Hurrah, here we are again. This week, the U Michigan Graduate Employee Organization contract nego­ti­a­tions have been shifted to the Palmer Commons. Earlier today the word on the street was that not many students had shown up for the bar­gaining round. Maybe that’s why they’ve tried to jam us into “Great Lakes North” — one of the smaller of the con­ven­tion rooms in the post-​​space-​​age ultra­bunker that is the Palmer Commons. Palmer Commons always weirds me out. How can a uni­ver­sity need its own con­ven­tion center at the scale of most mid-​​sized cities? Dunno, but I guess we do. And here we are, in one of the smaller rooms. Which is to say, a fairly large one. Holding the event as far off central campus as we can get without going to North Campus may have been a clever trick. Having it in a room with fewer chairs may not have been so clever. I don’t know when it happened, but at this time students have filled the chairs and are lit­er­ally stacking up on the floor. Ha ha. It looks good for our side.

(update: GEO, never slow on the button action, is dis­trib­uting buttons which say “Where the hell is Palmer Commons?” over a map. cute.)

Are appear­ances really that impor­tant? According to every­thing the bar­gaining com­mittee has to say about it, yes.

Earlier I had a quick phone chat with Cassidy of the bar­gaining team. He informed that today we were going to talk about salaries, bridge pay, and maybe access to benefits. I was on the radio so I wasn’t here, so I don’t know how the first couple of things went, but now that I’m here, it sounds like we’re on benefits.

Word is someone just gave tes­ti­mony regarding their own attempts to access health benefits, and the failure of the existing system to help her. Now we’re talking about “existing con­di­tions”, and how much the admin­is­tra­tion is willing to bend to acco­ma­date. The admin­is­tra­tion has inserted langauge that they aren’t willing to “fun­da­men­tally alter the oper­a­tions of a depart­ment”, or some such, and we want to know just what that means. Does that mean at all? A little? We’re being reas­sured that means they’re trying to avoid moving depart­ments to another building. We seem skep­tical that they might be using that as a smoke­screen to have an opt-​​out for any changes at all. They’ve com­mitted to letting us know.

Hey, it sounds like we just talked them into admit­ting that some depart­ments are, with regard to their employees-​​with-​​disabilities oblig­a­tions, “perhaps unaware of their respon­si­bil­i­ties, to put it charitably”.

“Whatever it is we’re doing now, isn’t pro­ducing results”. They under­stand, and they’re com­mitted to inves­ti­gating further.

And that’s all our pro­posals. Sorry I missed the salary and bridge pay talks. And now my battery is dieing.

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Oh hey, I have a backup battery. While I was offline the meeting broke up for caucases. While our respec­tive bar­gaining teams holed up for dis­cus­sions, we’ve had a summary of the day’s events, and now we’re dis­cussing issues.

It’s too bad I was offline for the summary, but what stuck out for me is that we’re *still* expecting the admin­is­tra­tion to push back against equal access to benefits for same-​​sex partners. It seems like they would like to help if it just cost them some money, but they aren’t willing to make any admin­is­tra­tive or policy change. Good grief. University of Michigan, home of diver­sity, as long as it’s effort­less diversity.

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Now in dis­cus­sions, another student has offered their expe­ri­ences with trying to squeeze acco­mo­da­tion for learning dis­abil­i­ties out of the struc­ture. Based on their expe­ri­ences, it sounds as though the idea is there that there is support in place, but you can’t actually access it.

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I’m blown away by this story from a psy­chology student: during their GSI ori­en­ta­tion, they are informed that they are hired at the .5 fraction, and they are expected to work 40 hours a week. Which is of course exactly x2 the actual number. Then when someone asks about that, they are informed that, yes, tech­ni­cally the contract says 20 but if they insist on pushing that number they will be resented by their super­vi­sors, not receive ref­er­ence letters, and be resented by their fellow GSI’s who will have to take up the slack. Un Be Freaking Leavable. I want to walk out on that right now.

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And now a team of under­grads — Students Organizing for Labour and Economic Equality have arrived with an enormous card­board craft clenched fist/​musclely heart valen­tine for the admin­stra­tion GEO. Awesome! Somebody send me a photo . Now they’re making a lovely speech of solidarity!

“the heart is a muscle the size of a fist“
“GEO, our hearts and minds are with you“
and the scrap paper they used is from print­outs of the contract. hell yeah.

update: Dave Rowland provides photos of SOLE’s valen­tine, which is clearly in the late stages of advanced awesomeness:

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Another point from the dis­cus­sions — regarding bridge pay, we gave them a contract that had a pro­vi­sion for some pay and benefits over the summer, during which we aren’t supposed to exist finan­cially. They gave us back a copy of the contract with that entire pro­vi­sion deleted. We gave it back to them with it back in, unchanged. Weee!

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We’ve recieved a comment from the former nego­ti­ating head for the U Vic TAs. Solidarity.

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Now we’re waiting for the admin team to return so they can walk through our SOLE team and past the huge (4 ft!) valen­tine. And here they are. Fun.

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Some scut­tlebut: talk of a grade-​​in event to support the next bar­gaining session, or the one after.
Other scut­tlebut exists, but I don’t know if it’s for dis­tri­b­u­tion yet.

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Battery is dieing again. I can’t imagine it’s going to get that exciting again. But who knows?

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I figured after the break, as we head into dinner time, we would have fewer people in the room. I’m now sur­rounded by floor-​​sitters to the point that it’s going to be hard to get out.

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There’s an option to extend the contract for a few weeks/​ months as a stop-​​gap measure to extend bar­gaining. They admin­is­tra­tion is remind us of that. We are indi­cating that we will be willing to discuss that next week. Given the state of bar­gaining and, winter break coming up…

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One thing I’ve never quite under­stood: why do all 6 of us talk, and they have 8 seats filled, but only one does the talking, plus a couple who occa­sion­ally raise their hand and are acknowledged.

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And we’re done.