Contract Ratification Vote

Fellow graduate assistants,

GAU is pleased to announce our contract ratification vote! This is our chance to have a real say on our futures as a graduate assistant on campus. While the bargaining team believes the tentative agreement we reached is a good, fair deal, ultimately the choice is yours.

This tentative agreement gives us three very important gains for dealing with fees, stipends, and health care:

Stipends: your bargaining team accepted the university’s proposals for modest stipend increases of 1% on January 1, 2012, 1% on July 1, 2012, and 2% on July 1, 2013. Originally we found these increases unacceptable — because they would almost certainly be eaten up by fee increases. But now we have a vehicle for dealing with fees.

Fees: our priority in bargaining was always to minimize the amount fees are taking out of our pockets. This contract does this two ways. First, the university made a written commitment to try and keep fee increases reasonable. Secondly — and this is what provides real protection — should the fee increases go up more than 4% in 2012 or 5% in 2013, we can reopen the stipend portion of the contract to negotiate for higher pay to offset those increases. The success of those negotiations will depend on two things: the financial health of the university and the support and activism of GAU’s membership. We have to be ready to fight to keep our money in our pockets should the time come!

Health care: your bargaining team was unable to make any immediate changes to our student health care plan. This is partially because of cost; any significant changes in the short term would likely come with staggeringly high fee increases and would price us out of the health care plan. Instead, we elected to take a more long-term view that will ultimately improve benefits for all students, not just graduate assistants. Working together with representatives from Undergraduate Student Government and Graduate and Professional Student Council, GAU will be working to come up with affordable health care solutions such as dependent care, getting rid of the pre-existing condition waiting clause, and lowering the out-of-pocket costs of extended care with an implementation beginning fall 2013. This also includes a university commitment to follow the guidelines of the Affordable Care Act.

You can read an executive summary online (http://bit.ly/vUL22Z) as well as the full-text of the proposed contract available online as a PDF (http://bit.ly/u42VJl).

Our information on voting and voting procedures are available on our website (http://wp.me/P15BvZ-ab). Voting will be held:

Monday November 21, 10am-6pm
Student Center Ohio Room

We hope to see all of you there to cast your vote on your future working conditions and make your voice heard throughout the university!
In solidarity,
Kristi Brownfield
Vice-President for Communications

http://gaunited.org