MSU and Graduate Employees Union officials are poised to stay up late as a midnight deadline approaches to reach an agreement on the union’s first contract.
Officials avoided a one-day strike by graduate employees scheduled for April 15 when an agreement was reached to complete contract talks by the end of today.
But as negotiations continue, four issues remained unresolved Sunday afternoon. Union officials say those issues - all economic - are the most important to their members.
“We’ve settled all the noneconomic issues, so it’s good and we’re still hoping to be done by (today),” said union President Jessica Goodkind. “They’re going to be negotiating late into the night.”
Health and dental insurance, child and family care, tuition waiver and salaries still remained on the bargaining table Sunday afternoon. Union and university officials agreed when negotiations began that economic issues would be the last elements of the contract to be discussed.
The two sides penned four additional tentative agreements Thursday, including union recognition and membership dues, completing all the noneconomic issues.
There are 28 separate issues the two sides must settle before a contract can be signed. Officials from both sides have declined to comment on the details of most of the agreements.
University spokesman Terry Denbow said he can’t speculate on what would happen if an agreement is not reached tonight, but said both sides are working to meet the deadline.
Goodkind said union leaders have called a Tuesday membership meeting to discuss the status of talks. She said if an agreement is reached, union members will decide if they want to move ahead with the process to ratify the contract.
A majority of eligible union voters will be needed to ratify the contract. There are 1,400 union members, but not all are eligible to vote.
The union was formed in April 2001, and its members and MSU bargaining teams have been working on the union’s first contract since October.
Wayne Cass, chairman of the Coalition of Labor Organizations at MSU, expects the two sides to reach an agreement by tonight’s deadline, but said there are no legal repercussions if it isn’t met. Cass, who has been consulting with the union, said the issues that remain unsettled would dictate what would happen after the deadline.
“If there is something that they could settle by meeting once again, they’ll probably just meet again,” he said. “If there’s something really big and it doesn’t look like anybody’s going to move, the GEU will have to determine what will need to be done to move the administration to a position to do so, or vice versa.”
Chad Previch can be reached at previchc@msu.edu.
