The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation reached agreement on contract negotiations with the University on Friday after both sides tentatively agreed on a settlement for the graduate teaching fellows’ 2008-2010 contract. The two-year agreement still requires final approval from both sides to become official.
The two sides agreed that the University would fund an annual increase of $250,000 that would go to increasing the GTFs’ health care cap, a minimum salary increase and a reduction in fees.
“The current proposal includes … maybe most important, a raise in the annual health care cap, a benefit that many of our members have unfortunately demonstrated the need for,” said GTFF President Mark Leymon on the GTFF bargaining Web site.
After the University yielded on the health care issue, the GTFF came back to Friday’s meeting with what David Cecil, lead negotiator for the GTFF, considered a generous compromise, either accepting or moving closer to several University proposals on salaries, benefits and fees.
After months of negotiations and growing frustrations on both sides, a breakthrough came on the April 21 bargaining session when the University offered a health care compromise that the GTFF had been unwilling to settle without, said Cecil.
“We really appreciate the movement the University made last time and feel that it got us to where we are today,” Cecil told the University bargaining team at the opening of last Friday’s meeting. “As promised, our side has made significant movement on the economic issues.”
Before the April 21 meeting, some GTFF members began to whisper among themselves about taking street action if some of their demands weren’t met, especially their request that the University provide enough money to raise the annual health care cap.
The previous health care cap on spending was set at $100,000 – an amount that the GTFF said was far too low to meet many of the GTFs’ health care needs.
At the start of bargaining last November, the GTFF proposed that the University provide enough money so the cap be raised to $500,000 next year and $1 million the year after, which the University’s bargaining team eventually agreed to on the April 21 meeting.
The GTFF was hopeful that the bargaining would conclude with Friday’s meeting.
“We are trying to finish up today … the proposals we have for you today are our best effort to wrap this up today,” said Cecil.
After hearing the GTFF proposals for compromise the University went into caucus for over an hour.
In addition to the health care cap increase, the two-year contract will include an eight percent raise in minimum salaries over the next two years, a reduction in University fees and two weeks of paid vacation for GTFs with a nine month research position.
The GTFF had hoped to not only increase the health care cap but also eliminate all fees for GTFs. Despite not getting that, GTFF members said they were pleased with the outcome of this year’s contract negotiations.
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