July 14, 2023
This past Wednesday, July 12th was a full and busy day of bargaining!
TL;DR:
- Our ASE team presented three new proposals on Shared Leaves, Summer Session, and Housing
- Admin presented four counterproposals on Grievances and Arbitration, Respectful Work Environment, Job Postings, and Accommodations
- Admin presented two new proposals on Employee Rights and Responsibilities, and Scope and Interpretation
- ASEs quickly turned around a counterproposal on Job Postings and presented a counterproposal on Discipline
Please read on for more details. As a reminder, you can review the full proposals that were presented in the Bargaining Center.
Yesterday, along with powerful and moving testimonies from ASEs from many campuses and RECs, our side presented a Housing proposal to address the severe rent burden and difficulties that members of our unit experience in finding and maintaining housing on our ASE stipends. Our proposal aims to reduce the burden by tying a housing benefit to our wages so that ASEs can afford to live in the communities in which we work.
Our ASE team also proposed a new article on Summer Session. Our proposal includes increased transparency and job security for summer session appointments, specifies that non-registered ASEs get paid at the same rates as during the academic year, and includes guaranteed funding support for ASEs who are unable to find work outside of WSU due to visa or immigration status restrictions.
Finally, ASEs proposed a Shared Leaves article. The proposed system would connect ASEs to the shared leave pool that is accessible to most employees at WSU, and would allow ASEs undergoing extenuating circumstances to receive donated leave time (or for ASEs to donate leave) when needed. A system like this would further expand ASEs’ ability to take time off and is very similar to benefits bargained by other unionized employees at WSU.
We received counters from Admin on our Grievances and Arbitration, Respectful Work Environment, Job Postings, and Accommodations articles. Our side returned a counter to admin on Job Postings; both sides are moving closer together on that article and we expect we could reach a tentative agreement soon. Both sides have also moved closer on Grievances and Arbitration, but Admin continues to propose that a meeting with the ASEs department chair or supervisor is a mandatory first step in the process. ASEs at the bargaining table could see clear cases where this is a conflict of interest and/or unnecessary and we will continue to assert our right to bypass this step of the process when appropriate.
Admin presented counters to Accommodations and Respectful Work environments that are still very much far apart from our aims for these proposals. Their counters reflect a disregard for ASE safety by removing language and timelines that protect ASEs from abusive conduct and unresponsive procedures in the workplace.
Finally, Admin presented a highly patronizing new proposal titled Employee Rights and Responsibilities, which outlines harsh interpretations of some pre-existing employment policies. It is not clear why they feel that it is necessary to contractualize these responsibilities. Admin also presented a new proposal on Scope and Interpretation, where they presented how they believe how our CBA (contract) and university policies should interact and has language that allows the university to act unilaterally to force change on mandatory subjects of bargaining.
As always, our coalition of academic student employees will continue to work together to bargain for better employment standards for all TAs, RAs, tutors, graders, and other ASEs. Here are the bargaining dates for the remainder of summer:
July 20 (9-5), August 2 (10-5), August 15 (10-5)
All ASEs are welcome to participate in bargaining by RSVPing here. You are welcome to come for any amount of time and participate however you feel comfortable; stopping by just to listen in is great too! You can also join workgroups or the weekly bargaining committee meeting by RSVPing here. If you would be interested in providing testimony to support the proposals being presented, you can submit your experience here.
Don’t see a way you’d like to get involved in bargaining & organizing? Have other questions? Email contact@wsucase.org, and someone will be in touch soon!
In Solidarity,
Acacia Patterson, Physics & Astronomy (Pullman)
Adam Bozman, Carson College of Business – Finance (Pullman)
Andre Diehl, Comparative Ethnic Studies (Pullman)
Arianna Gonzales, Psychology (Pullman)
Aurora Brinkman, Psychology (Pullman)
Chelsea Mitchell, School of the Environment (Puyallup Research and Extension Center)
Chia-Hui Chen, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (Spokane)
Claudia Skinner, School of Languages, Cultures, and Race (Pullman)
Cody Lauritsen, College of Veterinary Medicine (Pullman)
Coty Jasper, Integrative Physiology & Neuroscience (Vancouver)
Dano Holt, School of the Environment (Pullman)
Evan Domsic, Crop and Soil Science (Mount Vernon NWREC)
Gavin Doyle, English (Pullman)
Hannah Cohen, Veterinary Clinical Sciences (Pullman)
Kartik Sreedhar, Physics & Astronomy (Pullman)
Kayla Spawton, Plant Pathology (Mount Vernon NWREC)
Kelsey King, School of Biological Sciences (Vancouver)
Miles Hopkins, School of the Environment (Pullman)
Miranda Zuniga-Kennedy, Clinical Psychology (Pullman)
Naseeha Cardwell, Chemical Engineering & Bioengineering (Pullman/Tri-Cities)
Natalie Yaw, Chemistry (Pullman)
Ninh Khuu, Plant Pathology (Prosser)
Peter Obi, Pharmaceutical Sciences (Spokane)
Raymond Bennett, Psychology (Pullman)
Rebecca Evans, Biology (Vancouver)
Shawn Domgaard, Communication (Pullman)
Tazin Rahman, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (Pullman)
Tholen Justin Blasko, Animal Sciences (Pullman)
Victor Moore, History (Pullman)
Victoria Oyanna, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (Spokane)
Whitney Shervey, Sociology (Pullman)
Yiran Guo, Mechanical and Materials Engineering (Pullman)