pay for health care in 2010-11 exactly what they paid in 2009-10. In other words, GTFs would be responsible for paying for all health care cost increases next year.

A 10% cost increase to health care would be roughly $490,000. For GTFs to raise this amount among themselves, as the UO proposal would have it, GTFs would need to raise their summer payments by an additional $500. We could pass some of these costs on to dependents of GTFs, but the higher those costs go, the fewer people enroll and we're back to jacking up summer costs.

Those were the UO proposals. If you are like the bargaining team, you may be wondering how the UO could characterize these proposals as "generous." After all, the most likely outcome for the majority of GTFs would be significant increases in health care costs and nothing else.

The UO made these assertions that, in their minds, resulted in their proposals being very generous:

First, Rich Linton emphasized that tuition had gone up again this year and the UO continued to "forgo" revenue that they would have gotten from you if they were not so generous with the tuition waivers. Rich emphatically emphasized to us that the UO's proposals could have been much, much worse for us and, in that light, the UO had really gone the extra mile for GTFs this year.

Second, Marianne Nicols disputed the notion that one could calculate the amount of money it would cost the UO to pay for departmental fees by simply multiplying the number of GTFs by the amount of money they paid this year ($84,000). Instead, she asserted, it was more proper to consider the amount of money departments might have raised if they had charged departmental fees this year, but didn't because the UO was discouraging the practice as part of a planned phase out of departmental fees, and the amount departments would raise them next year if they could. So she gets the figure of somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000, but can't terribly accurate with this number because no one really knows how much departments might have charged in departmental fees next year if they could charge departmental fees.

Lastly, Linda King encouraged us not to look at the UO's offer on health care as pushing all cost increases for next year onto GTFs, but rather as the UO remaining committed to paying what they paid this year as a ground floor. In other words, the UO could have proposed cuts to health care for next year, but they did not, so it was very generous of them.

The bargaining team rejected these assertions and let the UO know we were not viewing the proposals as generous at all, but as negative proposals, given that the average GTF was likely (almost certainly) to see a decrease in benefits from the UO.

The way we see it is that the UO's total benefit improvements for next year are a 1% raise to the minimum wage ($80,000) and the elimination of departmental fees ($84,000). A total of $164,000 in new benefits.

Conversely, if health care costs go up by 4% then GTFs will collectively need to come up with $208,880.

On the individual level, a GTF who works in a department that does not charge a departmental fee and pays the minimum wage will see a $10 a month raise and an unknown increase in insurance costs.

A GTF who works in a department that charges a departmental fee could save up to $2100 a year, but most would save more like $600 a year. Again, with the unknown increase in health insurance costs.

A GTF who works in a department that pays more than the minimum and doesn't charge a resource fee (the majority of GTFs) would see no increase in benefits and faces unknown cost increases in health insurance.

Again, the bargaining team does not see a way to characterize these proposals as anything other than a negative package from the UO that will almost certainly cost the vast majority of GTFs money in the coming year.

Lastly, we were disturbed by the UO's tone throughout their presentations. While the GTFF team was very careful to always speak of the progress that the GTFF and the UO had made together over the years on catching up to our comparators, the UO spoke only of their generosity. For instance, the UO asserted that the UO had done marvelous things for GTFs in the past decade. The UO gave generous wage increases. The UO had made dramatic increases in health care costs. The UO claimed all credit for our shared successes without acknowledging that the union exists.

Additionally, no where in the UO's presentation was any kind of acknowledgment that the work that GTFs do is vital to the UO. While they would very much like you to think of your tuition waiver as "forgone revenue" for the UO, they gave no indication that they valued GTF labor or that you might not be here if it were not for the tuition waiver. The UO quite literally took the stance that they give and give and give and they wanted us to acknowledge how super that is.

Combined with Dean Linton's insistence that we understand their proposals could have been much, much worse if he wanted them to be, the bargaining team could not help but walk away from the table thinking that the UO thinks of GTFs as little more than ungrateful children.

