GEU met with PSU’s bargaining team on Tuesday, October 27. After over six months of bargaining with PSU, the admin team still has not brought counter proposals to substantial article proposals, chief among them a health insurance benefit for GAs. The administration team also continues to deny important non-economic asks like GEU’s proposed anti-bullying language in Article 14 and GEU’s ask to move away from PSU’s intentionally obstructive method of sharing bargaining unit information with GEU.
Thus, GEU has made the decision to request mediation from the state Employment Relations Board (ERB). Under PECBA (the law that governs our collective bargaining process), parties must engage in mediation before either party can escalate to declaring impasse, which is the next legal step in the process before GEU could move toward a legal strike. Mediation looks like closed bargaining sessions in which a state mediator works to help parties reach an agreement. We are waiting to hear from ERB to schedule our mediation session which will likely take several weeks (at earliest post Thanksgiving).
Stay tuned for updates from GEU including an upcoming General Membership Meeting (on 11/20 from 10am-12pm) during which we will talk more about a potential strike and what that would mean for you.