Author Archives: GEU Communications

We met with the PSU administration last Friday, January 6th, and continued to push for the basic information we need to represent our members. Throughout our negotiations so far, PSU has characterized GAs as students first, employees second, usually to justify why they are hesitant to give us information we need for bargaining or negotiate issues relevant to our employment at PSU. Last term we asked PSU for key information we need for bargaining. There have been many unfulfilled commitments and delays, but we’re cautiously optimistic to report that they have committed to deliver the most important information by next week.

So far, we’ve agreed to discuss non-economic contract topics in this order:

• Workload, assignments, notice and eligibility of appointment, class size, summer term appointments
• Evaluation
• Discipline, grievance, and arbitration
• Orientation, training
• Union – rights, dues, eligibility, etc.
• University rights
• Health welfare, workplace safety, family issues, childcare
• Work location, work conditions, accessibility
• Layoff
• Use of university resources, library
• Intellectual property and academic freedom

List of bargaining dates for upcoming term:

• 1/13/2017
• 1/23/2017
• 2/10/2017
• 2/13/2017
• 2/24/2017
• 3/06/2017
• 3/10/2017
• 3/17/2017

We’ll follow up with locations for these meetings next week. If you see issues you’re passionate about in this list, get in touch with us!

In solidarity,

The GEU Bargaining Team – Andrés, Emily, Forrest, Neal, and Ted

During the most recent bargaining session (December 9th, 2016), we completed a final draft of ground rules. Both teams are reviewing these ground rules, and we’ve scheduled an agenda item to sign them at the beginning of our next meeting, on December 16th. Once we’ve signed the ground rules, we’ll post them publicly. These ground rules allow observers who are members of the PSU community to attend bargaining sessions, and we look forward to seeing you at next term’s first bargaining session, on January 6th, from 9am to 4pm. We’ll follow up with the location and agenda for this meeting.

The GEU Bargaining Team met with administration on Friday, October 28th, 2016, for our first bargaining session. We have established a preliminary set of ground rules for negotiations and a schedule of sessions for the remainder of Fall term, and will finalize a full set of ground rules in our next session. In the next session, we will also continue an ongoing discussion about the specifics of the information request we’ve submitted to quantify GAs’ working conditions, and begin a shared discussion of bargaining interests for future sessions. If you have any questions or want to get involved in the process, please reach out to the bargaining team at bargaining@pdxgeu.org.