Unfortunately, the UO's attitude does not help us get closer to a bargaining resolution. Our position at the table has always been that the union and university share the twin problems of the need to remain competitive with our comparators and a bad budget climate in Oregon. Given these factors we kept our proposals modest. The UO, however, is taking the stance that they are already competitive and generous and that is the the only factor that the union needs to understand. They are not creating space for dialogue and problem solving, but making bargaining a test of who has more resolve. This is not how the GTFF prefers to bargain, but the UO has left us little room for maneuver. This is double unfortunate because the UO's proposals are not very good.

Non-Economic Articles

2010-01-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

We met with the UO on Thursday to receive their counter-proposals on our non-economic articles. While the UO wasn't exactly leaping to accept our language, the session went pretty well. At this point, the team is relieved that it looks like we can get good agreements on all the non-economic articles.

Here's the run down on the big ticket items:

Article 9 - We proposed that departments have "Specific, objective, and quantifiable" requirements for maintaining satisfactory academic progress, instead of the "general" requirements that the contract now requires.

The UO accepted the word "specific," but balked at "objective" and "quantifiable."

Our main difference seems to be over what these words mean. We have offered grade point average or passing exams by a certain time as perfectly objective measures of progress. The UO fears that someone might interpret grades or failure to pass exams as "subjective" because there is judgment involved. Moreover, the UO seems to want to reserve to the departments the right to have subjective criteria, but they couldn't think of any that would be acceptable to them, as they had already agreed that no decisions about academic progress should be "arbitrary."

In a different section of Article 9, we proposed that all departments would have to have a policy regarding the maximum number of students who could be assigned to teaching GTFs.

The UO rejected our proposal.

Their main objection seemed to stem from the idea that GTF time is already governed by the hours limits of Article 21. They seemed to believe that any GTF who was assigned too many students could report this to the department and have their teaching/grading burden reduced. We're not exactly sure what they were driving at, because we pretty strongly rejected the notion that it was easy for GTFs to approach their departments with hours complaints. Moreover, we pointed out to the UO that departments might be, one day, theoretically tempted to assign a very high number of students to a GTF with the assumption that the GTF would over-work their hours in an attempt to actually do a good job (I know, would never happen right?) and this language would help avoid such a situation.

The UO then fell back on the argument that departments needed flexibility to go over the limit (that they set) should an emergency or unforeseeable circumstance should arise. Given that the department sets the limit, they could set it higher than they really need to deal with such a situation, or the UO could propose "emergency circumstances" language. We feel like we can make progress on this idea.

Article 10: We had proposed language that would make the UO assign GTF help to GTFs who work as instructors of record the same way that GTF help is assigned to other faculty.

The UO rejected the idea on the grounds that full professors have so many difference factors that determine what they teach and how much support they get that they are just not comparable to GTFs.

The bargaining team will take this into consideration and take another look at the language.

Article 17: We proposed that grad students who apply for GTF positions, but don't get them, would be able to request as statement as to the reasons why they were not hired and their rank in the applicant pool (departments are required to rank all applicants based on their written criteria and give out GTF appointments based on these rankings).

The UO rejected the idea. They offered two reasons: One, this just isn't done at the UO. Second, it might be possible that telling a GTF their ranking in the applicant pool might, theoretically, reveal someone else's ranking and therefore violate the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974.

The FERPA argument is interesting and complicated. We didn't pursue it much at the bargaining table during the session, if only because arguments about FERPA can take everyone down a long, twisty road that is not terribly productive. Plus, this argument seemed to come from UO attorney Doug Park and we were not convinced that the rest of his team necessarily agreed with him, so the conversation about FERPA could have been long, twisty, unproductive, and meaningless.

We offered what I thought was a strong rebuttal in that grads who apply for GTF positions and don't get them often have no idea if they are anywhere close to possibly getting one next term, next year, or not at all. Because GTFs are the UO's main source of funding for grad students, we feel it is particularly important that they have as much information as possible to decide their future. Applicants to graduate school might not want to come here if they know they have little hope of receiving funding.

