Bargaining Session #7
Hi Everyone,
We have one more bargaining session before the start of the semester on Tuesday, August 20th, from 10 AM to 2 PM. The bargaining heat is turning up – let’s pack the room to show our support for our Bargaining team! Please RSVP to attend in person or on zoom here.
This bargaining update is provided to you by Elizabeth Oakes (Organizing Committee) and Katie Hall (Bargaining Committee).
In addition to being on the Organizing Committee, several working groups, and attending nearly every bargaining session, Elizabeth supports our bargaining committee by taking meeting minutes of what is said in negotiations. Her reflections are a great summary if you haven’t had time to read all of our updates:
From Elizabeth:
I've attended all of the bargaining sessions so far except for July 26th and it has been so interesting to observe how the back-and-forth has evolved over the past 3 months. In May, I was nervous about how this was all going to play out. At the start of bargaining, the College's legal team seemed to be testing our bargaining team and trying to put limits on the procedures and substance of the bargaining process. They learned quickly that our bargaining committee is incredibly well prepared and ready to negotiate on our terms. It also became clear that this process will involve battles that I would not have thought would be major points of contention, for instance, we have major disagreements with the College’s team on the Prohibition Against Discrimination and Harassment proposal as we fight for protections beyond the legal minimum.
In our June 12th session, our BC was masterful in explaining why we needed the provisions in our proposals. After a tense first half of the session, the tone in bargaining changed. It finally felt like an honest back and forth discussion of substance that led to productive movement on many proposals. I am convinced that this shift would not have occurred at that time without observers present.
Productive bargaining continued in July with the College's side listening to personal testimony from union members on Academic Freedom issues. We made real progress on that and other proposals.
When I came to the most recent session on August 2nd, I felt another tone-shift, unfortunately in a negative direction. Again, there were surprising sticking points, this time in the Health and Safety proposal and also in Workspace and Materials. The BC was clear and calm in explaining their reasoning for the language in our counter proposals. Many of the arguments from the College's side felt tangential to the substance of the proposals, especially in the section on promptly notifying BUEs of exposure to hazardous substances and what constitutes 'reasonable' time-frames for LTS to replace computers. They drew a line saying they would not commit to providing ergonomic office chairs. While I am happy to report that we reached agreement on the Discipline and Dismissal proposal and made some progress on Employment Records, most of the session felt like a step backwards in productive negotiation.
I'm optimistic that this will shift again for the better and I'm looking forward to attending the next session. I hope that you'll join me as an observer! It really is interesting to witness the process and it makes a supportive difference for our bargaining team.
From Katie:
I’ll start by echoing Elizabeth’s invitation to have all bargaining unit members join us as observers at the bargaining sessions. It would be great to have you join in person, but we’d love to have you on Zoom as well if that’s best for you. You don’t have to do anything to prepare for the meetings, other than turn your camera on, and you will not be called on to participate. The power in having observers at the sessions is it shows the College that we are a strong community, highly invested in generating a fair collective bargaining agreement that we hope will benefit everyone on the campus, not just the union members AND you can see how the sausage is made!
During this last session, we passed three counterproposals to the College, Discipline and Dismissal, Health and Safety, and Workspace and Materials. The College passed one counterproposal to us, Employment Records. As Elizabeth mentioned, we are often surprised by the things the College won’t agree to, especially on topics where we assumed there would be instant agreement. For me the most surprising so far is that the College will not commit to prohibiting discrimination against people based on their marital status, off-duty political activity and reproductive health decision making. The College often responds to sections in our articles with the argument that they are not “legally bound” to do something, such as when they said they are not “legally bound to follow ergonomic practices.” We point out that we do not need a union contract for things the College is legally bound to do and that the legal bare minimum for what is required in certain situations is not always in line with the College’s stated mission and values. If you look back at the proposals that have been passed back and forth you can see these discussions playing out in places where sections of text are deleted and reasserted multiple times.
Still, we were able to reach a tentative agreement on the Discipline and Dismissal Proposal and won strong protections for bargaining unit members who feel they are unjustly disciplined or dismissed.
We are busy at work drafting new articles and preparing counterproposals for our next meeting on August 20th. The College currently has fourteen (14) proposals in their possession, so we hope they will pass back more than one (1) as they did at this last session.
Please feel free to reach out to any of us with questions or concerns and be sure to join us on discord if you want to be more involved with discussions going on behind the scenes. Our union, WOAW, is really ours, and all of our voices matter.
If you haven’t had a chance to readourletter to the administrationregarding our stance on the prohibition against discrimination and harassment, please do. And if you agree,pleaseadd your name. There is strength in numbers and we are in this together.