Bargaining Updates
You can see our Tentative Agreement which was reached August 10th, 2023 by clicking here.
Ground Rules
Please see ground rules that were agreed upon at the first bargaining session below:
No recording of these sessions or screenshots
Both sides are allowed to take notes
All presentations will be shared with both sides
Cameras on
Be respectful and mindful in chat and other areas
Assume best intentions regardless of who is speaking even if we’re disagreeing
Only members of the bargaining team should speak - if you are not on the team, you should be prepared to be muted for the entirety of the session
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Summary for Thursday, August 10
Today's bargaining session consisted of Jonathan sharing Georgetown's best and final offers for a 4 year contract and a 3 year contract. The 3 year contract was so weak that it only reached the first year of raises in the final year of the contract. After a caucus, we decided to agree to Georgetown's best and final offer for four years. We finished out the session with the expectation that, assuming this contract is ratified, our first paycheck of September should reflect the raise we agreed to.
Stipends for graduate students with 9-month stipends increased to $38,000/year with 2.5% raises and a $1,100 supplement for those who don’t teach over the summer. 12 month stipends increased to $41,420.
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Summary for Thursday, August 3
In today's bargaining session, the University presented a counterproposal, increasing 9-month stipends to $37,250 for 2024, with an additional $1,000 summer stipend for graduate students without summer teaching positions. This proposal signifies a $250 yearly increase from their previous offer. However, they continue to offer only ~1.2% raises each year in a 4-year contract.
After a caucus, GAGE conveyed to the University the necessity for graduate student assistants to receive yearly raises that align with the cost of living changes in DC. We also highlighted that a 4-year contract wouldn't be feasible with the current stipend amounts offered. Keeping these points in mind, we responded with a counterproposal that would grant graduate students on 9-month stipends $38,250 plus a $1,100 summer supplement, along with 2.5% raises over a 3-year contract. Students on 12-month stipends would receive $41,693 and the same 2.5% yearly increase.
We asked the University to be upfront with us about what they can offer in a 3-year contract with improved yearly raises.
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Summary for Monday, July 31
The bargaining session today was a long haul, but after 4 hours, we did make headway in negotiations. We saw movement by the Administration towards a more favorable contract for the first time in months; they finally agreed to get rid of the tiered structure that they adopted recently which split stipends up into a teaching/research supplement and a base pay. The last counterproposal they shared had a base minimum stipend for 9-month PhD students set at $37,000/year with a $1000 summer supplement and 1.3% raise per year for 4 years. We found that summer supplement problematic because it requires students to apply (but not receive) summer teaching positions in order to quality for the receiving the summer supplement.
In response to these concerns, we shared the following counterproposal at the end of the session: 9-month base stipends will be set at $38,500 with 2.5% yearly increases. We also included a summer supplement, but changed the language to reflect that everyone who doesn’t have a summer teaching or research assistant position will get this supplement. The summer supplement we proposed will increase by $250 per year for the length of the 3-year contract.
Admin did not have enough time to present their counter, so we will have to meet again soon. Jonathan committed to emailing us their counter when it is ready.
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Summary for Monday, July 17
We started today's mediated session by presenting our counter to the University's proposal they they presented on Thursday. The proposal they shared on Thursday split stipends up into a $25,000 base salary with a $12,000 teaching or research supplement. One of our major concern with this proposal is that it would allow for non-service stipends to be lowered on the grounds that workers in those positions would not be considered for the $12,000 teaching or research supplement. Pay increases were only applied to the $12,000 teaching or research supplement, not to the entire stipend. Our counter proposal reverted back to the original language in the contract and did not split stipends up into different categories.
After one sidebar and waiting for admin to deliberate for over two hours, they finally gave us a counter with the same structure they had previously proposed, but this time the "teaching or research" portion of the stipend increase by 4% every year, as opposed to 3%. To put this number in context, admin is offering us tenths of a percent of an increase of the total stipend that was being proposed on Thursday. We ended the session with one more caucus wherein we decided to continue the conversation regarding how to counter in this week's bargaining team meeting.
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Summary for Thursday, July 13
Today's bargaining session was mediated by Kevin Wagner, a Federal Mediator. He began the session by introducting himself and then asking everyone on the call to introduce themselves. Admin shared another alternate proposal (which they called a counter proposal this time) which essentially provides a larger initial increase with much smaller increases over time. This proposal would land 9-month stipends at around $300 more after 4 years than their previous proposal, but 12-month stipends end up about $1000 less after 4 years than their previous proposal. This counter proposal also divides both 9 and 12 month stipends into arbitrary categories to justify the lower pay increases over time.
Both teams caucused, we returned to session and GAGE bargaining team members asked some questions, and then we ended the session after a final 10 minute caucus. Kevin recommended that the bargaining team offer a counter at our next session.
