Andrew Cooper, vice president for organizing and outreach for the Graduate Employees Union, talks about why increased wages for teaching assistants benefit the university, as well as graduate students.
—Last Thursday, the eight members of the Graduate Employees Union bargaining team went into negotiations with the university team at 5 p.m., prepared for the long night in front of them.
The union — which represents about 1,300 graduate student teaching assistants on campus and is known as the GEU — has been negotiating since February for its new three-year contract.
And at 6:35 a.m. Friday morning — after 13 and a half hours of nonstop negotiations — the union members and MSU representatives walked out with a tentative agreement in hand for a new contract.
Details of the contract aren’t being released until the agreement is ratified by the GEU members and the MSU Board of Trustees, but GEU President Sam Otten said if terms are approved — teaching assistants will receive wage increases each year, improved health care and a better dental plan.
Despite the difficult economic climate the state and university are facing, both sides appear to be happy with the results.
“It’s not exactly how we would have written it if we could have written whatever we wanted, but there are gains in all of the major categories that we set out to try to achieve,” Otten said.
*In the best interest *
This year’s negotiations went much smoother than in years past — with no teaching assistants picketing or going on strike during the bargaining process, said Theodore Curry, associate provost and associate vice president of academic human resources.
The contract also was established more quickly than normal, as the current GEU contract doesn’t expire until May 15, he said.
Plus, the late hours the team put in Thursday night is typical for the end of the bargaining process, Curry added.
“There’s something about getting close to the conclusion and feeling that you’re able to reach an agreement — fearing the risk of, ‘If we stop now, we may not be able to pick up the momentum,’” he said. Curry attributed part of the smoothness of the process to the “interest-based bargaining” process the two sides used this year — something that was a first for the teams.
With an interest-based system, both teams had a joint training session before bargaining began and listed the interests they wanted to keep in the forefront of negotiations, said Andrew Cooper, GEU vice president of organization and outreach. The job of both teams was to find creative solutions to make those interests a reality.
“A lot of times, people get into trouble during negotiations between management and employees because people have a lot of turf they feel they have to defend,” he said. “With interest-based bargaining, you quit being oppositional about things.”
One of the major gains for the GEU in the contract was an increase in tuition waivers, Otten said. Under the current contract, the university covers nine credits for teaching assistants in the fall and spring semesters for classes they need to take to complete their masters or doctorate and five in the summer, he said.
Nearly all other Big Ten universities cover at least 12 credits in the fall and spring semesters, and pending approval MSU will now be on a similar playing field, Otten said.
“We have made a gain on tuition waivers, but not with a huge price tag to the university,” he said.
By the numbers
Graduate student teaching assistants are responsible for about 60 percent of the grading and 30 percent of the course hours taught across campus, Cooper said.
Cooper said he currently teaches a calculus class and is the sole instructor and is in charge of holding office hours, writing exams and giving students grades, he said. This situation is common for about half of all teaching assistants, he said.
Otten said all of MSU’s employee groups took a 0 percent increase on their wages this past year because of the significant cuts MSU has received in state funding. But since teaching assistants are paid below the poverty line — at a minimum stipend in the range of about $14,000 per academic year, though some departments pay higher — the GEU argued it couldn’t afford not to receive a wage increase under the new contract, he said.
“We’re the largest user of the food bank,” Otten said. “For us — we’re at a point where we can’t take a zero.”
Still, Otten said the union realized the financial situation MSU is facing and didn’t expect the wage increases it had seen in the 2008-11 contract — the highest it had ever received.
“The stuff we agreed upon really is a compromise,” Cooper said.
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“If you look at where we started and where the university started, we’re definitely in the middle.”
Under the new terms, the union also will make gains in health care and dental coverage, with the university sharing the cost of the dental plan — a big win, Cooper said.
Big Ten comparison
Competitive benefits are necessary for universities to attract quality graduate students and the university strives for teaching assistant compensation in the middle of the Big Ten, Cooper said.
Many Big Ten universities don’t have unions, so administrators make decisions on teaching assistant compensation without input from graduate students, he said.
Rob Gillezeau, president of the Graduate Employees’ Organization at the University of Michigan, said its union also recently reached a tentative agreement for a new three-year contract — with wage increases for its graduate student instructors each year.
This academic year, the minimum salary for graduate student instructors on half-time appointments for the fall and winter terms was $17,270, he said.
“We have a great contract — the wages are pretty good and the health care is wonderful,” Gillezeau said.
Alex Hanna, co-president of the Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin, said its teaching assistants have been working without a contract since mid-March because of the budget repair bill in the Wisconsin state Legislature.
Geography senior Caitlin McKee said she is considering going to graduate school for geography or urban studies and the amount of compensation she could receive as a teaching assistant could be a deciding factor in her decision.
“That would be a big way I would pay for it because I don’t have the means otherwise,” she said.
Otten and Cooper said the new contract — if approved — will help MSU stay competitive for recruiting graduate students and despite university cuts, will help teaching assistants keep pace with their current wage and health care levels.
“Every contract we try to make it better,” Otten said.
A GEU member meeting will be held tonight at 6 p.m. in 1279 Anthony Hall to go over details of the agreement.
