January 14, 2024
We are just 5 days away from our January 17 strike – have you signed up for your picket shifts?
Take a couple of minutes to do so right now! If you have already signed up, great job! Now, ask your fellow ASEs who have not! We want to send a clear message to WSU Admin that it’s time for them to agree to our demands: fair pay, adequate health insurance, a reprieve from burdensome and misleading fees, and increased parental leave.
In Friday’s bargaining session, our bargaining team turned over a counterproposal on Health Insurance that made a massive movement towards admin in an effort to both finalize a fair contract and to help protect our priorities as ASEs. Disappointingly, WSU Admin didn’t accept the proposal and had nothing for us. Though they claim they are still interested in bargaining, their shameful behavior at the table says otherwise.
We are not expenses – Academic Student Employees are the lifeblood of this university. We teach the students that go on to be future leaders of the state and the nation. We perform the research that gets WSU recognized on the state, national, and global level. We do the outreach and extension work that advances the mission of this great university. We all matter and we all deserve more. Academic Student Employees should be afforded compensation and ability to care for ourselves and our families like other University employees.
Our ASE bargaining team will work hard to reach an agreement before our strike deadline. But we know that our voices at the bargaining table are only as strong as our membership mobilization. Our ability to win these improvements depends on being prepared to strike – it’s that simple.
The university knows this and, rather than meeting our reasonable demands, have resorted to fear mongering and scare tactics to try and discourage us from taking action together. In the past 48 hours they have chosen to disseminate blatant misinformation, which we would like to correct:
- First, striking is NOT PROHIBITED. Admin’s claim that striking is prohibited is blatantly false. In Washington state, strikes by public sector employees (which is us!) are neither prohibited nor an express right. This means that it is not illegal for us to strike. Many public sector unions have struck in Washington before, including University of Washington Postdocs, Researchers, and ASEs.
- Second, we don’t agree that our supervisors (or departments or the University administration) can require ASEs to report whether they plan to strike, nor change our status to “unpaid leave” unilaterally. In response to the email sent on January 12th by Provost Chilton, which was then reiterated by many of our department chairs and supervisors, we are filing a demand to bargain this decision. We also are demanding that the University must rescind this until they’ve satisfied their bargaining obligation. If you have any questions about how to respond to a request from your supervisor to report so they can change your status, please contact us so we can connect you with a department organizer to support you.
- Third – as a reminder – if WSU Admin chooses to withhold our pay, we have access to a $500/week strike pay and hardship fund through the UAW.Please sign up for a minimum of 20/hours per week of picketing to ensure that you get your strike pay! Talk to your fellow ASEs to get them signed on if you already have! We will sign up for strike pay on the first day of the strike (1/17): stay tuned for details.
As always, please respond to this email with any questions or concerns. Together, when we fight we win!