3/21/2014 update: Today, Friday at 3:30PM, 302 Gerlinger. Topics to include pay and health care.
3/14/2014: President Gottfredson’s team has been giving our students a hard time. Their “Hired Guns and Hired Help” live-blog of the bargaining sessions is here:
The admin’s position is that what the admin spends on him is not appropriate for the table. Our organizer points out that this is a misrepresentation of our position. We are trying to ascertain the admin’s priorities. He doesn’t get it. We’re not trying to offer any proposals that would alter the General Counsel Fund spending is administrated. But when we see spending on admin and General Counsel grow, and yet we’re told there’s no money to spent. Now the lawyer threatens to bury us under red tape.
And don’t miss the excellent Twitter hashtag feed: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23GTFF3544&src=tyah
Topics for Friday include money, sex, and of course dental. I’m no dentist, but Gottfredson’s position on the economics mystifies me. Our GTF pay floors are really low. This is painful for our grad students, embarrassing to our university, makes it difficult to recruit the best grad students in many fields, and generally calls into question the seriousness of UO’s efforts to stay in the AAU. The money needed to fix GTF pay is trivial – a Bean and a Gleason or two. Does anyone understand what game Gottfredson is playing here? Is it just that he thinks a few deadwood admins are more important to UO’s future than 1200 grad students?
UO’s lead negotiator is Jeff Matthews of Harrang Long Geller and Rudnick.
How did he get the job? Apparently Sharon Rudnick decided union bargaining was not her comparative advantage, and fled back to tobacco company work.
GTF union bargaining is completely shortsighted. Bargaining on dental coverage, medical care and paternity leave?
You all should be focusing on research support, competitive awards, dissertation preparation, and the number of graduate students (the more grad students you bring in, the less work you do in the classroom or grading).
As it is, this GTF union is only focused on marginal short-term improvement in your income, and not at all focused on your education, which is why your hear isn’t it? The fact you can emerge with minimal debt is great. But even if you take out 50k in students loan, that’s fine as long as your first job pays at least $280 more a month, which it certainly will if you get tenure track position over a nontenure track one.
Tell your union reps you care about education and not second benefits.
Tell the person that wrote this post to learn how to spell.
“…Why your hear…?” Do you mean “…Why you’re here”?
“You all should be focusing on research support, competitive awards, dissertation preparation, and the number of graduate students (the more grad students you bring in, the less work you do in the classroom or grading). ”
Recall, I think you are raising some valid points, but I think you are confused or have been misled about how bargaining works.
The reason the GTFF doesn’t bargain over such things is because it is *not possible*. The GTFF bargaining focuses on workplace conditions and issues, not academic issues.
For example, in sociology, where I earned my Ph.D. at UO, graduate workers were initially guaranteed four years of funding despite the fact that it took 7 years, on average, to earn the Ph.D. We would lobby to have these funding issues addressed through the Sociology Graduate Student Forum, which was our own internal organization separate from the GTFF. The GTFF is powerless to advocate on those issues. And, keep in mind, there are perhaps over 100 departments and units in the GTFF. Every department faces different issues, many graduate workers have full funding already, so the GTFF focuses on issues that impact and elevate all 1400+ employees.
I know that the lines often blur, but the GTFF can only bargain over *workplace conditions*, not *academic conditions*. What you are saying makes some sense (and there are other avenues to address those issues), but if the GTFF tried to inject academic issues into bargaining, the lawyers would shoot it down out of hand. So, that is the answer to your question.
P.S.: To the commenter below, we all make typos, focus on the issues.
I like it. The grad-student union can bargain for better faculty. The faculty union can bargain for better grad students.
Wait. Aren’t we already paying Johnson Hall to figure this out? Maybe both unions should demand better administrators?
Here here. I’m mainly worried that GTF union seems to listening a vocal minority of graduate students who are worried about benefits, rather than education which is what I assume the majority care about.
While research support is critical, people tend to focus short-term improvements when, for instance, they have an inflamed tooth. Only a minority of GTFs are actually struggling in the current system, but they are struggling, and the entirety of GTFs should be commended for looking past their own self-interests.
I’m afraid it’s more than a minority that are struggling, Science Duck. Almost 50% of our bargaining unit makes below the minimum wage. 70% of our unit are $400-$600 short of the university’s own estimated cost of living, every month. But those of us in that boat are humbled by the selflessness you laud in GTFs who don’t have these worries.
And that brings me to the point Recall raises.