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summary for Monday, June 26
Most of today’s meeting was taken up with a presentation on the University’s financial situation. Dave Green (Georgetown’s Chief Financial Officer) discussed the endowment and how Georgetown ranks financially in comparison to its peers. He claimed that Georgetown has an enormous amount of debt compared to other peer institutions, and that therefore their budget is pretty much immoveable. None of that information was particularly insightful, nor did it help explain why the Administration will not budget more towards stipends for graduate students.
It is not on GAGE to tell the University how to adjust their budget to properly compensate graduate workers, that is their responsibility. Based on the numbers they showed us, it’s unclear why it has been so hard for the Administration to compromise with us after 6 months of budget conversations. Their presentation did not even clearly demarcate where grad worker salaries are encapsulated in the budget.
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Summary for Tuesday, June 20
Negotiations started with discussions regarding mediation for future bargaining sessions. The University had put in a request for a mediator to be involved with our bargaining sessions.
Upon returning to bargaining from caucus, we informed admin's lead negotiator that GAGE is in agreement with using the federally provided mediator moving forward; he will contact the mediator to inquire about their availability for us to schedule our bargaining sessions in July.
A bargaining team member had a question regarding the budgetary reason that the University has been using to justify their low offers on stipend. Previously, the University had suggested that their offers were approaching the upper limit of what their budget is capable of. Our bargaining team member reiterated that GAGE had sent a letter to the Office of the President in August of 2022 asking for a living wage, so the University has known for months what our starting stipend proposals might be.
We then asked the University: did they not budget for our stipend increases because they already had a number in mind for how much they want to compensate us before negotiations began, or because we are not a priority for the University? The University replied that this is why the University plans to offer GAGE a presentation on their budget so that they could show us their perspective. The University also said that just because we asked for a living wage does not mean that we should expect to be compensated a living wage. They also acknowledged that they could have budgeted for higher stipend increases, but that is not what happened.
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Summary for Wednesday, June 14
Today’s session was mostly a discussion, and no proposals were shared by the University or GAGE. It has been over 5 weeks since the University last spoke with us about healthcare, and they have yet to provide us with a substantive counter-offer. Since we gave the University our original healthcare proposal on February 27th, we asked them when we might expect a response. They explained that the cost of insurance premiums has gone up by 10% and they won’t be able to make any improvements to our healthcare coverage, since the University absorbs the premium costs for graduate students on stipends. The University’s lead negotiator explained that they would rather have “flexibility” to increase compensation instead of healthcare, which is a bit confusing since we’ve seen virtually no flexibility on increasing compensation over the past six months; the last wage proposal the University gave us was actually lower than their previous offer.
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Summary for Friday, June 9
Today’s session was our first after a month-long hiatus, thank you to everyone who showed up! Georgetown’s lawyer gave us a wage “alternative” proposal which would give Graduate Student Assistants on 9- and 12-month stipends a 6.5% raise for 2024, and 2.5% raises for 3 years after that.
The last wage counter-proposal we received from the Administration was a 5% raise for 2024 with 3% raises for 3 years, and actually came out to more money overall. The Administration's lead negotiator said, “I’m not trying to talk you into this,” when we asked the University why they expect Graduate Student Assistants to consider this proposal even though it provides less compensation overall than their proposal from May 16th. Members of GAGE’s bargaining team asked questions and made it clear that we expect to see proposals that increase our compensation at this point in the bargaining process, and hopefully we will see our concerns addressed at the next session on Wednesday, June 14th at 12:30pm.
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Summary for Tuesday, May 16
Today’s meeting was exceptionally short, lasting 11 minutes. To start the session, a GAGE member gave testimony about their experience being a first generation student and the intense financial struggles that many grad students have been subjected to over the past few years. We hope that this story demonstrated to the Administration that GAGE members are not just statistics, but real people who are teaching and doing research for this University.
Georgetown runs on graduate labor, and they need to take our requests for a living wage seriously. We offered a pay proposal which would bring 9-month stipends to $39,800 and 12-month stipends to $43,382 by July 1st. This contract would have 3% yearly raises and last until June 2026. Our next bargaining session won’t be for a few weeks, but we can expect to hear back about benefits and wages from the University at that time.
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Summary for Friday, May 12
The University countered our stipend pay proposal today and we had a heated discussion about what the Administration thinks we deserve from this contract. They offered us a 0.5% raise over their last offer, which would be $35,505 for 9-month and $38,781 for 12-month stipends starting this July (this is a 5% raise overall, but only 3% above what we already get). The Administration wants this contract to last 4 years with 3% raises each year. While presenting those numbers, the Georgetown's lead negotiator said, “we are getting very close to the limits of what we can do with our budget,” and that “this only works for us on a 4 year budget.” We clarified that bargaining is not a process of offering ultimatums, and to provide us with an ultimatum like that when GAGE is committed to fair negotiations is unacceptable. We cannot be held to different standards, we all have to be flexible in this process. The University’s lead negotiator informed us that if they offer us a 3-year contract instead of a 4-year contract, they will not go above the rates they proposed today.
