At Sep 25th, before the massive membership meeting, this email was sent to the international student committee and steering committee channel (moved to forum channel by bargaining team).
After strike authorization vote on Oct 27th, I tried sending it to GSWOC general, which is internal for union organizers. But the bargaining team rejected it.
Hi everyone,
The bargaining team (BT) sent a immigration & work authorization article to USC on Sept 18th. Members of the International student committee discussed it with BT at our event.
Things Mentioned Below:
- Demands dropped or weakened.
- How it happened
- We believe this shouldn’t happen.
- We believe the way of bargaining should be changed.
Demands dropped or weakened:
The bargaining update only mentioned the win, but didn’t mention the dropped or weakened demands. Initial and latest proposals are in the link.
Dropped demands:
- If the University fails to handle work authorization, our loss shall be made up in full.
- On-boarding support:
- Workshop about healthcare, rental and banking
- Reserve housing for incoming international GSWs
Weakened demands:
- Taxing: OIS also offers and will continue to offer tax workshops
Currently, OIS offers it by a private company. The workshop is about how to use their software and sell it to international students. This isn’t what we want.
- Re-employment of international students fired due to immigration status:
Whether a eligible Graduate Student Worker is selected for an available position under this section is not subject to arbitration under Article (Grievance and Arbitration)
We are concerned about this non-grievance sentence. BT said there is still enough room for grievance, and offered legal explanation.
We discussed with BT about many alternative solutions. BT also gave us many explanations. But we were told not to send out. Because they are worried that the USC admin may see it and get to know bargaining strategy. We encourage people to reach out to them privately.
How it happened:
USC gave us their proposal on Sept 18th. We think there was no need for BT to reply on the same day. It would be totally okay for BT to ask us before dropping these demands.
BT member explained they believed USC was trying to reach an agreement, so they replied to the proposal and tried to move forward. They also explained it is important to get close on issues before heading to strike. As having too many issues open will give USC more ways of leverage.
We said we think the immigration article is over, key demands have been dropped or weakened. BT members said the immigration article is still at priority and will stay on the table till strike.
There is only little difference between the USC’s proposal and ours:
- USC: taxing workshop once a year. BT: twice a year.
- We only fill tax once a year, we think this is not meaningful.
Fund for immigration and legal expenses.
- USC: $10,000/year. BT: $40,000/year.
- Compared with wages, this is trivial for USC. Financially, The gap is only about $10 a year per GSW.
- About re-employment of international students fired for immigration status. The difference is in eligible and available added by BT: Whether a eligible Graduate Student Worker is selected for an available position under this section is not subject to arbitration under Article (Grievance and Arbitration)
We welcome BT to reply if they wish to explain more about decision making.
This shouldn’t happen:
It is a difference of Stand For vs. Stand With: Stand For means representing marginalized people and making decisions for them. Stand With means inviting marginalized people to make decisions for themselves, and supporting them to fight for the changes they want.
In our initial bargaining demands, we wrote “GSW Representation: Include impacted GSWs in all relevant University bodies making policy decisions”. We believe it is also the same for decision making in our union.
(Update: we also think there are problems about transparency and democracy in the decision making, which we will discuss in this followup email.)
The way of bargaining should be changed
Other unions do it differently. For the union at University of Michigan: For drafting the proposal and counters, union members form groups to draft the proposal related to them. Before sending a proposal to the university, there are discussion sessions for union members to discuss what has been drafted/modified, then union members will vote on the proposal. And a modification list with explanations will be sent out to everyone.
They see bargaining as a platform and encourage union members to advocate for issues related to them. They promised everyone’s demands will be kept on the table till the last minute. There is no priority between demands from different groups. It is a way of social justice unionism and allows marginalized and under-represented GSWs to advocate for themselves. .eg. They are the first GSW union that wrote transgender healthcare into contract. They expanded coverage for gender-affirming care in their student health plan, which also benefits non-union members.
In comparison, our proposal was written by BT alone. Proposals will only be available to union members when they are officially sent to USC. Non-bargaining team members can only know its content earlier than USC by reaching out privately. (Update: We will discuss more in this followup email.)
During a conversation in May, We said to BT member that this would prevent important feedback. We asked if we could campaign on this, e.g. encourage people to reach out to BT and ask about it. We were told that we certainly can. Also now, we encourage people to ask about what has happened and the decision making.
How to make the change happen?
This requires rebuilding our union to be buttom-up and massive participation of rank-and-file union members. We can discuss it with our coworkers and our fellow organizers. We can talk about this at our future meetings, like the Massive Membership Meeting. If you want to share this email, here is the link. The comment is open to everyone for conversation. We also welcome BT to share their opinions. There is still time for change and we will have more important decisions to be made.
Q&A
Why send this to people? This will undermine support
People will eventually find out. These are on our website, everyone can see and compare. If we continue hiding the loss and only mention the win, things will only get worse. There are many alternative solutions and explanations. Many of them were discussed together by us and BT members. We believe people should know.
Updates:
- BT sent us a response
- Our reply about transparency and democracy
- Our followup question asks if specific things will still be covered, BT refused to respond.
About UMich union:
- Details of their working groups are here, I list the names as below:
- Abolition;
- Disability & Covid;
- Harassment & Discrimination
- Healthcare
- International GSIs
- Masters Workers
- Parents & Caregivers;
- Payment 4 placement; (for Social Work students)
- Reproductive Rights;
- Transgender Healthcare;
- Workers’ and Union Rights;
- Workload