Bargaining Updates and Tracker

On May 1st, we had a successful Union Break. Hundreds of us came together across all campuses to collectively take a 30 minute break and celebrate one year since we voted in our union. The message was clear – we know what value we bring to the university and we know what we are worth. We keep the U functioning, so administrators better listen to our demands. 

The next day, the University’s bargaining team presented us with the least productive counter we have seen so far. We were left wondering why the University even bothered to meet. Their counterproposals showed backsliding on the non-economic language and no progress on economic articles. 

• They outright rejected our proposal to cover our fees as a benefit of employment. Are we all going to accept this?
• We have repeatedly heard from our departments and supervisors that university administrators, especially Provost Croson, are spreading unfounded rumors about how much graduate workers are going to cost next year. Despite this, the administration has not bothered to give us a counter on pay. It is irresponsible for the university to be giving departments inaccurate information on pay when some departments are making hiring decisions based on this information. 
• Despite acknowledging at the table that there are no current procedures to address cases of advisor abuse and harassment, the University has not even bothered to counter our language to address this issue. We requested copies of hostile work environment policies in 13 randomly selected departments across the U. Their response: only 3 departments have policies – and those policies were weak or unclear. 
• We brought up the hasty and irresponsible building closures over the last week, explaining the acute safety risks posed to the graduate workers who work in labs and make key decisions. It is unacceptable to give us only 2 hours notice to vacate our workplace based on some vague and undefined threat.

We all need to take these fights into the fall. It is clear that the people sent to negotiate with us are not the real decision makers. We ask that if their advisory committee – Provost Croson, Dean Lanyon, and VP Horstman – are the people deciding what language they can and cannot include in our contract, then they should be in the room listening to us.

We made significant progress on the remaining non-economic contract proposals on the table. 

• International Workers’ Rights: The University finally agreed to reasonable timelines for processing visa paperwork and to allow grad workers time off for immigration proceedings, getting us closer to tentatively agreeing to our entire international workers’ rights article. 
• Health and Safety: With guaranteeing access to the grievance procedure if safety violations go unaddressed, we have tentatively agreed on the entire article. 
• Anti-Discrimination: The administration finally moved toward us on the issue of caste, bringing us closer to agreement on that article.

After GLU members sent hundreds of emails to collegiate deans urging a response, the administration had no choice but to return with something – a counter on a few economic articles and numerous questions on the rest. This came after March 21st, when the U’s bargaining team stated in front of 150 grad workers watching on Zoom that they had no timeline for responding or reviewing to the Pay, Fees, and Benefits proposals endorsed by over 2,700 grad assistants. 

Specifically, the employer brought counters on leaves of absence, commute subsidies, and employee assistance. They only had questions – no counter offer – for pay, fees, and health benefits. After discussing their questions (many of which were explicitly answered in our proposals), we reminded them that bargaining sessions will be better spent if they actually develop counters. Grad workers want a contract, not halfhearted questions from administrators.

We hope the Employer continues to take the right lessons from the emails sent to the Deans by returning on April 18th with a comprehensive counter on the remaining economic articles. Then, we’ll be able to dig into urgent negotiations over pay, fees, and health benefits.

Despite 2,700+ graduate workers signing onto our Pay, Fees, and Benefits petition last month, the U’s bargaining team did not respond to a single economic article. They claimed that they “need time to cost these proposals”, but would not provide a clear timeline on when they would respond, even though they’ve had these proposals for 3 weeks. The U’s team effectively told the 150 grad workers observing on zoom and in person that our economic well-being is not a priority. 

We all need to act together to pressure management to give us a response! Look for an email from your bargaining committee representative or contact a member of the Contract Action Team for information about emailing your college’s dean to pressure the U’s bargaining team and advisory committee (Grad School Dean Lanyon, Provost Croson, and HR VP Horstman) to stop the delays. 

Make sure to sign off on your email and feel free to include a personal reason why you want to see the administration move on our union’s economic proposals! 

On top of the lack of response on economics, they tried walking back an article they had previously agreed on (Article 17, Appointment Notification and Reappointment) which would secure us a clear, transparent, and grievable reappointment process. 

The administrators responsible for our low wages make six figure salaries, and now they shrug off our proposal for a living wage, proving how disconnected they are with our lives. If this makes you mad, email your dean.

