Twelfth Bargaining Session
***21 days since our contract expired on August 15!***
Today, the GEO Bargaining Team (BT) and the UIUC Administration held their twelfth 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: Wednesday, September 20, 2017, 9:00am-12:00pm, Illinois Fire Service Institute (11 Gerty Drive, Champaign). We need as many members in attendance as possible if we want to make gains! You can also find more information about bargaining on our website.
We signed a Tentative Agreement (TA) that grants us more flexible parental accommodation and states that supervisors and HR must strive to accommodate grad employees who have to miss work due to visa issues. This TA ensures two weeks of paid parental accommodation, and an additional four week flexible leave to be taken at the employee’s discretion. We have also secured a new visa/immigration leave article that states that the Administration will strive to accommodate absences due to visa/immigration procedures and will strive to provide tuition waiver generating appointments to affected employees when they return to campus. This was a long, difficult fight, and is indicative of even more contentious battles to come.
The Admin gave us an egregious counter-proposal on Appointment Terms and Grievance, which does nothing to fix their chronic problem of delivering appointment letters late–even though we have a legally binding arbitration that says they are in the wrong. Currently, over 90% of grad employees receive their appointment letters late, but the Admin doesn’t want to do anything to remedy the issue. They don’t seem to realize how difficult it is to plan for our future when we don’t know what sort of appointment we’ll have. This proposal would also weaken our ability to grieve contract violations, and would reduce our current contract in a number of other ways. The Admin also asked us to withdraw our Distribution of Information article, which is important for us as it provides us better ways to contact grad employees to inform them about their rights. We indicated our disappointment that they would even think to propose a package like this.
Finally we made the case for a mediator to be brought in. We’ve been bargaining since March, and only have two TAs to show for it. The Admin has been dragging their feet as much as possible, despite their claims back in July that they were “confident” we would have a contract by the time school started. Instead, we’ve been working for over twenty days without a new contract–and we haven’t even discussed some of the more contentious issues, like health care or wages! A mediator will hopefully help speed up the process, but the only real way to make strides is to have as many members as possible at bargaining sessions and work actions to demonstrate our collective power to the Administration and push them to move forward. We need all our members to become empowered to collectively take action to win better working conditions!
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 Wednesday, September 13, 6:30-8:30pm (location TBD–check our Facebook page for the info closer to the date). This meeting will be for bargaining-related updates and to get membership input on how to proceed and strategize with our economic and non-economic proposals. WE NEED YOUR INPUT AND SUPPORT to strategize on winning further gains! Please come to the 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.
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!
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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