That's basically it. We had some small quibbles over minor issues, but these were the substantive disagreements. And not that bad of disagreements at that.

GTFF Winter 2010 Word Cloud

2010-01-19T09:53:00.001-08:00

Health Care Deal Reached!!!

2010-01-15T09:42:00.001-08:00

On Thursday, the GTFF and the UO signed a deal settling the summer health care bargaining that got carried over into this year.

The deal is this:

The UO will continue to pay for GTF health insurance at the same rate that they did last year. This is a slight over payment because there was a slight decrease in the cost of health care this year. All excess funds paid by the UO will go toward future payments.

The annual cap will stay at $250,000 for the time being. There is a strong possibility that the health care reform bill currently being hammered out in Congress will almost automatically eliminate annual caps on essential medical benefits. If it does not, the GTFF has reserved the right to bring up the subject of the annual cap, including the possibility of making it retroactive, in the current round of negotiations.

The University will increase their payment for the administration of the health care from $75,000 to $85,000. That's still not all the Trust needs, but the bargaining team felt this increase was adequate.

That's the deal. It probably doesn't look like much, but as you can tell from the posts here, here, here, and here, it was a bit of a wild ride.

Anticipating a couple of question, let me offer these pre-emptive answers.

Q: Wait, aren't we still bargaining with the UO over wages and whatnots?
A: We began bargaining over just the health care portion of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) last June. As we discovered that the GTFF and the UO were not at all on the same page over the matter of Appendix I and whether or not the UO owed the GTFF an additional $250K to cover the cost of increasing the annual cap on benefits, we agreed to go to arbitration to settle the matter. Scheduling arbitration takes forever and was set to begin on January 21.

In the meantime, we began bargaining over the rest of the CBA in October and that bargaining will carry forward.

Q: Why drop arbitration and make this deal?
A: The bargaining team strongly suspects that Congress will render any arbitration ruling invalid or unnecessary. We felt that it made little sense to risk losing $4,000 on something that would be rendered null either way shortly before or after we received a ruling. Plus, we had strong reason to believe that an arbitrator would likely rule that the two parties never had a "meeting of the minds" and order us back to the bargaining table. Given this possible outcome, it made even less sense to risk money when a bargaining session was currently ongoing.

Q: Does the bargaining team support this deal?
A: Yes. It is not everything we would have like to have gotten and we're not walking away thinking we kicked ass or anything, but given the complete misunderstand of Appendix I, the ongoing budget crisis, the uncertainty about what it is Congress is up to, and the fact we can always bring these issues up at the (other) bargaining table, we feel like this is a good deal and encourage you all to vote yes.

Please vote as soon as you get your ballot. The GTFF has an hefty quorum requirement and we need all the votes we can get. Mail you ballot back or drop it off at the GTFF office, but vote, vote, vote.

Feel free to ask questions. I will post (reasonable) questions in the comments and try to provide answers.

One

2009-11-11T08:22:00.001-08:00

We have our first bargaining session with the University this Thursday (tomorrow) from 10 am to noon in the Rogue Room of the EMU.

On the agenda is a discussion of the Ground Rules and possibly the two sides giving each other an overview of the reasons we opened the Articles we did.

There is a decent chance that this will not be the most exciting bargaining session ever, but it will give you an introduction to the players, an idea of how these things work, and, you never know, there may just be some pointed back and forth.

If you're on campus and you have nothing better to do, you should pop in and check it out.

Comparator Data

2009-10-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

So this post kicks off the round of what we call "CBA Bargaining" as opposed to "Health Care Bargaining." From now until roughly March, we'll be bargaining with the university over wages, fees, and working conditions.

