It is nearing the end of summer, as you may well know. Our team has been working hard to secure important rights and precedent for our unit. This week’s bargaining session began with our bargaining team’s detailed counter proposal on Grievance. Our team also began discussion on Appointment-Reappointment procedure and Union Rights in the campus community. Additionally, our team received an amended proposal on Personnel File Access and a counter-proposal on Non-Discrimination from the administration.
Our bargaining team put in a great deal of effort on the grievance counter proposal as many of the members of our unit are not represented in any systematic way under current university policy. It seems clear from the administration bargaining team’s proposal that they are not aware of, nor are they particularly concerned about these gaps in the governance and operations of the university. In the university administration’s amended proposal on Access to Personnel Files, the administration’s team moved toward our team’s concerns; however, their proposal omitted our call for giving a unit member the ability to grieve material that is unsuitable for inclusion in a personnel file.
Additionally, the administration’s team moved toward our proposal on non-discrimination but continues to exclude language protecting members despite immigration status or parental status. Perhaps most disturbing was a discussion on the Union Rights proposal we presented. We propose that the union should have the right nature of the union’s ability to contact unit members via university email. An administration bargaining team member asked whether the union would send “defamatory emails” about administrators using the email under such an arrangement. They seemed Their side of the following discussion seemed to suggest that if our campus union uses campus email addresses then the administration has the right to police the content of those messages. We find this unThis is not acceptable in an intellectual community (nor any for that matter, and it only does a disservice to the diverse constituencies multiplicity of our community which is where our strength lies). We will continue to push for the union’s and its members’ right to be an integrated, non-stigmatized part of the university community.
While we have made progress on some of these proposals we have yet to reach tentative agreements on them. Our next bargaining session is scheduled for August 11, at 1:30. The bargaining team will continue to negotiate on all currently open proposals. I with primary emphasis on the topics of ( I forgot which two). If you would like to attend the next bargaining session and lend your insight as well as your support, please contact our lead negotiator, Kay Emmert (ake153@hotmail.com) or communications chair Dorothee Schneider (communicationsloc.6546@gmail.com).
