Hi Colleague,
Last Friday, more than 1,000 ASEs and supporters gathered in the Quad to demand that UW Admin stop stalling at the table and give us real proposals. The bargaining session yesterday makes it clear – they need to hear it again, and louder. Management responded to many of our proposals with little movement or outright rejecting them. In order for us to reach agreement on a strong contract by April 30th, we need real proposals now.
We made some progress towards a strong contract by reaching a tentative agreement on Intellectual Property with new language to ensure that our contributions to scholarship are fairly recognized, addressing a key issue that ASEs have faced in labs with harassment and bullying from mentors.
However, we have yet to see any real proposals from UW Admin on our key priorities. With yesterday’s proposals, UW Admin continues to want to pay ASEs less to work more – while making it easier to fire us. Their second wages proposal was a 4% / 3% / 3% increase to the base salary rate, still less than their own projected rates of inflation. They reasserted their language removing the 220 hour quarterly maximum on workload as well as presumed resignation & abandonment. They still believe ASEs should pay at least $1,092 more with no improvements to healthcare.
We need to keep turning up the pressure. See you on the 17th at noon by the George Washington statue near Red Square to give Admin a taste of what’s to come if they continue to stall.
| UW refused to move on eight (8) articles, reasserting their initial proposals or current contract language rather than make progress towards to an agreement, on Articles 13 (Insurance Programs), 16 (Layoffs), 30 (Union Security), 32 (Vacation), 35 (Workload), 4 (Appointment & Reappointment Notification and Job Description), while rejecting our Relocation Stipend and Transitional Funding Program proposals.
We passed proposals on Articles 33 (Wages), 7 (Fee and Tuition Waivers), 8 (Grievance Procedure), 17 (Leaves of Absence), 5 (Childcare), 27 (Travel and Purchasing), and our new articles, Reasonable Accommodations and Immigration. We also made proposals on healthcare (GAIP appendix) and Article 29 (Union Rights). With 27 articles still left to settle, we need to keep up the pressure for Management to keep making progress towards a strong contract that meets our needs. |
Compensation
We remain far apart on articles related to compensation. UW Admin passed a proposal with a small increase to the first year of a proposed 3-year contract, with 4% / 3% / 3% wage increases, which is still lower than their own projected rates of inflation over the same time period. They still maintain that ASEs should pay fees to work at the UW. We countered with proposals to make progress towards a strong contract with wages that keep up with the high cost of living in the Puget Sound as well as enshrining increases to variable salary rates in our contracts.
Healthcare / Childcare / GAIP Appendix
UW reiterated their desire to make us pay over $1100/year in premiums. We continue to fight for $0 premiums while making small changes to our proposals around medical costs, dental, and vision. We made some progress on childcare, with UW Admin’s latest proposal increasing the amount of childcare funds for each ASE parent but no responses to anything else.
New Article XX: Reasonable Accommodations
As many responses on the bargaining survey showed, the current process for accessing accommodations as an ASE is an unclear bureaucratic puzzle. We made progress at the bargaining table towards an article to enshrine an interactive process for ASEs to access reasonable accommodations, with interim protections and union representation for DSO meetings.
New Article XX: Immigration
Management, after making us wait for 2 months, finally responded with no significant changes to the status quo. In our counter proposal, we reiterated our priorities for concrete, material support for non-citizen ASEs with financial support to offset mandatory visa fees that non-citizen ASEs have to pay to work at the UW, paid leave for immigration-related activities, and concrete measures to increase appointment security for non-citizen ASEs dealing with situations beyond individual control that frequently arise in the current immigration system.
Article 27 (Travel and Purchasing) + Package of Articles 21 (Parking and Transit), 15 (Job Titles and Classifications) & 25 (Summer Non-Registered Graduate Research Student Assistants)
We made significant progress towards improvements to our travel and reimbursement policies in our next contract. UW Admin maintains that we should have to pay to work by making us front the costs of work-related travel and minimize our access to transit benefits. We passed a proposal that would streamline these processes and to guarantee ASEs transit passes for every quarter they work.
The 2024 ASE Bargaining Portal has been added to the UAW 4121 website!
Questions? Want to get more involved? Reach out to ase-bargaining@uaw4121.org.
ASE Bargaining Team
Natalie Wellen (Applied Mathematics)
Justin Applegate (Biochemistry)
Tahiyat Rahman (Physics)
Anastasia Schaadhardt (Information School)
Soohyung Hur (Geography)
Yuying Xie (Geography)
Francesca Colonnese (English)
Candice Young (Molecular & Cellular Biology)
Natasha Crepeau (Mathematics)
Nelson Niu (Mathematics)
Jayden Wood (Mechanical Engineering)
Peter Lindquist (Earth & Space Sciences)