I've heard from a few of you that your departments are freaking out about the possibility that we might get raises and that would destroy their departmental budget. The bargaining team is well aware of the current state of the UO's budget. The way we see it, it is our job to go to the bargaining table and tell the UO what GTFs want and need. Conversely, it is the UO's job to tell us what they can (or cannot) afford to do for GTFs along those lines. The people who represent the UO are generally pretty good at what they do, so you can rest assured that if cuts to fees or raises do come down the pike, the UO has the money to pay for them.

One of the main ways we determine what kind of raises GTFs need is to look at comparator data. The UO has eight AAU-designated comparator schools. We've been looking at this data over the last decade as we bargain with the UO. We started out about 30% behind the average earned by grad employees at our comparator schools, but have caught up to the point where we're only 5% behind.

How this data will mesh with our thinking about fees and budgets is still to be determined, but I thought I'd throw the comparator data up here when we had it. Maybe you can tell us what you're thinking about wages and fees in light of this data.

A "Toby Prompts Me to Work" Post

2009-08-27T13:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Wheeling, Yes. Dealing? Maybe.

2009-08-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

Friday - 1 pm - Umpqua Room

We meet tomorrow for what is either going to be the final session where we get a deal or the last session before a big break. At the last session, both sides affirmed our desire to reach a settlement before PacificSource's tentative deadline of September 1st. We both floated some ideas, but the UO indicated that they really weren't in love with our ideas. Their idea, however, is expensive. Puzzling, since they are supposed to be very concerned about costs.

To review:

It turns out that the UO and GTFF have very different interpretations of Appendix I. The GTFF believes that the second paragraph obligates the UO to pay an additional $250K this year for buying a higher annual cap. The UO argues that this language means that they are obligated to maintain the $250K payment they made last year.

Both sides seem genuine that their interpretation of the language is the one they thought they bargained into the contract last year. I know sure as shit that this is what the GTFF thought we were bargaining. The GTFF filed a grievance and the UO has agreed that the best course of action is to let the grievance process play out. While that happens, the UO would be obligated to maintain its health care payments at the same level as last year, so nothing much would change in the Fall term.

In an effort to wrap bargaining up before then and to make everyone feel more comfortable about next year, the two parties agreed to try to find ground common enough that we wouldn't need to grieve or continue bargaining.

Along those lines, the GTFF floated two ideas (as opposed to proposals. There were just ideas we were kicking around, not formal proposals, which is why they are so vague). The first would be to reinstate language in the CBA that would require the UO to guarantee to pay a large portion of any increase that came along next year. This way GTFs would be indemnified against facing a large increase in their costs for families or summer for two years. Our other idea was for the UO to kick in more money for the summer, lowering costs for everyone and making it easier to buy, so fewer GTFs would have to decide to go without health insurance in the summer.

We liked these two ideas because, while it seemed like the goal of increasing the cap was out of reach this year, stability and access/affordability are two of our other goals.

The UO had a different idea. They wanted to find out how much it would cost to raise the cap to something more than $250K (where it is now), but something less than $1,000,000, which is what we are proposing. They needed us to get the dollar figure to them before they would commit to saying that they wanted to roll with that idea.

I just sent them data that indicates that it would only be about $44K cheaper to have a $500K cap instead of a $1M cap. It breaks down like this (figures based on a comparison to the costs from last year):

$250K cap = -$75K
$500K cap = +$188K
$1M cap = +$232K

I don't know what the UO will do with this info. The ball is sort of in their court, since they said they didn't really like our ideas. So, tomorrow we'll see what shakes out. I know that the GTFF is more than prepared to walk away from the table if the UO is not willing to give us a deal we like. We're confident we'll win the grievance and the UO will owe us $250K and we'll be able to buy that $1M cap eventually.

Should be exciting, see you there.

Belated Update, Last Minute Anouncement

2009-08-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

Last July 23, the union made its opening proposal for health care bargaining. Not surprisingly, we asked the UO to pay the entire cost of the increase in health insurance costs. Since the the cost of renewal is pretty cheap, the UO didn't really say anything about it.