On February 29, we presented our proposals on economic issues to the university. Over the last three weeks, over 2,700 graduate workers – 63% of us – signed onto our union’s platform for a livable wage, ending the fees, comprehensive benefits, and clear leave policies. Our message was clear in the bargaining room – grads need these proposals, and we needed them yesterday. Over the course of the last three weeks, thousands of us had conversations about these issues. We know that our power to move the employer comes from having conversations like these. The university would be wise to listen to us.

Even as we begin to negotiate over pay, fees, and benefits, the employer has demonstrated a reluctance to hold faculty and university bureaucracies accountable. The University still disagrees with language that would allow us recourse against unsafe workplaces, hostile or discriminatory supervisors, and opaque termination procedures. 

We expect the employer to respond to the contract proposals – both the remaining Workplace Safety and Quality of Life articles and the proposed economic package – on Thursday, March 21.

In this set of bargaining sessions with the University, we won tentative agreements on Workload and Appointment Duties and Scope of Work, meaning that we have successfully negotiated all of our Job Security, Transparency, and Workload articles! 

With tentative agreements on most of our Workplace Safety and Quality of Life proposals, we will start negotiating over Pay, Fees, and Benefits soon. Before bargaining over these issues, thousands of grad workers around the University are signing onto the Pay, Fees, and Benefits bargaining platform. Signing on to this platform is your chance to demand that the University pays us enough to live, stops charging ridiculous and discriminatory fees, provides comprehensive health coverage, and allows us time off from work. Please reach out to me or a CAT member to sign today!

A few sticking points remain, even as we approach bargaining over economic issues. We need to continue to fight for protections over discrimination, hostile work environments, academic discipline and discharge, and international workers rights. The University might attempt to make us choose between these vital workplace protections and higher pay and better benefits. However, we need to reject this dichotomy: with administrators taking home six figure salaries and spending millions on consulting fees, the U has the money. 
Real security means protections against workplace abuse and better economic support. We can only win real security in our contract if we stay organized.

We had another set of bargaining sessions with the University on Feb. 1st and 2nd, making more progress on our Workplace Safety and Quality of Life proposals. But the continued fight for workplace protections and meaningful economic support doesn’t just happen at the bargaining table. Over the last two weeks, Grad workers came together in a series of 18 townhalls to discuss our union’s Pay, Fees, and Benefits bargaining platform. 

Join the fight at this Wednesday’s General Membership Meeting!

• We have made tentative agreements on our grievance and arbitration articles, giving us a robust process for enforcing our contract! 
• The employer once again failed to provide a counterproposal on international workers’ rights. Despite international workers making up a huge portion of our union– comprising the majority of many grad departments – this is the only article to which the University has consistently failed to give a response.
• The employer keeps asserting that their current policies on hostile work environments and discrimination are sufficient. The university is reluctant to hold faculty accountable for abusive behavior, despite its own internal reviews calling for meaningful recourse.
• The employer refuses to respond to academic discipline and discharge language. They created a system that entangles our roles as students and workers, yet they continue to claim a right to fire us for “academic” reasons even if those reasons are unclear. 

Through continued organizing across the University, GLU-UE members have been able to push our employer to tentatively agree on a majority of the articles brought to the table in September. However, the University is still trying to avoid accountability for egregious faculty abuse and insufficient support for international workers. To win what we deserve, we need to keep organizing. Attend Wednesday’s General Membership Meeting to go over the Pay, Fees, and Benefits Platform and to learn how to build power in your lab or office. 

On January 18th and 19th, we resumed bargaining for the spring semester. After hundreds of graduate workers rallied outside bargaining on December 1st, administrators were pushed to  meaningfully respond. On Thursday, the University finally gave us a counter on every article. This includes their first response to the international workers’ rights proposals.

This substantive counter allowed us to make six new tentative agreements, including on union rights, professional development, and job security. The employer withdrew their proposal to retain the right to discharge workers if the university can’t meet disability accommodations. While there is still progress needed – including on academic discipline and discharge, hostile work environments, and nondiscrimination – the last bargaining session was a positive step towards a contract that gives us all better workplace protections and rights.

With this forward movement, we are preparing to negotiate on pay, fees, and benefits, and we need your input. Over the next week and a half, there will be a series of townhalls to discuss the pay, fees, and benefits bargaining platform, which will be finalized at a GMM on February 7th. Here is the full townhall schedule and the proposed platform. If you can’t attend your area’s town hall, feel free to email me or attend a different townhall. As a union, we need to understand our collective needs and priorities: this includes you.

