December 14, 2023
On Wednesday, we had a full day of bargaining with WSU Admin. Last week, we gave Admin a December 15th deadline to give us a fair contract. RSVP to the 12/17 Sunday 3pm MASS MEETING to decide together the next steps after we see what Friday brings!
TLDR on what happened in bargaining on Wednesday:
- Our bargaining team presented proposals on Health Insurance, Transit and Parking, and Anti-Discrimination and Harassment as well as two packages:
- Workloads Package: Holidays, Workload, Vacation, Job Titles and Classifications, and Summer Session
- Economic Package: Wages, Leaves, Fees and Tuition Waivers, Child and Dependant Care, and Contract Duration
- Admin presented proposals on Parking and Transit and Health Insurance
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, and RSVP to attend the last bargaining session of the semester on December 15th here.
Our ASE team passed back proposals for Transit and Parking, and Anti-Discrimination and Harassment and Health Insurance. In an effort to get closer to agreement, our Transit and Parking proposal made significant movement on carpooling benefits and emergency ride programs while maintaining the rights to have ASE representation on the University Transportation and Parking Task Force and Transit Advisory Groups. Our Anti-Discrimination and Harassment proposal reiterated our fundamental stance: delaying justice for survivors is unacceptable. We should have the same unabridged protections that our peers at UW and UC have.
Admin passed a counterproposal on Health Insurance which stated as the employer they were not responsible for premium sharing for an ASE’s dependents, but accepted our proposal that ASEs who are eligible for health insurance through the spring semester will retain that insurance during the summer session. Also, we learned that WSU has not heard back from insurance providers with regards to the Request for Proposals that was sent out in November.
Admin passed a counterproposal on Health Insurance which stated as the employer they were not responsible for premium sharing for an ASE’s dependents, but accepted our proposal that ASEs who are eligible for health insurance through the spring semester will retain that insurance during the summer session. Also, we learned that WSU has not heard back from insurance providers with regards to the Request for Proposals that was sent out in November.
Our ASE team also passed two packages. The first package included proposals for Holidays, Workload, Vacation, Job Titles and Classification, and Summer Session. The overall package moves to protect ASEs from unrealistic workloads, protect flexibility to take leave, and maintains our belief in equal pay for equal work during summer sessions. Our second package included Wages, Leaves, Fees and Tuition Waivers, Child and Dependent Care, and Contract Duration. Our ASE team made an effort to move towards Admin by narrowing our Fee Waivers proposal to the Operating Fee, Building Fee, Non-Resident tuition, SRC fee, CUB fee, Student Union Fee (WSU Tri-Cities), and the Technology Fee (WSU Vancouver).
For Leaves, our proposal reiterated that ASEs deserve the right to paid family and medical leave. Admin pushed back hard; they implied that we should not receive paid medical leave benefits because that is not a benefit that the university provides to any other group of employees, and that we should be grateful for the four weeks of family leave that is currently offered. As our ASE team has said to Admin many times, our inadequate leave benefits create a huge burden for ASEs given that, unlike many other employees, many of us do not meet the hours threshold for state-funded Paid Family Medical Leave (PFML).
We also find admin’s latest counter on Wages to be untenable for ASEs. Our team passed a counterproposal on Wages that moved towards admin by lowering the minimum stipend levels and accepted their proposed delay in implementing the experience-based salaries increases until Fall 2024. We insisted these proposals reflect the real needs of ASEs of a livable wage as soon as possible.
Budgets are about priorities. While ASE pay has stagnated, administrators who earn salaries that are 10-to-63 times higher than ASE salaries have increased their pay by 18% between 2018-2022 on average. Meanwhile, management refuses to ensure that ASEs, some of the university’s lowest-paid employees, get the basic safety net of paid medical and family leave or childcare support. ASEs are the heart of this university, and we have been left behind for far too long. We deserve more than what Admin is offering! Please join us at the Sunday 3pm MASS MEETING! (RSVP here).