Dean Linton did ask a question, though. He was wondering if the GTFF had done any surveys or had systematically asked our members in any way if they were concerned about the cost of health insurance and the ratio of how much the UO spends on health insurance to how much they spend on wages. He explained he was asking because, apparently, they hear from many faculty and staff that they would rather receive money in the form of pay and buy their own health insurance or spend the money however they wanted as individuals.

I told him that we had not conducted any such surveys, but in my seven years of working for the GTFF, I have not had a single GTF mention to me that they would rather not have the health care and get more money. I did mention that if any GTF was concerned about the health care to wages ratio, they would probably be more interested in seeing their wages go up. I mean it was just sitting there, so I couldn't ignore it, but I also didn't want to make too big of a deal of it.

I doubt that Rich was asking only because he was interested in GTF attitudes to health care/wage ratios, but more to set up the "if you want health care, you need to be prepared to give up wages" line, which is, of course, his job. We should hear more about this when the UO makes a counter-proposal.

Speaking of which, we hear that counter-proposal tomorrow. Thursday, August 6 at 3 pm in the Umpqua Room of the EMU. This will be our first taste of the UO's rhetoric concerning the budget crisis. Fortunately, we are not asking for much, so we don't expect a lot of it, but, again, they kind of have to roll it out just to set up bargaining for next fall. But then, you never know what they have up their sleeve.

My worst fear is that they propose "bargaining" wages and fees now, offering a wage freeze or something in exchange for paying the minimal cost increase for health care. This would be unfortunate because it would complicate what should be a very simple health care negotiation.

Next Meeting

2009-07-21T12:29:00.000-07:00

Thursday, July 23. 10 am. Room 122 of the Knight Library.

Openings

2009-07-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

This is the text of a presentation the GTFF gave to the UO to open bargaining. This info informed our coming proposal:

Two decisions we made last year impact this year’s bargaining.
• The UO agreed to contribute an additional $250K to increase the maximum benefit cap.
• We moved from paying for the administration of the health care plan from a per capita basis to a lump sum basis

Renewal numbers look good.

Last year we had thirteen large claims that caused a rather large renewal. 15.6%. We agreed to increase the UO’s contribution by $250,000 to increase the maximum cap and ended up with an 18.5% increase to the overall cost of the plan.

This year things are significantly different. There have been fewer large claims for much smaller amounts.

Because the UO has committed an additional $250,000 to increasing the cost of the cap, this is the only benefit change we are looking to make this year and we have asked PacificSource to give us renewals figures only for the cap increase.

PASS OUT SHEETS

*All costs are estimates, as they are dependent on enrollment numbers.

PacificSource gave us three different versions of the renewal with a cap increase. We are, of course, only interested in the cheapest of these three versions - $1M cap with $250K pooling.

• Pooling – bit complicated, think I have it.
• Re-insurance
• For next year’s renewal, PS can only apply $250K toward the Trust’s experience.
• $150K cost more than $250K because our risk is $250K now, to go down to $150K would represent a lowering in our risk – more risk for PacificSource, so more expensive.

This option increases the cost of the plan by $182K, which is below the UO’s agreed contribution level of $250,000.

This renewal is 3.43%, which is significantly less than we saw last year and many other years.

Lump Sum:

• Used to build into the cost of the plan a per capita dollar amount to pay for administration. Due to the difficulty of accurately and continuously adjusting this per-person dollar figure, it was agreed during bargaining last year that it would be better if the UO paid a lump sum for administering the Trust.

• We agreed on the figure of $75K to pay for administration costs, and COBRA.

• It turns out that the $75K might not be adequate for the Trust to meet its obligations. As it stands now, the GTFF, the union, routinely pays the Trust expenses -to avoid unnecessary duplication and to keep costs down - and gets reimbursed through a quarterly billing. It is looking like the $75K is not enough for the Trust to pay what it owes the GTFF and the union ends up subsidizing the Trust. This was, of course, not the intent of our agreement about the lump sum last year.

• We are currently doing work to get an accurate accounting of how much the Trust would need to cover its obligation and expect to have it shortly, but for now we wanted to let you know that we plan to bring a proposal for Section 4.

