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4/30 Bargaining Summary
Today was our last scheduled day of bargaining and it was another long day. We made movement on our proposals in the effort to get administration to agree to a fair contract. Throughout the day, there were seven counter package proposals passed between us and admin. As a part of our last package proposal, we moved admin to significantly increase a number of their previous proposals, and we also reached tentative agreement on several others. At 5:20 pm, admin passed their “last, best, and final” package proposal (more info below).
After this, we stated that we would need to have further conversation, but UW admin refused to extend our contract — effectively forcing us into the “Evergreen Period.” When bargaining extends past the end date of a contract, parties can agree to extend the contract by a specified duration. If both parties do not agree to this, then the contract enters what is referred to as the “Evergreen Period.” This period, mandated by Washington state law, effectively extends most terms of the contract for up to one year.
Below, you’ll find a summary of the current status of our proposals, admin’s “last, best, and final” offer, and you can also find a more detailed summary here. None of these proposals are final, and all decisions about whether or not to accept a final contract will be subject to a membership-wide ratification vote. Join tomorrow’s membership meeting to discuss these proposals and next steps!
4/30 Proposals Summary
These are the articles where our last package proposals are still in disagreement with admin:
- Fee and Tuition Waivers / Lump Sum MOU: Because admin is reluctant to set a precedent by waiving more fees, we are proposing to offset fee costs by bargaining for a lump sum, similar to what we won in 2018. In our last pass, we proposed an annual lump sum payment of $200 to all ASEs. Admin has continued to propose maintaining contract language with no lump sums or additional waivers to offset fees. This would mean maintaining the current fee waivers, but an end to the $100 lump sum payment.
- Wages: In our last pass, we maintained our proposal for wage increases of 3% in each year of a three year contract (the same amount as our previous proposal for the median of our peer institutions). As of yesterday, admin was proposing wage increases of 1% in 2021, 1% in 2022, and 1.5% in 2023. Today in their “last, best, and final” offer, they moved to propose wage increases of 2% in 2021, 3% in 2022, and 3% in 2023.
- EPIC & Equity Teams: EPIC is an incredibly important program for ASEs, and one that administrators often tout as a benefit of coming to UW. Despite this, admin has continued not to move on adding more EPIC trainers or our proposed pilot Equity Team program. After much solemn discussion & in our final pass to UW admin, we proposed to increase the number of EPIC trainers from 2 to 3 and we withdrew our proposal for Peer Equity Teams. In admin’s final offer, they continue to reject the addition of an EPIC trainer, despite the vast amount of work these trainers do. As it stands, we have a slight improvement in the EPIC program by having our 2 trainer positions extended from a 9 month appointment to a full year appointment.
As part of our last package proposals, we reached tentative agreement or conceptual agreement with admin on these articles. This means that we would be prepared to bring these items to a membership-wide vote as part of ratification of a full contract:
- Health Insurance and Insurance Appendix: We have tentatively agreed to a proposal in which all gender affirming care is covered at in-network levels, and our out-of-network outpatient mental health care coverage increases from 60% to 80% coinsurance. These are significant and important wins, but we are also disappointed that UW was not willing to invest more in our health, particularly during a pandemic. For context, to our best estimates, the agreed-upon changes represent an overall 0.16% increase in our plan cost, or approximately $9 per member per year. We believe there are still significant inequities in our healthcare, particularly around out-of-pocket costs for assisted reproductive services, dental, and vision, and are committed to continuing to advocate on these issues going forward.
- Childcare: we have tentatively agreed to a proposal that increases the ASE Childcare Fund to $70,200, with a quarterly stipend of $1,350 per ASE.
- Grievance procedure: Admin has been consistently attempting to degrade current, well-functioning rights in our grievance procedure. Today, they finally tentatively agreed to our proposal, which maintains our current contract language and retains our right to file grievances at Step 2, as well as our right to standing quarterly arbitrations.
- U-PASS: In our last pass, we continued to maintain our proposal which includes the U-PASS waiver for the duration of our contract. Admin has maintained a similar proposal, with slight language differences in how they describe the same duration.
- Holidays, Leaves, Vacation, and Workday tracking: We have tentatively agreed to all proposals with changes related to Workday tracking, scheduled to be implemented on September 16th, 2022. Admin additionally agreed to further discuss this implementation with us ahead of time and that we would agree to language used to communicate with departments about the change.
In Solidarity,
UAW 4121 ASE Bargaining Committee
Douglas Avella
Vern Harner
Amzi Jeffs
Levin Kim
Kyle Kubler
Jacob O’Connor
Nayon Park
Marissa Parker
Solmaz Shakerifard
Samantha Thompson
Momona Yamagami |
