It took nine months of bargaining and nine hours of state-mediated talks, but the University and the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation finally reached a contract agreement last month, narrowly averting a threatened GTFF strike fall term that could have resulted in withheld grades and a campus-wide walkout by the University’s 1,300 union GTFs.
A strike vote passed by the GTFF May 25 was the first since 1977, and only the second in the University’s history. It put the union one step
closer to a full strike, which would have been a University first.
The chief items of contention between the union and the University were whether the University could hire GTFs outside of contract, the size of GTF salaries and whether GTFs would be charged student fees.
GTFF President Eric Lindgren said in some cases GTFs have been known to teach classes for $8 or $10 an hour, as opposed to teaching on salary and under contract. Lindgren said the University wanted to insert language into the contract that would make hiring GTFs for hourly wages easier in the future.
Hiring GTFs in this manner allows the University to exclude those employees from tuition waivers and health benefits, but Lindgren said this is a violation of the GTFF contract.
Vice President of Research and Graduate Studies Richard Linton, who was the chief negotiator for the University, said that in many cases the University can’t hire GTFs on contract because the contract stipulates there must be at least nine hours of work per week for them. When a department doesn’t have that much work, it is common for them to hire GTFs for hourly wages, Linton said.
The GTFF also had a problem with the University’s practice of hiring undergraduates to teach discussion sections and grade papers, work the union considers to be GTF-level work, and work the union says the University has to offer to GTFs first.
“I would like to see the University argue that undergraduates are more qualified for that kind of work,” Lindgren said.
Linton said hiring undergraduates for work of this level is not uncommon for research universities, and that the University had the right to determine its own hiring practices.
In early negotiations, Linton said the University was not able to offer the GTFF a pay raise because of a statewide wage freeze on all state employees.
Lindgren said the wage freeze was not real because of a state authorized ‘fighting fund’ that the University was going to receive to keep top-level faculty. Lindgren said if the University could afford to raise professor salaries, then there was no wage freeze in place.
Linton said the university portion of the fighting fund would only be $125,000 and could not even be implemented until it passed the State Emergency Board in September.
Linton also pointed out that the
University did follow through with the contractually obligated four percent raise last fall, despite the wage freeze.
The final sticking point was fee reduction. Under the former contract, Lindgren said GTFs had to pay back 10 percent of their paycheck in student fees.
“It’s our position that fees should be zero,” Lindgren said.
Linton said the University offered a 16 percent fee reduction on top of waiving all tuition payments for GTFs, something that no other comparable university offers.
Linton said the total University offering amounted to a 3.5 percent to 7 percent increase in net take-home pay.
“What we have on the table is reflective of a very strong University commitment,” Linton said in late July.
On Aug. 4, the day before entering state-sponsored mediation, the GTFF held Empty Campus Day. Lindgren said half of the 1,300 GTFs held their classes off campus, mostly at the Koinonia Center at the corner of Kincaid Street and East 14th Avenue. In addition, an unknown number of researchers stayed away from the office, Lindgren said.
Students were also supportive of the GTFF.
“I think [the strike] is a good idea,” junior journalism major Amber Merritt said. “The University is getting out of paying a lot of money for real teachers.”
Linton issued a statement the same day questioning the legality of Empty Campus Day and admonishing the union for being insensitive to the needs of students.
“We don’t appreciate actions like this,” said Linton.
In the end, it only took one nine-hour session of mediated talks the day after the Empty Campus Day to diffuse the potential strike. The GTFF got a $45-per-term reduction in fees for the length of the contract. The University also promised to give the GTFF a two percent raise next year if the wage freeze ended.
Lindgren said he was pleased by the outcome.
“Essentially they gave us twice what we asked for,” he said.
Linda King, University director of human resources and chief spokeswoman for the negotiating team, said the final contract was fiscally responsible for the University and fair to both parties.
The GTFF won a decisive victory on the issue of hiring graduate students for hourly wages. The union believed the former contract language was unclear on the subject. The contract now states that GTFs cannot be hired unless they are under contract.
King said the new language
“clarifies the work to be performed by GTFs.”
GTFF organizer David Cecil said mediation was successful because mediator Wendy Greenwald allowed the two groups to interact without the “flares of ego” that nine-months of negotiations can cause.
“There are times when having a third party to relay offers really helps,” Cecil said.
King said Empty Campus Day and other solidarity actions taken by the union had no effect on negotiations. The University had been ready to settle the contract long before the events took place, she said.
No decision was made during mediation about undergraduate workers, but the GTFF did have grievances filed against what it saw as the three greatest offenders: the math, biology and English departments. In those cases, the University found the actions of the math and English departments to be legal, but found the biology department to be acting illegally.
The University did not accept the GTFF’s proposed remedy for the biology department. The union wanted the department to agree to stop hiring undergraduates for GTF work and pay back the dues the union would have received if those jobs had been done by union members, or roughly $5,000.
The GTFF plans to go into arbitration over the English and math department rulings later this year.

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