GAU Executive Summary of Our Tentative Agreement

GAU EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF OUR TENTATIVE AGREEMENT

This is an executive summary that details the major points of the tentative agreement we reached at approximately 4am this morning with the administration. The complete text will be available on the website tomorrow (we need a little more time to ensure proper formatting). Your bargaining team believes this is a very fair settlement and, in all, we got probably 90%-95% of what we asked for.

WHAT WE GAINED:
We got a deal where a salary renegotiation trigger will help keep fee increases down and where an increase in revenues also triggers renegotiation of salary. We also got a conceptual link between fees and stipends, and in a side letter, a commitment to keep fee increases manageable, the teeth of that commitment being the renegotiation triggers.

We were able to negotiate an optional 12-month pay schedule (as opposed to a 9-month) for GAs. What this means is that we will spread our year’s stipend out over 12 months instead of 9, and that will make most GAs with families eligible for state benefits at that point if we needed them.

We got a general commitment to finding ways to get rid of the pre-existing condition waiting clause, and lowering the Out-of-pocket costs of extended care, with a mechanism to begin dealing with other provisions and costs of the health care system here at SIUC. Most interesting, the changes we recommend by Jan1 2013 will improve health coverage for all students, not just graduate assistants.

We got an agreement to support clarification which could lead to those graduate fellows who are completing the same work as graduate assistants being included into the contract

We have gained the option for graduate assistants to receive multi-year assistantships

We got language that protects GAs from being used to break the Faculty Association — or any other union’s — strike. We got language that protects us from retribution for being in and participating in the Union and all legal union activities.

We received language that grants an exemption from the 8-credit hour requirement if there are no classes that further your education available to take

We now have language on fair share, where if we get a majority of the bargaining unit joins the union and becomes dues-paying members, the rest of the bargaining unit pays the service fee for Union services.

We got fixes to language on which calendar we are on, as well as the right to participate in orientations on Campus. We also got language to help us ensure compliance on Evaluations.

We got a 4% raise over the next two years (1 percent in January, 1 percent in July, and 2 percent in July 2013)

We got a clarification on language regarding tuition scholarships for not maintaining good academic standing

We got NO regressive language or take backs (so everything we had before, we still have, especially the 50% pickup of the Student Health Fee)

WHAT WE CONCEEDED:
We had to drop our demand for a fee freeze in exchange for the renegotiation clauses.

We had to trade our demands for immediate implementation of health care benefit changes, such as the removal of the waiver of pre-existing conditions and the reduction of the maximum-out-of-pocket costs for the ability to build a better (and more cost effective) health care deal for all students. We also had to drop inclusion of Medicare and Medicaid as “insurance” and therefore eligible for an opt-out of the fees. The state of Illinois doesn’t believe that Medicaid is “insurance” and that was something we could not refute within the bargaining process.

We dropped automatic fair-share in exchange for the 50% trigger, which we believe will actually be more acceptable to our membership.

We had to drop inclusion of fellowship students into the bargaining unit while we wait for a clarification from the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board on fellowship students.

COMMENTS:
There are a lot of relatively minor points, most of which were administration concessions to us, and the things we have had to give up on were only ways to improve the contract, but at least we didn’t give up a single thing that we had before we went into bargaining. So while we didn’t get all of our demands, we got some improvement on many things, and most importantly, we were able to put together a fair deal.

Your bargaining team recommends this tentative agreement to our membership for ratification vote. We will be holding informational meetings to explain and discuss this proposed contract next week at our strike headquarters: 880 W. High St (Old Carbondale High School). Times of those meetings will be announced over the weekend. We have also decided to delay the membership vote to ratify this agreement until our fellow union, the Faculty Association, is able to end their strike through a fair tentative agreement of their own. Consistent with GAU bylaws, and standard union practice, the ratification vote will be open to dues-paying members.

This was a very hard process for all of us. But the determination showed by graduate assistants to reach a fair settlement, along with the support of the SIUC community, the regional community, and our fellow graduate assistant unions, the GEOs at the University of Illinois-Chicago and University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and the TAA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has got us to this point: a fair deal.

This fair deal is a great starting point for a further efforts to continue to agitate and try and improve the conditions for graduate assistants at SIUC and the campus as a whole. We’ve made a good start — but our work is just beginning and we hope you will continue to work with us for those goals.

In solidarity,
Kristi Brownfield
GAU Bargaining Team
Vice-President for Communications