We’re all concerned with our education. We’re not short-sighted. We recognize that’s what we’re here for. But the lack of a living wage and any sort of benefits has a direct effect on our education, in two ways:
1.) It becomes increasingly difficult to focus one’s studies when you find yourself out of money by the middle of every month. I’m at Level 2, and I’ve had to cash in savings bonds that were part of my inheritance and borrow money from family just to make the ends meet. And I’m about middle of the pack as far as GTF stipends go. Several GTFs are even worse off. The lack of adequate compensation, therefore, can, and often does, have a direct and deleterious effect on our education. A GTF that doesn’t have to worry about where her next meal is coming from is a GTF that is much more focused on her work. Once we can get compensation sussed, then we can begin to bring the things you mention into the bargaining platform.
2.) As UOM points out in the OP, the lack of adequate compensation, both in terms of salary and benefits, diminishes our peer groups. I know of at least 3 departments that have had to go 2-3 tiers down in their waitlist just to fill their last three cohorts. The chief reason cited for the declinations? UO doesn’t pay. In my own department–a department that unfailingly commits any surplus dept monies to GTF raises–we’re almost $12,000 behind out nearest competitor institution. We could have our stipends doubled and we’d still trail them by ~$2000.
For us, the issues of compensation and benefits are inextricable from our education. We don’t consider this an either/or proposition; we just believe we’ve got to straighten out compensation before we move on the things you mention. We’re organized. We have a plan.
gTF stipends are too low, but Below min wage? Just took avg GTF stipend per term, divided by max hours per term. Result?, not even close to being below min wage.
From H. Bookbinder’s comment, it sounds like 70% of GTFs are at .40-.45 FTE as Level 1 or .4 FTE at level 2 (making $1,000-$1,200 a month, or $400-$600 less than the $1600 cost of living). A level 1 (lowest pay rate) GTF at .4 has a maximum 17.5 hours per week of work and is paid $1,090.67 a month.
$1,090.67/(4 x 17.5) = $15.58 per hour, above the minimum wage. Help me out, Bookbinder, what am I missing? Is the problem that GTFs need to be able work more hours to make a living?
Yeah. But when we were grad school nearly everyone was on Wic, medicaid and foodstamps, which easily added up 400 a month, or they had a spouse working.
You don’t need to use hyperbole to get faculty to be on your side. But why do you think parternity benefits and better medical benefits are the key? That seems to be what your GTF union is fighting for?
In order to implement a minimum wage floor, we estimate it would cost the university less than $700K over the life the contract.
For reference, it cost UO roughly the same amount of money they pay the baseball coach.
They could provide a living wage for ~1450 people for almost the same amount of money they currently pay one person, yet our demand is “extravagant” (per the HGLR lawyer they are paying ~$300/hr to not know anything in bargaining).
I agree there should be a reasonable floor. If you can’t pay at least 15k for .49, then don’t offer support at all.
I would ask, what do you think a comparator salary is?
I know UC pays 17500, Boston University pays 20k, based on a friend sending several undergrads to grad school this year. So are some folks really paid 5k a year for .49 FTE? That seems hard to believe.
Also at UC, you could work up to .75 FTE. So I worked as an RA part time to make an extra 400-700 bucks a month. Here at UO, I can’t hire grad students, unless I can pay their tuition, which I can’t do with my start up budget. Hence I use undergrad RA’s which are far cheaper, but I pay them a similar hourly wage to what I was paid as an RA in grad school. Some of your negotiated your current rules prevent your monthly income from going higher, and prevent you from claiming you are an RA on your CV.
Lastly at UC, I had to pay 8k a year for family medical coverage. Hence everyone opted to be on Medicaid instead. Turns out that was cheaper health coverage for having babies because there was no out of pocket.
Lawyer status: telling GTFs that they don’t get to have any input into what the university’s priorities are with respect to funding, and that they are refusing to provide answers to any of the questions from last time about the university’s budget.
The administration’s bargaining team just stormed out of the room after interrupting the GTFF negotiator to ask not to be interrupted.
They seem to have come back now, after recovering from their tantrum.
Echoing a bit of awesome0 here
The external funding reality is rather harsh in terms of our ability to adequately support GTFs.
In most cases that I am aware (especially mine!) average single
PI grants are about 10-20% less now than they were 15 years
ago. Thus the external grant world’s ability to pay graduate students is less robust than before.
A concrete first step is if we could get the UO to make phd candidate students exempt from tuition (this is no a common occurrence at other research universities) – in addition, if a lower overhead rate accompanied GTF hiring, then GTF stipends could increase.
So there are policy issues within the Grad School that can help
(or hinder) in this process of attempting to pay grad students a decent wage.