A bargaining team member broke down the projected expenses for a grad student on a 9-month stipend using the offer we received today. $35,505 for 9-months would only allow $1,183 per month for rent (before taxes), but at least 80% of GAGE members are paying $1,500 or more per month in rent (according to our survey conducted in fall 2022). We asked the administration how we should handle that discrepancy without becoming rent burdened (i.e. spending more than ⅓ of our income on rent) and Georgetown's lead negotiator said that, “a 9-month stipend … is not intended to be what you live on for an entire year,” and when we asked him to clarify he explained that Georgetown does not intend for their stipend to be a living wage.
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Summary for Monday, May 8
Today we offered counterproposals on wages and EAF. We kept the numbers that the University previously proposed for hourly workers and the EAF budget the same, but shortened the length of the contract from 4 years to 3 years; hourly workers would make $22/hour next year with 3% yearly raises, and the University would double the budget of the EAF over the next 3 years. For 9-month and 12-month stipends, we proposed 18% raises for next year ($40,000 for 9-month and $43,600 for 12-month starting in July 2023) and 3% raises for the next 2 years.
Last week, Georgetown’s lawyer tried to use the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to compare inflation and the cost of living in different U.S. states. In today's session, we used the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) website to show the Administration that they were using the tool in a way that BLS explicitly says you are not supposed to.
A GAGE member gave a presentation at today's session in which they used Forbes’ Cost of Living Calculator to calculate how much grad students would have to make to maintain their standard of living if they moved from a peer institution (like Cornell, Brown, UChicago, etc.) to Washington, DC. The results are what you would expect: Georgetown would have to increase grad students’ stipends by at least twenty percent from the latest offer to catch any of their peers. The administration responded to this data by continuing to stress that their wage proposals are in excess of what they think graduate students need to live, and that GAGE’s wage proposals are too high.
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Summary for Tuesday, May 2
We finally received a stipend pay counter from the Administration today. Unsurprisingly, they barely moved. They offered us only a 0.5% raise ($35,366/year for 9-month stipends), which has been their typical strategy in bargaining sessions so far this semester. Once again, the Administration demonstrated that they are inflexible and unwilling to come up with creative solutions in this negotiation process. Admin's lead negotiator went back and forth with GAGE members on what a fair contract would look like. We continued to stress that we need a living wage, but the Administration does not want to engage with that line of reasoning. We could not provide a stipend counterproposal today without understanding the University’s final offers on pay and benefits. Hopefully we will get some clarity in upcoming meetings.
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Summary from MOnday, May 1
Once again we received no stipend pay counter from the administration at today’s bargaining session. That makes this the third session in a row where we were told we would receive no offer from the administration; we got nothing on April 24th, and the meeting on April 25th was canceled because we were told ahead of time that we would receive no offer. The Administration proposed an adjustment to the EAF budget today and offered us a counter for the hourly pay rate ($22/hour starting July 1 2023, with a 3% increase yearly for the next 3 years) but we explained that we won’t respond to those proposals, or any other pay/benefits proposals, until we can see the full package that they are willing to offer us, which is the same logic they used on us to severely delay the bargaining process.
Charles DeSantis (Associate Vice President of Benefits, Payroll and Wellness Chief Benefits Officer) gave us an update on our healthcare proposal. He explained that the cost of insuring a person will increase by $340 per person for everyone on the SHI plans next year. That includes undergraduate as well as graduate students, and does not consider any of the improvements we proposed previously. We still have nothing on dental care or vision insurance, and were given no timeline on when to expect a real response to any health-related proposals.
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Summary from Monday, April 24
Today we had a short bargaining session. We TA’d our proposal for increasing parental leave (Article XXIV: Leaves of Absence from Assistantship, Section 3), settling on 8 weeks, which is an improvement from the 6 weeks currently budgeted in our contract.
Next, we presented a new Emergency Assistance Fund budget which would double the fund’s size over the next 3 years. After a caucus, the Administration explained that they are open to increasing the fund incrementally over the next few years, but that they wanted to know more about our “priorities” before they provide us with more counter-proposals on anything related to pay or benefits. We have been describing our priorities in bargaining sessions since October of 2022, but we reiterated our need for fair wages and comprehensive benefits.
The meeting ended early because the Administration was not prepared to present us with a wage counterproposal. They implied that GAGE has not been “reasonable” over the past few sessions in our wage offers. When we asked them to explain more about why they are not moving forward at this point, their lead negotiator made a lot of vague statements about how the Administration will be focusing on understanding the “relative tradeoffs” of their offers, and trying to determine what a “fair outcome” might look like in this bargaining process.
