Recently the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation has aimed to raise awareness of its nine-month effort to settle contract negotiations with the University with events such as last week’s Solidar-i-tee Tuesday and an up-coming rally during Monday’s IntroDUCKtion session.
The GTFF is a member-run labor organization for graduate student instructors or GTFs, who either instruct or perform research in their respective fields for the University in return for free tuition and/or modest salaries. According to the GTFF, despite making far less than professors or fully-tenured staff, GTFs provide almost one-third of the instruction on campus during the school year. The GTFF represents 80 percent of GTFs working at the
University, a total of more than 1,300 instructors.
Every two years, the contractual terms for GTF employment with the University are reviewed and revised through a series of proposals and negotiations between the University and the GTFF.
But strong disagreement over a series of key issues has drawn out this year’s deliberations far longer than usual.
“This usually would have been settled by now,” GTFF organizer Glenn Morris said. “This is very concerning to us because we are getting into the fall and a new school year without having a contract with specific wages and benefits. We hope the University realizes that this is our livelihoods at stake.”
One of the key points of contention in the deliberations has been the GTFF’s insistence on a more comprehensive method of providing transparency in the hiring and re-hiring process.
Currently, GTFs are hired on a quarter-to-quarter basis with the fate of their employment resting solely in the hands of departmental advisors who assess their academic progress.
Yet, without any official criteria for evaluating individual instructors, personnel evaluation relies on a heavily subjective system — one that many GTFs resent.
“We want to push that we are teachers too, not just students, and we need to be judged accordingly,” Bernofsky said. “Many times re-hiring is not handled by the terms of the contract, and while there are departments that do it responsibly, it is just not consistent, which is what we are looking for.”
The negotiation process began in September 2009 with the University and the GTFF exchanging their proposals for the contract terms for the coming year. Despite almost a year’s worth of deliberation, talks last month had broken down to the point that the GTFF saw it necessary to call in an official from the state’s Employment Relations Board to mediate the discussions.
“We didn’t feel that the University was willing to proceed in a way that would have produced a fair contract,” GTFF President Sam Bernofsky said. “A mediator will be able to work between the two sides to come to an equitable solution. We have been prepared to find ways around this, and the University, although not necessarily unprepared, has been kind of dragging their heels.”
University officials involved in the negotiations view adding a third party as a standard and mutually beneficial action to remedy such situations and insist that a solution is well on its way.
“Mediation is a routine practice when both sides involved in collective bargaining conclude they would benefit from outside assistance in resolving outstanding issues,” University Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies Richard Linton said. “The University looks forward to concluding bargaining in the weeks ahead and already has made proposals that significantly increase total compensation for GTFs, including improvements in minimum salaries, tuition waiver and other benefits.”
According to a posting from the University on the Graduate School’s website, although issues regarding the University’s academic progress standards are typically “outside (the) purview” of the GTFF’s collective bargaining agreement, the University has set forth a proposal that “requires clearly articulated evaluation measures” and “specifies that objective criteria be included.” Regardless of such assurances, members of the GTFF are showing no signs of yielding their efforts to gain what they feel are fair and reasonable measures.
“I have been a GTFF member for eight years, and I have never seen people this worked up,” Morris said. “We are interested in a fair and just contract, and we are willing to stick it out until we get it.”
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