When most students were frantically cramming for their exams the last week of spring semester, a dedicated group of activists and negotiators were fighting for what they believe is appropriate compensation from the university.
For a number of students, it was teaching assistants and graduate employees who were the face of many of their classes, doing a sizable amount of the grading and teaching for the nearly 40,000 undergraduate students at MSU.
From shutting down Grand River Avenue to confronting President Lou Anna K. Simon, the Graduate Employees Union’s bargaining team was able to negotiate a new contract just before their old one would have expired on May 15.
History of the issue
The first contract given to TAs was signed in 2002. Before then, conditions for graduate employees were rough, GEU lead organizer Meredith Place said.
“Before TAs had a union, there hadn’t been an increase in wages at MSU for 13 years,” she said in an email. “GEU’s first contract set standards that allow TAs to bargain more effectively to support their well-being and professional development.”
The most recent contract, besides the one just negotiated, was signed in 2011 and included a negligible pay increase because of the aftermath of the 2008 recession. Their healthcare benefits, however, were agreeable to the GEU.
That was until last summer, when the insurance provider, Aetna Inc., no longer provided the same benefits. MSU administration said it was because of the increased costs associated with the Affordable Care Act. More of the healthcare costs were then pushed onto graduate employees, GEU president Sylvia Marques said. She said because of the limited pay of most graduate employees, any additional out-of-pocket expenses would be difficult to cover.
An arbitrator was brought in whose report was expected for the summer of 2015, and the GEU claims the administration cannot unilaterally double back on a contract agreement. President Simon told the Lansing State Journal that MSU simply couldn’t offer healthcare that isn’t provided by Aetna.
The most recent round of negotiations began in January 2015, well ahead of the May 15 expiration date.
Contract proposals
Both the GEU and the administration assembled bargaining teams to hash out a new contract.
The GEU represents 80 percent of TAs at MSU and TAs are responsible for between 30 and 50 percent of all freshman and sophomore instruction, according to MSU’s academic governance website.
The GEU’s proposal included a three-legged stool of demands: healthcare, a pay raise and an increased tuition waiver.
“Salary and healthcare and tuition waiver are the three big economic issues, and we have to do a kind of juggling act between the three things,” Marques said.
Because of this juggling act, the GEU didn’t have a specific number in mind for a base salary, however the number of $15,000 was thrown around at many of the GEU’s activism events.
The GEU also demanded a comparable healthcare agreement to what they received under the last contract.
A third major area of the negotiations centered around a tuition waiver. Under the last contract, graduate employees were guaranteed nine credits in the fall and spring and five in the summer.
Marques said other universities gave a full tuition waiver, which was the guiding idea behind negotiations.
None of the members of the administration’s bargaining team who were reached out to responded to requests to comment, and reporters were not allowed in the negotiation meetings. However, problems the administration had with some of the GEU’s proposals, according to Marques and Place, included a budget strapped for money and concerns with the tuition waiver leading to students taking frivolous credits.
Activism
All of that took place inside the bargaining room. Outside of it, the GEU organized a series of events to show support. One major event included a three-day grade-in during exam week in the Nisbet Building, just feet from the bargaining room. On the last day, State Senator Curtis Hertel Jr., D-East Lansing, came to show support.
One of the last events included an attempt to confront President Simon in her office to deliver demands and a petition with 1,166 signatures, though she was not in her office at the time.
A major GEU talking point was how the administration’s policies toward graduate employees showed a “fundamental (insensitivity) to families,” because some who work for the university as teaching assistants also have children, Marques said. Many children could be seen at these events, including the infant son of Elizabeth Kenyon, a graduate employee in the College of Education.
She brought her five-month-old son not only because she didn’t have childcare that day, but because she wanted to make a point.
“This was a choice that I made, but one that was sort of necessary to make, given my age and my husband’s age and things like that,” Kenyon said. “It’s important that I feel supported and respected in regards to that choice I made.”
She said later in a letter to The State News that her program, the Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education PhD Program has been incredibly supportive, however “this support is the exception to the rule.”
During the negotiations, the administration brought in a mediator — a sign of talks wrapping up, Place said. They scheduled the mediator for one day, May 7, and when an agreement was not reached the administration pulled out of all of the next week’s bargaining sessions, saying the mediator wasn’t free again until June. Only a few days later, MSU agreed to meet on the previously agreed upon dates.
“I think pressure from our membership is due in large part for their reasons to come back,” Place said.
Results
On May 13, a deal was struck and the GEU quickly claimed victory in the negotiations, though the administration sees it differently.
Key provisions of the agreement include maintaining affordable, quality healthcare, a 2 percent annual raise beginning August 16 and an increase to the minimum stipends by 10 percent in the first year of the contract and 5 percent in the third year of the contract, a GEU statement read.
The GEU did not receive the full tuition waiver.
As of Monday, the contract still had to be ratified by the GEU, at which point it will become active from May 16 forward and last until May of 2019.
MSU spokesperson Jason Cody said they didn’t see the agreement in terms of winners and losers, and until it is ratified more specifics of the contract cannot be discussed.
“I can say we are very pleased we were able to reach a tentative agreement with the members of the GEU and their leadership,” Cody said. “The negotiation process worked. We went to the bargaining table, both sides were able to talk about their concerns and we were able to reach a consensus that was amicable to both sides.”
