Dear Colleagues,
By now you have likely heard that graduate employees may go on strike in the coming weeks. Similar to our own experiences in bargaining, these workers have been engaged in difficult negotiations with the Administration over the last year. Following the process laid out in state law, the Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE) declared an impasse in negotiations on September 25th. Strikes can have significant impacts on our students and the university, and we know that CGE has not made this decision lightly. We sincerely hope the Administration will reach an agreement with CGE as soon as possible – one that adequately supports our graduate workers.
Understandably, we have been getting a lot of questions about the impact a strike might have on faculty work.
Faculty already have our own workloads that we must attend to. This workload has been assigned to each of us at our current FTE and pay, as defined by our own position descriptions, college or unit level workload guidelines, and our Collective Bargaining Agreement (see Article XIV). While it may be appropriate for your supervisors to engage in discussions about how to cover the work of striking employees, it is not acceptable to simply push you to cover work assigned to graduate employees without consideration of your own time and compensation. If you feel that you are being pressured to cover additional work outside of your own work assignment, please let us know right away so we can assist you.
We have also received questions regarding what faculty can and cannot say to their graduate employees. It is always acceptable to ask questions and learn from your graduate workers. However, do not ask them if they intend to strike or not, and please avoid anything that seems like pressuring them to take any particular position on their negotiations or the strike itself.
Above all, we encourage you to respect CGE’s active negotiation process and the lawful actions these workers are engaged in. And please reach out with any questions or concerns, either directly with an officer or staff member, or via our email account: info@uaosu.org.
In solidarity,
Your UAOSU Executive Council