Although we don’t have precise figures yet, we can say with confidence that the total costs of our proposals will not be more than $250,000 above last years costs for the UO.

Obviously, you miss the delicious back-and-forth, but you get the gist.

Hope to see at the next session.

Proposed Changes to the Collective Bargaining Agreement

2008-05-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

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.

Contract Agreement Reached

2008-05-02T21:36:00.001-07:00

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

The Emerald does it again

2008-04-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

GTFF in the news once again

GTFF in the News

2008-04-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

We're in the Emerald.

STRIKE FAQ

2008-04-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

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.

The Work Starts Now

2008-04-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

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.

The Statement Not Given

2008-03-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

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.

human cost = financial cost

2008-03-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

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.

Trembling at the Sound of Their Silence

2008-03-06T08:09:00.000-08:00

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.

In The Event of An Earthquake, Your Contract May Be Void

2008-03-03T13:44:00.000-08:00

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.

Who Came Up With This Schedule?

2008-02-27T09:13:00.000-08:00

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.

My Two Hats

2008-02-04T20:36:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-04T09:16:00.001-08:00

If you missed it, you can catch the Emerald article about bargaining here. It's pretty accurate.

Getting Fired Up

2008-02-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

[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.

Did Not See That Coming

2008-02-02T09:10:00.000-08:00

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.

Do you feel safe?

2008-01-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-01-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

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.

Best and the Brightest

2008-01-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

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.

Long time, no post

2008-01-15T11:23:00.000-08:00

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.

Article 21 [Salary]

Almost there ~ Stay on target

Background facts:

Based on D-list given to the GTFF on 10-5-2007

	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.

[Insert chart here] [Chart won't insert] [You'll have to trust me]

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 in Family or Household	48 Contiguous States and D.C.	Alaska	Hawaii
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, January 24, 2007, pp. 3147–3148 and http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/07poverty.shtml

3. Food stamps

According to the State of Oregon’s DHS Food Stamp Calculator -- https://apps.dhs.state.or.us/fsestimate/ -- a single GTF who earns the minimum wage, pays $450 a month in rent and pays his or her own utilities would qualify for an estimated $93 a month in food stamps.

4. UO calculations

Based on information found at http://financialaid.uoregon.edu/Cost.htm

	Monthly	Academic Year	Full Year
Off-Campus Housing
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

GTFs face a myriad of fees:

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.

GTFs can pay as much as $2668 a year in fees alone.

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

The undergraduate deal to roll some fees into tuition did not include graduate students. Graduate students were excluded because rolling graduate fees into tuition would not be “revenue neutral.”

Time to Rock

2007-09-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

Greetings fellow workers and GTFF members. Just a quick note to remind everyone that bargaining for a new contract begins *this* quarter! That is correct, those wages and benefits you have grown to know and love are up for grabs. I say, based on the record number of GTFs signing up to be full members, we should rock the admin's worlds again this go around.

So if you like your dope GTF wages and benefits lifestyle you need to raise your voice and let the our friends in Johnston Hall know they picked the wrong group of hard core unionized graduate workers to mess with. Come on down to bargaining to see the bizarre logic of those who don't think you deserve a decent salary, working conditions, and health insurance in inaction.

The most immediate thing you can do as a union member to ensure a successful contract is to sign up any straggling non-union members in your department. It is surprisingly easy and the feeling you receive from dropping off a newly minted full member's card by the office, is, well, pick your favorite substance of recreation and drop either the side effects or legal ramifications and you *begin* to get it. Bottom line: 1350 demanding something makes more of an impact than 36.

Stay Strong,
Glenn

Tester Outer

2007-09-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

Check, check 1, check 2. Can you all hear me out there? Uh, yeah, Chuck, can I get a little more in the monitor up here. Yeah. No, the left one. My left. Yeah. Okay, that's great. Check, check. Okay, that sounds good.

How you all doin' tonite?