On Wednesday, we had a half day of bargaining with WSU Admin.
ICYMI, we gave Admin a January 17th deadline to give us a fair contract. If they don’t meet that deadline we are going on strike. Click here to sign up for your shifts on the picket line today – participating in 20h/wk of picket duties is how you earn strike pay if WSU withholds your wages while striking. You can also RSVP to a Strike Captain Training session to learn more about how you can ensure a successful strike that wins us a strong first contract!
This week, we reached Tentative Agreement (TA) on Summer Session and Title IX. Articles still on the bargaining table include Wages, Duration, Fees and Tuition Waivers, Leaves, Vacation, Healthcare Plan Design (Appendix I), and No Strikes No Lockouts. 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, take a look at a Summary of Proposals to gain an understanding of what’s still on the table, and RSVP to attend further bargaining sessions (including one on January 10th) here.
Our ASE bargaining team has continued to push WSU to take our healthcare seriously.
- WSU’s lack of care toward our health insurance has resulted in many issues. In the summer, their failure to bargain changes to our plan resulted in our Unfair Labor Practice charge. Now, their delays in managing the process for selecting an insurance company has stalled progress again. They have sent us a comparison of the costing of insurance benefits that UnitedHealthcare and Aetna are able to provide, but are still not able to answer the basic questions we asked during our most recent healthcare bargaining session.
- Admin also has not given any counterproposals on the actual plan benefits. Since July 2023, we have been proposing specific changes to our plan’s out-of-pocket-maximum, costs for doctors visits and other services, and other plan improvements. Admin has never given a counterproposal on benefits, and continues to propose that we push these conversations to some unknown future date.
- Despite the inept and poorly managed progress on healthcare negotiations, Admin proposed that we withdraw our Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) complaint against the university and continue the same pattern of delays and inattention. This is unacceptable: ASEs need affordable, accessible care as part of this contract.
During the bargaining session, Admin passed a package containing the remaining proposals on the table.
- In this package, Admin moved towards our last Wages proposal by accepting our initial base pay of $2,318.50 for Pullman, 5% raise for ASEs whose wages are already higher than the new base pay, and higher pay steps for every other WSU location along with the experience category salary steps. Admin proposed a 3 year contract with one additional 4% raise in 2025. They also proposed a minimum wage for hourly ASEs of only $17.09,
- Admin’s Fees and Tuition Waivers showed no movement towards us, their proposal maintains the status quo of waiving only the operating fee and non-resident tuition, claiming that they are unable to waive fees for ASEs. We maintain our stance that the building fee is a part of Tuition, and thus can be waived as other tuition fees are waived.
- In Admin’s proposal on Leaves, they moved towards us by proposing 5 weeks of paid family leave instead of their previous proposal of maintaining status quo of 4 weeks. They maintained their proposal for just 36 hours of sick time per semester, and continue to propose restricting the use of this sick time so that it cannot be used to care for unmarried partners.
In response, our bargaining team put together a package including proposals on Duration, Wages, Vacation, Leaves, Fees and Tuition Waivers, and Health Insurance Plan Design (Appendix I).
- Our new Wages proposal adopted Admin’s timeline: an increase to the base wage or 5% within 90 days, experience based increases in August 2024, and a raise in October of 2025. We continue to differ in the amount for the October raise; admin proposed 4%, while we proposed 7.5%. Admin has gone back and forth on whether raises should happen once or be spread out; we are open to different timelines but maintain the need to see an increase of this size over a three year contract. We also moved toward admin by adjusting the minimum wage for hourly workers to $20/h and retracting our proposal for a wage bump for instructors of record.
- As stated previously, in our Fees and Tuition Waivers proposal, we have rejected Admin’s claim that they cannot waive building fees, but we moved towards them by accepting their maintenance of the international student orientation fee.
- For Vacations and Leaves, we maintained our numbers of 56 hours and 40 hours per year, respectively, but moved towards Admin by accepting their language around usage and methods of tracking time off. We have also maintained our proposal for six weeks of paid parental leave.
- Finally, we have reiterated that ASEs need to see improvements to the health insurance plan in this contract, and we need them to start taking our health and wellbeing seriously.
The contract we are fighting for is more than the sum of its parts. Each of these proposals – Wages, Fees and Tuition Waivers, Health Insurance, Leaves, Vacation – make up a contract that ensures that ASEs can live a dignified life and effectively carry out the work they care deeply for. Admin is still trying to hold out on Fees, Leaves, and Health Insurance design when we are nearing our strike deadline. They are clearly not taking the task at hand seriously enough. If they do not deliver on the contract we deserve by January 17 we are ready to strike. Sign up for Picket Shifts at your campus here.
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)