On Friday, December 1st, we wrapped up our first semester of negotiation with the employer. Despite having three weeks to respond, the employer did not present a substantive counter. While we have made progress on some articles, we want to flag the employer’s inaction on the following crucial contract issues. 

• International Workers Rights – The employer has refused to respond to our proposals, claiming they do not have any experts on the subject on their team, and that they consider these rights to be purely economic. 
• Hostility and Harassment – The employer wants us to only be able to grieve abusive work situations after we’ve gone through internal university processes. We know that we would not be negotiating over other pathways for addressing these things if the current process protects grad workers. Their preferred policies also do not cover hostile situations unrelated to discrimination or sexual harassment, leaving a huge gap in protection.
• Workload and Professional Rights – The employer is trying to restrict our contract to nonacademic issues, while adopting an extremely expansive definition of academic work. Under their definition (“academic work is anything that touches academics”), our contract would not cover TA or RA work necessary to graduate. This would severely limit our ability to grieve burdensome or inappropriate workloads. This would also limit the contract’s ability to secure professional and academic freedom, IP rights, and access to remote work and timely reimbursements. 
• Discipline and Discharge – Since October, the employer has held that they should be able to fire graduate workers for two particularly egregious reasons. First, they maintain any termination related to “academics” should not be subject to our contract or its grievance procedure. Second, that if the university is “unable” to meet disability accommodations, they can fire you. In both cases, the employer is deliberately trying to retain the right to fire us arbitrarily, with impunity. 
• Health and Safety – The employer wants to limit our ability to file grievances over workplace safety hazards, claiming that we should only be able to grieve if the employer first evaluates a situation as unsafe. This gives them latitude to determine what is safe and what isn’t. However, when lead is present in a lab or a fire alarm is not loud enough to hear, we are the ones who suffer the consequences, not them. 
• Nondiscrimination – The employer has repeatedly crossed out characteristics that are not currently included in their nondiscrimination policies, leaving us at the status quo. If the university has its way, any supervisor could discriminate based on caste, ancestry, pregnancy status, HIV antibody status, political affiliation or belief, immigration status, citizenship status, medical condition, arrest or criminal record. In bargaining, we asked the university if they intend to discriminate against grad workers on these characteristics. They had no response. 

While the employer had their own internal meeting on Friday, hundreds of graduate workers rallied outside the Carlson School (where bargaining took place) to speak out on the very issues listed above. With this show of collective action, the pressure is on the employer to respond more substantively when we resume bargaining in January.
If you care about these issues and want to see change at our workplace, join the Contract Action Team (CAT). We can only win a strong contract if we stand together and keep organizing.

On November 9th and 10th, we continued negotiations with university administrators. Out of the 26 articles currently on the bargaining table, we tentatively agreed on 2 additional articles, including an overhaul of the university’s job posting process! Also, we received new responses from the employer on 12 articles and have yet to hear back on 3 articles. To view the articles, check out our bargaining tracker. Some highlights:

• While we appreciate the employer’s substantive response to the grievance procedure proposal, we are wary that they want to carve out exceptions. In cases of overworking, discrimination, harassment, and workplace safety violations, they want us to use their internal university processes before filing a union grievance. We know these current procedures are ineffective, which is exactly why we need a robust union grievance procedure.
• The employer did not meaningfully move on some issues highlighted previously. They are still holding on a clause that allows them to fire us if they cannot meet accommodation needs under the ADA.
• The employer postponed all discussion of international workers’ rights, rejected proposed protections for undocumented workers, and claimed these issues are merely “economic matters”. The employer continually fails international workers, all while recruiting abroad and touting a commitment to DEI. By framing these rights as a cost, the employer actively dismisses international workers.
• The employer asserted that they don’t see work that contributes to academics as related to employment. In discussion, we called out the consequences of the employer’s separation of our “academic” work from our graduate assistant work, with examples regarding intellectual property, grant writing, and fulfilling teaching requirements for degrees. The employer is attempting to reduce the power of our contract, despite the fact that our labor provides value to the employer.

The employer claims that they do not fully understand our workplace, yet they feel qualified in telling us which protections we deserve. By repeatedly citing how decentralized the university is, administrators ignore the common factor that binds our union together: graduate workers keep the university running.

