Eleventh Bargaining Session
***9 days since our contract expired Aug 15!***
Today, the GEO Bargaining Team (BT) and the UIUC Administration held their eleventh bargaining session. Thank you to all members who attended!
Please read below for more information on what happened today and what comes next.
NEXT BARGAINING SESSION: Tuesday, September 5, 2017, 9:00am-12:00pm, Illinois Fire Service Institute (11 Gerty Drive, Champaign). All members are welcome! You can also find more information about bargaining on our website.
We received and asked questions about a new Leaves and Holidays proposal from the Administration that includes more flexible parental accommodation. The proposal, however, is contingent on us dropping our Child Care proposal. We’ve been fighting for more flexible parental accommodation for weeks now, and thanks to our organizing efforts the Admin has proposed a weaker version of our Leaves and Holidays article that includes flexible parental accommodation language as well as Visa and Immigration leave language. It’s a tough decision, and one we will discuss and receive input on at our General Membership Meeting on Tuesday, August 29th. If this issue is important to you, please attend the General Membership Meeting to voice your opinion to our Bargaining Team.
We proposed a package focused on Appointment Terms, which is designed to alleviate the Admin’s chronic issue with sending our appointment letters late. Almost every graduate employee (an estimated 95%) on this campus have received their appointment letter late at some point, which keeps us in the dark about our employment and makes it hard to plan our future. We’ve taken the Admin to arbitration over this, and won–but they’ve still not offered any remedies and continue to send late appointment letters. Our proposal would make the Admin provide financial compensation for employees who receive late appointment letters, but the Admin is refusing to accept this.
We stood firm on maintaining our current grievance procedure. The Admin proposed requiring all grievance meetings include a representative from Academic Human Resources, even informal meetings. This has been proven to have an intimidating effect on members, and would make it more difficult to resolve grievances in the long term. We indicated to the Admin that we have no interest in changing our current practice.
If you have questions about bargaining or the BT’s proposal, attending a meeting is the best way to address them. You can reach us at barg@uigeo.org. You can also find more info about bargaining at our website.
What Comes Next:
We will have a General Membership Meeting on Tuesday, August 29th, 6:30-8:30pm at the GEO Office (809 S. 5h St. Champaign, Geneva Room). This meeting will specifically be for bargaining-related updates and to get membership input on how to proceed and strategize with our Immigration and Visa Leave, Parental Leave, and Childcare Subsidy proposals. We have succeeded in expanding our Non-Discrimination article, but are still fighting to win Immigration and Visa Leave for international graduate employees as well as more flexible parental leave and a childcare subsidy for grad employee parents. WE NEED YOUR INPUT AND SUPPORT to strategize on winning these proposals! Please come to our first General Membership Meeting (GMM) to let us know about your ideas, questions, and concerns.
Members, we need all of your participation for this struggle! Please attend the next bargaining session: we need you! The Bargaining Team represents members at the table. We look to you, the members, for input when we go to break out sessions. The more members in the room, the better informed our decisions at the table.
Attending bargaining sessions is the best way to actively engage in the negotiation of your wages, healthcare, and other protections. It is perfectly acceptable to come late or leave early from a bargaining session if you can’t stay the entire time. Just being present demonstrates our unity and strength to the Administration. You can even bring your work if you want. Coffee and food will be provided.
If you can’t make it to the bargaining session, you can still keep up with bargaining updates by attending GEO committee meetings and general membership meetings, following GEO on social media, and reading GEO emails.
Our Contract Expired–What Does That Mean For You?
The GEO has been bargaining with the administration since March, working hard to secure a new, more equitable contract based on the four pillars our membership voted on last spring: Tuition and Fee Waivers, Healthcare, Wages, and Access and Equality.
Because we are still negotiating with the Administration, we are entering the fall semester without a new contract. However, the expired contract includes a clause stating that it will remain in effect during negotiations, so you can go to work as you normally would.
GEO is committed to winning a better contract for all our members, but our power is directly determined by our membership. We won our first major victory a few weeks ago by expanding our non-discrimination clause to include ethnicity, gender expression, visa and immigration status, and arrest record as protected categories. We were only able to achieve this because members organized around this issue, and came to bargaining sessions to show their support –and there’s a lot of work still to be done! If you haven’t been involved with GEO in the past, now is the perfect time to join a committee, become a Steward for your department, or come to a bargaining session. Together, let’s win our best contract yet!
Here’s some information that our Bargaining Team research group compiled on the surprising state of university finances: Setting the Record Straight on University Finances
Are you a member?
Our members are why we succeed at the bargaining table! If you haven’t signed a membership card yet, don’t delay! Contact us at geo@uigeo.org to sign a membership card. If you’re not sure of your membership status, please ask!
Call for Testimonials
One powerful tool in bargaining is member stories, and we want to hear from you! If you have a story related to our contract, email barg@uigeo.org to share it with the Bargaining Team.
Our pillars of bargaining are protecting tuition waivers, raising wages and eliminating fees, ensuring quality healthcare, and promoting access and equality, which includes creating childcare support, strengthening our nondiscrimination statement, and expanding parental, bereavement, and immigration/visa leave. If you have an experience to share about these (or other!) issues, please consider sharing it with the Bargaining Team. If you do not feel comfortable speaking in the session, that is OK too. With your permission, someone else can read your written statement without mentioning you as the author. You can indicate to the Bargaining Team how you want your story shared. You can find examples of testimonials from bargaining on our website under “Member Stories.”
Note: When choosing to have your testimonial read at a bargaining session, the GEO’s bargaining team wants to ensure you know and understand your rights. Interactions that happen at the bargaining table become part of a record that may be referred to later in legal decisions that determine the intent, meaning, and scope of new contract language. As an official action at the bargaining table, your testimonial will be a part of that record.
To ensure that the Admin does not misrepresent your words, the Bargaining Team requests your permission to deliver printed copies of your testimonial to the Admin’s Bargaining Team. While your testimonial is being read, notetakers on both bargaining teams will be taking notes, but providing a paper copy of your testimonial ensures that the Admin cannot misrepresent, misquote, or twist your words at a later date. Testimonials can still be made and submitted anonymously.
See the GEO event calendar for future Bargaining Team meetings, bargaining sessions, and other events. Add it to your Google calendar by searching for geo@uigeo.org. Bargaining Team meetings and bargaining sessions are open to all members. Please contact the Bargaining Team (barg@uigeo.org) with any questions.
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Website: www.uigeo.org
Twitter: @geo_uiuc
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