Today, we had our second bargaining session with the UMass Chan Bargaining Committee. UMass presented two proposals, and we presented twelve proposals to improve our working conditions. Our bargaining sessions are open to our members, and we were pleased to have a group of Student Worker observers in this session. If you are interested in attending the next session on November 24th and other upcoming sessions, click here to RSVP. Many thanks to our observers who showed up to support this process!
You can find all of the proposals on our bargaining tracker here (be sure to click the Student Worker tab) and a short summary of the proposals we presented below:
- Academic Freedom: Ensures that UMass Chan grants student workers a space to share and discuss knowledge regarding their research.
- Training: Ensures access to work-related training opportunities by providing time to complete training and coverage of costs.
- Workspace and Materials: Guarantees that student workers have the materials and space they need to fulfill their duties.
- Workload: Ensures that workload will be reasonable, allowing for student workers to maintain their mental health and work life balance.
- Employment Records: Establishes a fair process for providing student workers with access to the information contained in their employment files and to regulate the maintenance, access, and alteration of employment records.
- Discipline and Dismissal: Protects student workers from unfair disciplinary practices.
- Prohibition Against Discrimination and Harassment: Protects student workers from discrimination and harassment and outlines steps for recourse if discrimination or harassment does occur; covers bathroom equity and lactation spaces.
- Intellectual Property: Establishes the rights of student workers for their creations, inventions, and work products.
- Successorship: Ensures that in the event of a change in ownership or control of UMass Chan, the contract with the Union will continue to be recognized by any succeeding entity.
- Grievance and Arbitration: Provides a mechanism for student workers and the Union to resolve grievances that arise when UMass Chan has violated a provision of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. This article is necessary to enforce the Agreement. It establishes a process for resolving issues that culminates with arbitration by a neutral third party if need be.
- Union Access and Rights: Ensures our union’s ability to communicate with and represent all student workers in their workplace and provides Union representatives and officers with access to areas where student workers work.
- Dues and V-CAP Checkoff: Regulates the collection of union dues and voluntary contributions
In our last bargaining session, we communicated to the UMass Chan administration that the withholding of our regularly scheduled stipend increases is not legal, and UMass Chan agreed to look into the issue. While the Administration told us they are still looking into the issue and hope to have an answer soon, we were disappointed that UMass did not come prepared today with a response on the withholding of our regularly scheduled raises. This is an urgent issue for all of us, and we made it clear that, unless our stipend increases are restored, we are prepared to enforce our legal rights through the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations.
We were pleased that the Administration ended our session by indicating that they intend to bring formal responses in our next session, on November 24, and by scheduling an additional session on December 18. We are optimistic that the current pace of bargaining will quickly lead to a fair contract—but we need to continue to show UMass that our demands are backed by our members. Tell us why winning strong protections in these articles is important to you by submitting a testimonial using this form!
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