TOMORROW 8/23: Monthly Meeting on Admin’s recent economic package

This past Wednesday, both sides passed many proposals during our bargaining session. This included a package of economic proposals that we passed back across the table in rebuttal to Admin’s offer last week.

Notably, Admin emailed our ASE team at 5pm on 8/22 to cut our scheduled 8/23 9-5pm session short by two hours. With the agenda already packed, this last minute change prevented us from fully discussing our economic proposals and left no time for Admin to present their Anti-Discrimination proposal. This is not the first time Admin has canceled or cut short our time at the table; these delays impact our progress in making key improvements for all ASEs. 

To find more details about our economic package, as well as other counterproposals discussed at bargaining, read on below. As a reminder, you can review the full proposals that were presented in the Bargaining Center & RSVP here to attend upcoming bargaining sessions (August 31, September 7, and September 19).

TL;DR:

Our ASE team reached a tentative agreement on Job Postings. Our team also passed a counterproposal on Grievance Procedures that helps address Admin’s concerns while retaining our reasonable timeline, and hope to reach a tentative agreement on that article soon. 

Admin passed us counter proposals on Appointment, and Reappointment, and Job Descriptions, Parking and Transit, Accommodations, Empowering Prevention and Inclusive Communities (EPIC), and Immigration. In Accommodations, Admin has moved toward us on rules regarding documentation, but they continue to push back on a few key issues, including a set timeline for responding to accommodations requests and post-natal accommodations.

In Parking and Transit, Admin accepted our proposal to add an ASE representative to the parking and transit task forces but rejected every other proposal we made, including subsidized parking passes, event parking notifications, free transit passes at all locations, and carpooling benefits. 

We’re excited to continue conversations around our proposed peer-led sexual harassment training program, EPIC (Empowering Prevention and Inclusive Communities). This program is modeled off of a successful program that was bargained and developed by ASEs at UW.  Although we’ll need to agree on logistics, WSU admin has generally been receptive to this idea. 

Admin continue to demonstrate a lack of care and attention to the issues framed in the Immigration proposal. Despite the extensive testimony and analysis we provided with our last counter concerning the many ways that ASEs are impacted by Immigration proceedings during our tenure, admin insists that “Immigration happens before [we] are employees.” Given this perspective, they continue to push back on much of our proposal, including sections that would codify legal and monetary support for visa issues and immigration.

CASE Economic Package Proposal

Towards the end of the day, our ASE team presented a package of economic proposals that included counterproposals on Wages, Healthcare, Childcare, Fees, and Tuition Waivers. Our team maintained a focus on achieving a living wage for all ASEs by adjusting our proposal base wage down to $2,664/mo (step 73) and reinserting location- and experience-based adjustments. We moved toward admin on the structure of our wages proposal to reflect their existing step structure.

When Admin presented their Fees and Tuition Waivers proposal, they expressed their belief that they could only waive specific fees but that it would be against the law for them to waive others. This does not accurately reflect Washington State law, so our ASE team kept our position in our fees counter that all fees should be waived.   

In their economic package, Admin had suggested we begin discussion of healthcare for the ‘24-’25 school year in November, when it might be too late to make movement towards the next health insurance proposal. Our ASE team rejected the idea of waiting to start these negotiations and asserted that we need to be involved in the Request for Proposals (RFP) process to bid for new plans ASAP. 

Admins’ economic proposal rejected our housing proposal in its entirety, claiming that it’s not a mandatory subject of bargaining. Our team returned a counter that ensured that ASEs would not experience rent-burden and establish housing committees as a platform to resolve housing related issues.

Finally, Admin rejected much of our original Child and Dependent Care proposal. Our counterproposal reinstates a child or dependent care subsidy for all eligible ASEs and creates a joint task force composed of university community members and employees to improve accessibility and affordability of child and dependent care for WSU employees.

CASE Fall Social on August 31st!

We will continue conversations and planning actions around these issues at our workgroup meetings and upcoming events, including our August 31st Pullman Social at Thompson Flats from 4.30pm-6.30pm. RSVP here! For non-Pullman ASEs, reach out if you’d like to help organize a social at your campus!

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)