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.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Non-Economic Articles
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Health Care Deal Reached!!!
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
One
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.
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.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Comparator Data
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.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
A "Toby Prompts Me to Work" Post
So we wheeled, we dealed. Nothing much happened.
I won't recap (see below), but will narrate.
The UO came in and offered us a deal whereby they would agree to give the GTFF $150,000 a year so that we can buy an increased annual cap. If you're saying to yourself, "But wait! Doesn't the GTFF believe that there is already contract language that requires the UO to give us $250,000 a year to buy mare cap?" then you are on the ball and a candidate for the next bargaining team.
We politely declined their offer and told them we were not interested in pursuing an agreement along these lines, as we are pretty confident that we are going to win a grievance that will require them to pay us $250,000. We also pointed out that it would take roughly three years to hoard enough money to be able to purchase a cap increase.
We counter-offered with the idea that they would automaticaly cover any increase up to 13% next year and 85% of any increase after that. They seemed genuinely interested. They asked us to go back to the office and write something up. We did. They asked us many questions about our proposal and went for a long caucus.
We got to thinking that maybe, just maybe they were thinking about accepting our proposal.
No such luck.
They came back and told us that they would be more interested in something like a 5% guarantee and then, if the renewal next year went over that, we could just agree to bargain. Or maybe split increase over 5% halvsies.
Given that this was the least we would expect to get in bargaining next year, it doesn't seem like reason to drop our grievance and give up $250,000 this year.
We are pursuing the grievance. We had our meeting with the UO's greievance officer and it went fine. We await his ruling.
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.
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