After a year and half filled with bitter debates, failed negotiations and disruptive demonstrations, the Graduate Education Organization and the University of Massachusetts have finally reached a tentative three-year agreement May 19, ending GEO?s three month period of working without a contract.
GEO/UAW Local 2322 members voted overwhelmingly to ratify their sixth contract with the University on May 19 and May 20. The contract will remain in effect from July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2007. The new contract covers all UMass graduate students who are employed as Teaching Associates (TO), Teaching Assistants (TA), Research Assistants (RA), Project Assistants (PA), Assistant Residence Directors (ARD), and Graduate Interns.
The GEO of UMass is a labor union that represents 2,400 graduate employees. UMass graduate students first started to assemble in the late 1970s but have worked as a union for 15 years. Every three years the GEO and the University have worked together to negotiate a new legally binding contract.
On March 1, over 600 members and allies of the GEO held a ?Mass March? around the campus of UMass to demand a fair contract from the University. The large crowd ? the biggest at a UMass rally protest in years ? marched through various crosswalks on North Pleasant St. and Massachusetts Ave. bringing traffic to a standstill. The marchers walked through the Whitmore Administration building and delivered several hundred letters to Chancellor John Lombardi in support of GEO?s demands.
GEO officials also co-sponsored a shutdown of UMass Amherst campus classes April 22, and threatened to picket UMass President Jack Wilson’s inauguration ? in front of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, Mass.) ? earlier this year.
The contract disputes stem from the attempts of UMass officials to lower GEO wages and raise the costs of healthcare and childcare.
According to Jed Murr, Vice Predisent of GEO, The Boston Globe and other publications have reported recently, that there has been a dramatic decline in tenured-track faculty members at UMass.
?As there are less and less tenured-track faculty, the University looks towards other groups to perform to carry out the labor, such as adjunct faculty members and graduate student employees. So if they can pay us less it saves them financially,? said Murr. ?And these cuts have nothing to do with the state-wide budget cuts. Our research shows they can afford to pay us fair wages, they can afford to give us free healthcare, and they can afford to give us affordable childcare.?
In the new agreement, all Continuing Education wage scales will be increased by five percent beginning in fall of 2005 and by four percent in the fall of 2006. GEO member stipends will have an annual increase of two percent.
GEO?s Health and Welfare funds will now cover the costs of everyone at the two lowest income levels so that they experience a childcare cost of $0. Current advertised rates of $0 and $1 increase to $1 and $2 per hour. Health and Welfare funds will maintain those who currently pay nothing and reduce costs for those who currently pay $1 per hour to $0.
In addition to changes in health and childcare, both sides agreed to create a new committee to discuss how same-sex marriages intersect with other issues like residency and adoption. Currently, benefits for same-sex partners cannot be ended without a mutual agreement between GEO and UMass.
GEO members continue to hold true of the importance that their influence exerts on the UMass campus.
?We do an enormous amount of teaching and work that happens at UMass,? said Murr. ?We?re a big reason why the level of under-graduate education is so high and why UMass holds the level of prestige that it does.?
