This past Thursday, July 20th was a long day of bargaining.
TL;DR:
- Our ASE team presented our final new proposals Parking and Transit & Professional Development and Career Counseling
- Our team also turned around counters on Discipline; Accommodations, Management Rights; Appointment, Reappointment, and Job Descriptions & Respectful Work Environment
- Admin presented us a few counters including Job Postings, Vacation, and Holidays
- Register for the 7.26.23 Monthly Meeting here!
Please read on for more details. As a reminder, you can review the full content of proposals that were presented in the Bargaining Center.
Yesterday, the ASE bargaining team presented a new proposal on Parking and Transit that works to reduce WSU’s environmental impact, address the challenges of living in rural areas with unique transit situations at each location, and the high costs of WSU’s parking system in comparison to our peer schools. Our team proposed improvements to these systems that would benefit ASEs across all campuses.
Our ASE bargaining team also presented a new proposal on Professional Development and Career Counseling. There are no clear expectations of mentorship established at the University level, many of us feel the effects of this on a daily basis. The goal of the proposal is to ensure that ASE’s receive quality professional development during our employment at WSU. This is the norm for other employees at most organizations, including faculty and staff at WSU and for ASEs at other universities.. The proposal additionally creates standards for access to professional development programming and career counseling services at each physical WSU location.
Admin returned counterproposals on Job Postings, Vacation, and Holidays. Our ASE team has made progress on Job Postings and will continue to review this counterproposal in the coming weeks. In their Vacation and Holidays proposals, Admin pushed back on any concept of ASEs taking time off during the academic term. Their vacation proposal greatly reduced the amount of time off from our original proposal, and introduced limits on when and how an ASE may take time off.
The ASE bargaining team also made quite a few counterproposals yesterday. Our team is committed to reducing the burden currently placed on ASEs in pursuing disability and domestic violence-related (i.e., stalking) accommodations in the Accommodations proposal. This proposal provides accommodation measures that comprehensively meet the needs of the ASE, such as properly set up rooms to express breastmilk.
Both teams traded proposals on Discipline, where we have just one remaining issue to resolve. This proposal provides strong protections for ASEs, and we are excited to implement it going forward.
Our ASE team also countered on Management Rights and Appointment, Reappointment, and Job Descriptions. Our team’s Appointment, Reappointment, and Job Descriptions counter pushed back on Admin’s removal of a timeline on when job descriptions should be sent to ASE’s and removed language around academic standing as we maintain that academic progress issues should be addressed through academic systems.
Monthly Meeting!!
July’s monthly meeting is this Wednesday, July 26! During this meeting we will discuss leveraging our ASE collective power through mass actions in the upcoming Fall semester to win a strong contract! Make sure to register for the meeting and invite your colleagues and classmates!
Bargaining Continues
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:
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)