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Graduate employees hope to bargain collectively

February 12, 2001

A petition bearing the signatures of more than 900 graduate employees was filed with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission on behalf of the newly formed Graduate Employees Union at MSU.

The union hopes to gain collective bargaining power allowing it to negotiate a contract with university administration. The members have cited several concerns in recent years, including inadequate health insurance, salary increases, tuition waivers, hours and working conditions.

“As graduate students and as graduate employees, we don’t currently have a voice in terms of the state of our benefits,” said Sally Theran, a spokeswoman for the union. “Over the last five years our medical benefits have decreased every year.”

Theran, a clinical psychology graduate student, said unionization is long overdue.

“So many other public universities around the country are already organized,” she said. “It’s important that MSU not fall behind.”

Graduate employees include teaching assistants and graduate assistants.

Theran said if the petition is approved, union members will have to have an election to decide whether they wish to negotiate a contract with the university.

Union President Christopher Oliver said the response to unionization has been positive.

“Somewhere between 80 to 90 percent of the people we talk with want to become members,” the sociology graduate student said. “The whole philosophy we’ve taken is to make sure this is something people want.”

Oliver said he also hopes to have a working relationship with the Council of Graduate Students.

COGS is MSU’s graduate student government.

“We should always have a cooperative arrangement with them,” he said. “We actually have quite a number of COGS representatives who are also members in GEU.”

COGS President Sam Howerton said his position as president prevented him from either supporting or denouncing the unionization movement.

“I have not signed on, but that’s just because of the position I hold,” he said.

Karen Klomparens, dean of the Graduate School, also could not comment on union activities, but said she urges everyone to know all aspects of the process before making their decision.

“I do hope that if there is indeed a vote later this semester that each TA will fully inform him or herself on all aspects of the current system and of a unionized system,” she said in a statement Saturday.

The union is being supported by other organized labor organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, as well as the AFL-CIO.

Cedric deLeon, president of the Graduate Employees Organization at the University of Michigan, said unionization at MSU will help graduate employee unions at other schools around the state bargain with their respective administrations.

“When we go into negotiations with U of M, the chief negotiator with the university will say, ‘Well, why the hell should we give you that. The people at MSU don’t have that,’” he said. “When people won’t organize across the state, it makes our job that much harder.”

And deLeon said he is optimistic about the union’s chances of negotiating a satisfactory contract.

“I think they’re going to whip the university’s butt, frankly,” he said.

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