November 21, 2023
After a long day of back and forth at the bargaining table, we’ve made progress on several key equity issues! We’re still not hearing much from Admin on economic issues, and Admin are still claiming that we’re “miles apart” in these areas. It’s pretty clear that the pressure we’ve applied through our strong Strike Authorization Vote turnout is forcing Admin to take certain issues (especially those related to discrimination and harassment) seriously. Come to the STRIKE READINESS Town Hall tonight at 6PM to learn how we can amp up pressure even further to win a fair first contract (register here).
TL;DR on what happened in bargaining today:
- We passed counterproposals on EPIC (Sexual Harassment Prevention Training), Anti-discrimination and Harassment, Accommodations, Respectful Work Environment, and Professional Development & Career Counseling.
- We came to a Tentative Agreement on our Union Rights article.
- Admin passed counterproposals on Accommodations, Respectful Work Environment, and Anti-Discrimination and Harassment
- Despite our insistence that we come to the table to bargain more regularly to continue the progress we’re making (even for a couple of hours daily after the Thanksgiving break), Admin insist that they cannot find time in their calendars to add more dates other than December.
To find more details about proposals discussed at bargaining, read on below. As a reminder, you can review all of the full proposals that were presented in the Bargaining Center & RSVP to attend upcoming bargaining sessions (November 29th & December 11th) here.
Admin continue to behave as though their time is more valuable than ours – they claim it is a “challenge” for them to adjust their schedules to dedicate the time necessary to negotiate a fair contract. Despite Admin claiming that they urgently want to wrap up bargaining, the next available date they’re willing to meet is December 11th. ASEs at the bargaining table are willing to dedicate the time out of our schedules on top of our research, work, and other extracurriculars because it’s our livelihoods on the line! In order to reach a fair and equitable first contract, our team is dedicated to meeting as frequently as possible – full days, partial days, weekends, after 5PM, whatever is necessary to continue the momentum towards wrapping this contract up.
This past week, Admin reached out to PERC (the Public Employee Relations Commission) to request a mediator, and now claim that they do not want to schedule too many additional bargaining dates before the mediator gets involved. Although we are not entirely opposed to mediation, the past week has shown that we clearly can and do make progress when we actually get to the bargaining table; by far the most important factor in making further progress is that Admin agrees to more bargaining dates.
Yesterday, our ASE bargaining team showed Admin what can happen when they actually show up to the table, in the great progress that we made on a suite of equity articles. Admin finally passed a counter proposal on Respectful Work Environment after it sat on their side for almost four months, and we turned around a counter proposal within an hour. We were also able to return counterproposals on Accommodations, Anti-Discrimination and Harassment, and Professional Development and Career Counseling in response to proposals we received this past Thursday (11/16). After months of back and forth, the Accommodations article is down to a few key issues, including the definition of disabilities and the ability for an ASE to consent to the safety-related accommodations. In our negotiations regarding Anti-Discrimination and Harassment, we are closing in on a list of protected classes, but are farther apart on our definition of retaliation and our understanding of how claims of discrimination and harassment will be addressed. We’re also coming close to a collective understanding of the behaviors that underlie bullying in our Respectful Work Environment article, and hope we can reach an agreement on the protections in this crucial article soon. After only a few back and forths on the Professional Development & Career Counseling article, we are still working on increased funding and staff for professional development opportunities but have made promising strides in defining terms and tools for appropriate mentorship of ASEs.
In the next few weeks, we need to make progress on our economic articles as well. After seeing how much we’ve accomplished in a week with two bargaining sessions, we’re increasing the pressure on our ask to get Admin to the bargaining table more often. We are reaching out to our department chairs, program directors, and center directors to ask them to sign on to a support letter telling central Admin that faculty also want them to meet with us to finish the contract. If there is an Administrator in your department who would like to sign on, please respond to this email.
Don’t forget to register for the Strike Readiness Town Hall tonight at 6PM (register here), where we will discuss where we are in our strike readiness timeline and how we can continue to amplify the pressure that we’ve already built. As always, if you have any questions, please respond to this email.
In Solidarity,
WSU-CASE Bargaining Committee:
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)
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)