We are excited to have had our first bargaining session this afternoon, bringing us one step closer to establishing a fair contract!
We were joined by national and regional UAW representatives who came to show their support for our efforts. From the University’s side we were joined by David LaChappelle (Sr. Director of Employee and Labor Relations), Matthew Lyford (Director of Employee and Labor Relations), Mary Ellen Lane (Dean of the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences), Allison Atwood (Sr. Labor Strategy Consultant), and Joshua Nadreau (Attorney). Both teams expressed a desire for the process to be positive, productive, and efficient. We highlighted last week’s “Fund our Future” Town Hall with federal and state legislators as an example of a constructive approach.
We started by introducing ourselves and speaking briefly about our backgrounds and research. We then presented UMass Chan with our Initial Bargaining Goals, which a majority of students voted to ratify last month by 99.5%, and explained why each goal is a priority for our first contract. Next, we discussed bargaining logistics and scheduling. We are glad to report that we have scheduled bargaining sessions through December. We encourage students to attend as an observer—click here to RSVP for future sessions.
After we discussed scheduling, we presented three proposals to UMass. You can find our proposals on our bargaining tracker here (make sure to click on the Student worker tab at the bottom), and a short summary of the proposals below:
- Union-Management Committee: creates a joint committee to meet regularly during the life of the contract on matters related to our contract
- Health and Safety: ensures that all student workers have a safe and comfortable workspace and an appropriate environment that will make workers more productive
- Severability: protects the remainder of our contract if one part is declared unlawful, and ensure our right to bargain over any impacts
We also brought up the issue of our yearly stipend increases. Many of you have reached out to us with concerns about this issue, and we represented these concerns to UMass Chan today. As many of you are aware, we receive annual increases to our stipends every year. However, we did not receive an annual increase this year. UMass Chan is required to maintain all policies and practices during contract negotiations, including our regular raises, and we made clear to the administration that it would be unlawful for them to discontinue such regular raises during the negotiation process. They confirmed that they would look into the issue.
If you want to hear more about our first bargaining session, please join us tonight at Greater Good Brewing Co. from 5:30pm-8:00pm. If you need or can provide a ride, please fill out the form here.
In solidarity,
Kathleen Desevin, Graduate Student, Biochemistry & Molecular Biotechnology
Clint McDaniel, Graduate Student, Biochemistry & Molecular Biotechnology
Akshay Alaghatta, Graduate Student, Medicine
Milky Abajorga, Graduate Student, Molecular Medicine
Will Cruz, Graduate Student, RNA Therapeutics
CORE-UAW Student Worker Bargaining Committee