October 3 Bargaining Update
Ninth Bargaining Session Complete
TLDR:
- ONE Tentative Agreement today: International Employee Rights!
- We’re waiting on admin to deliver counters to our articles and information we need.
- The fall is heating up! Make your voice heard–fill out the wage survey (MEMBERS CHECK YOUR EMAILS!), join walkthroughs, attend walkthrough trainings, and come to the NUGW-UE history session on 10/4 at 5pm!
Today, we completed our ninth bargaining session! We reached a Tentative Agreement on International Employee Rights; you can view the text on our bargaining tracker. Our next bargaining session is a full day session on October 19th.
International Employee Rights
We reached a tentative agreement on International Employee Rights, securing a range of protections for international workers on campus! Thanks to the moving testimony from our bargaining committee advocating for some of the most vulnerable populations on campus, administration agreed to language reaffirming their support for international workers brought to campus under immigration statuses other than F-1 and J-1 visas. This is crucial support for all international workers!
We’re waiting…
Northwestern administration has been slow to deliver essential information we have been waiting on. Despite asking almost four months ago, we have still not received an explanation of why hundreds of workers are missing from the bargaining unit list we were provided in June nor a response to our latest Information Request. These delays drag out the bargaining process! We deserve timely responses to our reasonable requests and proposed articles. Administration also hasn’t provided a counter on our crucial Non-Discrimination article (which we last countered over a month ago). They continually reassert their belief that the current systems work, as they did today at the table with Discipline & Discharge; we all know, however, just how often Northwestern’s systems fail graduate workers.
Feral Union Fall
NUGW-UE activities are heating up this fall! The wage survey that dropped yesterday is open until 9am on October 8th. Let your thoughts be heard on what a reasonable grad worker stipend is and what you’re ready to do to fight for it. Get FERAL with NUGW-UE by joining walkthroughs this week to help survey as much of membership as possible. Walkthrough training sessions are happening EVERY DAY. Come by to learn more about NUGW-UE history this Wednesday (October 4th) at 5pm in TGS Commons. See you there!
Signed, The NUGW-UE Bargaining Committee: Alejandro Abisambra (Management and Organizations and Sociology), Jade Basinski (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Maddie Brucker (Computer Science & Learning Sciences), Lawrence Chillrud (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Peter Cummings (Clinical Psychology), Adam Goldsmith (Communication Studies), Jack Hamill (Music), Reem Ibrahim (Interdepartmental Neuroscience), Lauren Johnson (English), Cataldo Lamarca (Materials Science and Engineering), Elisabeth Latawiec (Chemistry), Thomas McKenzie-Smith (Physics and Astronomy), Behailu Mihirete (Communication Studies), Ben Oxley (Chemistry), Summer Pappachen (Political Science), Sebastian Poblete (Economics), Andrew Poverman (Physics and Astronomy), Adrian Ray-Avalani (Linguistics), Jakob Reinke (Materials Science and Engineering), Mounica Sreesai (Anthropology), Drew Weidner (Chemical and Biological Engineering), Teke Wiggin (Sociology), Ruoxi Zhu (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Kavi Chintam (Chemical and Biological Engineering), Esther (Em) Kamm (History)