The new agreement provides improved dental benefits for union members and also puts provisions in place for salary increases. In the first year of the contract, members will receive a 1.5 percent bonus based on their current salary, and they will receive raises in the three years following.

The new deal also addresses the previous contract’s tuition waiver policy, which ranked among the worst in the Big Ten, said Andrew Cooper, the GEU’s vice president for organizing and outreach.

“The issue is that there are some people who are required to take 10-12 credits per semester, and (some) people had to take more credits that weren’t covered by the waiver,” Cooper said.

“In order to get past that, we’ve established a temporary pool of 100 credits.”

That credit pool will be organized by both the GEU and the Graduate School and will allow the GEU to distribute those credits freely for usage by members.

Cooper said, in the meantime, the union will work with the university to establish further details.

GEU president Sam Otten said members of the GEU will meet with officials from the Graduate School on Wednesday to begin that process.

“Right away, we’re already starting our 100-credit fund (for TAs),” Otten said. “We’re starting to put the policy documents together.”

The GEU also has set up a working committee to explore other solutions to the tuition waiver policy and plans are in place for meetings this summer, Cooper said.

“I think we’re pretty confident that the tuition waiver situation will be resolved, primarily because we’ve heard from the university that being competitive in the Big Ten is important,” Cooper said.
“I definitely do think the university realizes that their interests lie in improving the tuition waiver, too.”

An additional feature of the agreement will give GEU members greater access to facilities on campus whenever needed, Cooper said.

Cooper also was pleased with the length of the contract. The GEU’s previous agreements with the university hadn’t run longer than three years, but the extra year now will reduce the amount of time the union spends enforcing the contract, Cooper said.

Curry said regular meetings would be held to deal with problems as they arise. The meetings also will be used to compare MSU’s benefits with other schools and particularly to examine the evolving tuition waiver policy.

“We’ll look at what we’re doing relative to what our peers are doing,” Curry said. “It’s certainly our hope that things will run smoothly.”