This past Thursday was a shortened day of bargaining due to admin’s last-minute schedule conflict, but our ASE bargaining team worked to pack in as much as possible. Admin’s remarks during our presentations made it clear that they were not interested in having a respectful conversation about our bargaining unit’s needs. Instead, they berated ASEs who presented the unit’s needs, claiming that our proposals “quarrel with the basic structure of higher education.”
Here’s the TL;DR:
- ASEs at the bargaining table presented counterproposals on Immigration and Accommodations and a package proposal including Grievance, Appointment Notification, Discipline, and Management Rights
- Admin presented a counterproposal on Scope & Interpretation, Grievance Procedure, and Anti-Discrimination & Harassment
- After sending over costing information, ASEs asked to hear the questions Admin mentioned having in the previous bargaining session about our Economic proposals. Rather than offering questions, Admin used this time to make disrespectful statements about the work that ASEs do.
To find out 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 (September 7, 13, and 19) here.
In the morning, our ASE team asked clarifying questions to try to understand Admin’s resistance to providing amenities in lactation rooms. The discussion began with a conversation about keeping the rooms clean – a stipulation that Admin refused to contractualize. After much discussion, our ASE team turned around an Accommodations proposal which maintained our stance that these lactation spaces should be clean, quiet, and well provisioned-for. Our team’s proposal continues to push back on Admin’s attempt to strike “equitable” and “voluntary” as requirements for accommodations, as we have no interest in a contract that would result in ASEs experiencing work-related inequalities due to being accommodated.
Our ASE team also presented an Immigration counterproposal. Between bargaining sessions, Admin had provided a legal analysis that claimed much of our article was illegal. Our team took their analysis into consideration; given that this language exists in other contracts and that there are no laws that specifically contradict the provisions in the proposal, our team’s proposal maintained our position that visa and immigration-related issues do not only occur prior to employment or our tenure as ASEs. Both sides share the understanding that the finalization of an ASE’s recruitment may be close to the start of the academic term, but Admin continues to reject our language ensuring ASEs relocating from abroad can receive temporary housing support.
Towards the end of the bargaining session, our team presented a package containing the following proposals: Grievance and Arbitration, Appointment Notification, Discipline, and Management Rights. This package helped address language admin had added to each article regarding academic judgment and academics as a condition of employment, which we believe is already sufficiently covered by the state law which defines our unit (RCW 41.56.205). This move to package proposals also signals to admin that we are serious about moving things forward and focusing our conversation and efforts on issues critical to the health and wellbeing of our unit.
During the final stretch of the bargaining session, Admin finally engaged with our ASE team about our economic proposals that prioritize living wages for all ASEs to allow us to live dignified lives while we serve the University in our roles. Despite our team’s patient explanations over the past few months, Admin still “misunderstood” our proposal and spent much of the remaining time berating ASEs who deigned to propose that our unit members should be given a living wage.
According to their lead spokesperson, “It is absolutely true that being a member of your bargaining unit requires first and foremost that someone be a student, and what we provide is for someone to be a student. It is not a career. It is not feasible for us to pay career kind of wages […] the job is not set up as something that’s meant to be a career. It’s supporting someone going to school through tuition waivers and the like.”
This characterization shows a huge lack of understanding and respect for our lives and work as ASEs. The wages proposed in our package would hardly constitute a sufficient “career-level salary”, but instead support what is minimally required to live, eat, provide for our families, and commute to our jobs as ASEs. Admin describe ASE employment as though it is a favor that they provide us, ignoring the vital role that our labor serves in ensuring that this university functions. This lack of acknowledgment for the services provided by Research Assistants has already come up in the past and now has seemed to expand to a general lack of acknowledgment for any ASE role. ASEs at WSU teach, tutor, administer programs and policies, and are responsible for millions of dollars worth of research. And yet, Admin insist that it is“not feasible” to provide us liveable wages for our labor, and that facilitating this level of support is impossible “without dismantling graduate programs entirely.” Our ASE team reminded Admin that many ASEs are unable to take on additional work outside of their assistantship to supplement their stipends. International ASEs are legally unable to work outside of WSU, and domestic students are restricted from taking on extra work or cannot due to the combined workload of their employment and academic work at WSU. If Admin expects that the only income ASEs will have is from their assistantships, then they hold a responsibility to make sure an assistantship will provide a livable wage.
Join us at our Strike FAQ Town Hall Meeting on 9/12 at 6 pm to discuss Admin’s comments and to learn about the logistics of creating pressure to win what we need in our first contract. We will discuss what actions we can take and learn about the logistics of striking, strike authorization votes (SAV), and how collective action can help us use our power to win a strong first contract!
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)
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)