Grad workers propose 7-article package to preserve rights

Our bargaining session this week marked just over seven months since the start of negotiations with Penn admin. We passed admin a package proposal that included comprehensive responses on seven (7) contract articles: Access Needs, Appointments, Freedom of Speech and Expression, Job Expectations and Scheduling of Work, Management and Academic Rights, Union Rights, and Union Security. This package responds to admin’s Management and Academic Rights proposal while ensuring that the other articles implicated by that proposal are adequately addressed as well. We hope that packaging these proposals together will allow both parties to move forward and make progress towards a full contract.

Here’s a summary of yesterday’s bargaining session:

• We reached a tentative agreement on Intellectual Property
• We proposed a comprehensive package (a method of grouping proposals and making the language in them contingent on an agreement to all of them) of 7 articles
• Admin stated that they will continue to “flat out reject” any article pertaining to Freedom of Speech and Expression
• Admin passed counter proposals on Intellectual Property and Workers Compensation

While this is the third session in a row that we have reached a tentative agreement on an article with Penn admin, today’s negotiations also exemplify admin’s tendency to come to our sessions with minimal proposals, request to end sessions early, and outright reject reasonable proposals. While some grad workers may be away from Philly during the summer, we all need to do our part to hold Penn admin accountable and let them know that they cannot take a summer vacation at the expense of our rights. When grad workers pack the bargaining room, Penn admin has been more likely to engage with what we are bringing to the table. 

Penn admin has nearly all outstanding articles in their court. Join us as grad workers turn up the heat and observe the twentieth bargaining session next Wednesday, May 28th from 10:30 – 4:30 PM in the basement of the Sheraton Hotel (3549 Chestnut). At bargaining sessions, observers can directly weigh in on the articles we discuss and meet workers from other parts of the university. Join the over 200 workers who have attended bargaining to date! RSVP Here, and stay for as long as you’d like.