On October 26th and 27th, we made progress on several contract articles. We have received counters from the employer on a majority of the Quality of Life and Workplace Safety proposals. Here are the main takeaways:

• While we are making progress on workplace health and safety, the employer attempted to reserve the right to evaluate the credibility of reported hazardous conditions. But this is the very problem: often, grad workers report unsafe conditions that the employer then hastily determines are safe without full explanation or investigation.

• The employer attempted to reserve the right to discipline or discharge a graduate worker from their jobs for academic performance without recourse, reflecting their stated belief that our roles as workers and students are completely separate. We know that this is not true. We asked for clarifications on their perspective for the next bargaining session. 

• The employer tried to assert that they should be able to terminate graduate workers if they are not able to meet accommodation needs under the ADA. We have sought further clarification and would like to hear from you if you have experience getting accommodations through the DRC. 

• The employer has not yet presented a counter to our international employee rights article, instead asking us basic questions about the visa process and claiming that their delay was because they are not experts on processes governing international labor. The actual experts on these processes – international workers themselves – directly answered their questions. We await the employer’s counter. 

As we look forward to our next bargaining sessions on November 9th and 10th, we hope that the administration recognizes that all grad workers – including disabled workers, workers facing discrimination and unsafe work conditions, and international workers – make the University function. 

We will be discussing further details at our next General Membership Meeting at 5:30pm Monday, 10/30 (RSVP here!).

On October 12th, we heard responses and questions from the employer on our proposals. October 13th, we spent our bargaining session responding to each of the employer’s counter-proposals and giving testimony. Here are the main takeaways:

• The employer responded to only 6 out of the 21 articles that we presented a month ago. We responded to each counter-proposals within a day. 

• The employer has not yet responded to proposals that grad workers around the university have highlighted as vital, including workplace safety, grievance procedures, nondiscrimination, scope of appointments, and international worker rights. 

• Thanks to testimony provided by graduate workers across academic disciplines, the Bargaining Committee directly responded to questions asked by administrators about how graduate workers are pushed to work in unsafe situations and to perform duties well outside the scope of our appointments and job descriptions.

While bargaining was in session, grad workers around the university wore buttons in support of these proposals. With this show of solidarity, we expect meaningful responses from the employer when we return to the bargaining table in two weeks.

TLDR:

• The bargaining committee presented our proposals to the employer, university administration. 
• Opening statements were presented by bargaining committee representatives highlighting why we, graduate workers, are demanding better conditions and the history of GLU.
• We expect to hear the employer’s response to our proposals at the next bargaining session on October 12th.

During our first bargaining session with the University, Sam Boland, a Bargaining Committee (BC) representative from Biomedical Engineering put it well: “I chose the University of Minnesota because of a reputation of competitive stipends, world class facilities, and excellent mentorship. Over my 4 years, I have watched the U of M fail to exemplify these values, and ultimately fail its workers.” What Sam said is true and encapsulates the experiences of so many workers here at the University.

To address these issues, we presented the workplace safety and quality of life proposals summarized in our ratified bargaining platform to the University. You can see the proposal language in the bargaining tracker (above). The University’s team (below) has agreed to meet with us next on October 12, which is when we expect to see their counter proposals. In other words, the ball is now in the employer’s court. 

As we move through the bargaining process, you can expect updates from your bargaining committee through:

• Our newly launched bargaining tracker
• Email updates like these
• Individual conversations with BC and CAT representatives
• General membership and area meetings

Employer attendance: 

• Kari Seime (Labor Relations Consultant)
• Coy Hillstead (Assistant Director of Human Resources)
• Amy Hietapelto (Interim Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs in Duluth)
• Greg Thruston (Director of Student Health Benefits)
• Erik Brown (Associate Vice Chancellor for Graduate Education and Research in Duluth)
• Michael Huyen (HR Director for College of Biological science)
• Bryson Barth (HR employment specialist)
• Etty DeVaux (Chief Operating Officer, Executive Director, Grad Ed Policy Office)
• Victor Barocas (Interim Dean for CSE, Professor of Biomedical Engineering)
• Ann Meier (Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Programs in CLA, Professor of Sociology)
• Tabitha Grier-Reed (Associate Dean for Graduate Education and Faculty Development in CEHD)