In response to that, we explained that, “the burden is not on us to make a more competitive offer, it is on you all.” The University's claims were especially frustrating since we have compromised on our wage proposals six times more than Administration has over the past few weeks.
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Summary from Monday, April 17
Today’s bargaining session was hosted over Zoom and was attended by 55 GAGE members and 5 members of the University’s administrative team. This session included a long-awaited Tentative Agreement on Article XIV (Workplace Resources) and wage proposals from both parties.
The University offered us a 4% raise for the 2024 academic year, and a 3% raise for the following 3 years. This would increase a 9-month stipend from $33,813 to $35,167. We had a long discussion with admin's lead negotiator, Jonathan, about this shallow raise and the reasoning behind the Administration’s offer. He explained that the University makes its decision on how to pay us by looking at the rate of inflation averaged over the last 5 years (which is about 3%), and comparing our wage rate to that of other Universities nearby. Georgetown has not directly said that they don’t think we deserve a living wage, but their actions speak far louder than their words. We countered with $22.25/hour for hourly workers, $40,850/year for 9-month stipends, and $44,526.50/year for 12-month stipends, with 3% raises in 2025 and 2026. Additionally, we reverted back to our 3-year contract, as opposed to the University's proposed 4-year contract.
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Summary from Monday, April 10
We started today’s bargaining session by tentatively agreeing on edits to Article XXI (Support of Visa and Immigration Process). This edited article will alleviate some of the issues that international graduate workers have with visa document processing by the Office of Global Services (OGS), which has become increasingly difficult and unreliable since the COVID-19 pandemic began. We also shared a counterproposal to Article XIV (Access to Workplace resources).
The bulk of today’s meeting was taken up with a benefits presentation by Charles DeSantis (Associate Vice President of Benefits, Payroll and Wellness Chief Benefits Officer) and Laura Hardman Crosby (Director of Student Health Insurance). The Administration indicated that they would be rejecting our proposal to make the current staff health insurance plans available to graduate students. They also explained that they will also not be officially countering our healthcare proposals for at least a few weeks. The fact that the University is pushing a substantive discussion of benefits until the last moment in this negotiation process is frustrating and alarming. We are still planning on fighting to get the best healthcare options possible; Graduate students at Georgetown deserve comprehensive and affordable healthcare.
The Administration gave us another wage counterproposal. They increased hourly and PhD stipends by 3% from the current rates, which is only a half of a percentage point on what they offered us last week. The University’s lawyer expressed concern that our wage proposal numbers are still very far away from the University’s, but our counters have moved a lot more than theirs have in the past few sessions. Please see below:
The University is showing an unwillingness to cooperate to the same level that we are in this negotiation process. If Georgetown wants to pay its graduate workers at a competitive rate that aligns with their core values, they need to do better.
If you are frustrated to see that the University doesn’t believe we deserve a living wage or affordable healthcare, keep coming to our events! We will be in Red Square on Wednesday from 12-2 during the weekly farmer’s market, please come by on your lunch break in your GAGE tee shirt to show support! We will also be having a cook out on Friday 5-6:30pm at the Car Barn Patio with catering from Falafel Inc.. More information on those events (and more) are coming soon!
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Summary from Monday, April 3
After last week’s disappointing wage counter-proposal from the University, we regrouped and responded with a new wage proposal; increasing 9-month stipends from $33,813 to $42,000, increasing 12-month stipends from $36,934 to $45,780, and increasing hourly pay from $20.80/hour to $22.50/hour. When the Administration presented their wage proposal last week, they spoke a lot about “predictability” being their main motivation. Dominick Cooper (GAGE’s president) explained today that our current wages and the proposals we received from the University last week would make our lives very unpredictable; we don’t want to be locked into low wages and meager raises for the next 5 years while our purchasing power is diminished by inflation. Our counter-proposal today is a step towards a more predictable and higher quality standard of living for graduate workers at Georgetown.
We also proposed a new budget for the Emergency Assistance Fund (EAF). The EAF has run out about 4 months early every year since its creation (and this year it ran out in less than 6 months!), so we clearly need an increase in the size of the fund; with the adjustment we just proposed, the fund would increase yearly for 3 years to help us fulfill the influx of EAF requests we have received in the wake of COVID-19 and inflation. Alicia Ward from the Office of Global Services (OGS) came to the Bargaining session today to answer some questions and concerns we have about the expedient processing of forms for international students that rely on OGS via Article XX. The discussion on Article XIV (Access to Workplace Resources) continued today; the Administration seems hesitant to limit the use of privacy-invading software on computers used by GSA’s, but that conversation is still ongoing.
During the session today we came to a tentative agreement about undocumented worker support after many sessions and a lot of work. When we first proposed edits to Article XXI, the University was very hesitant to include any language that would protect undocumented workers in our contract, so the substance of this Article is a huge win for GAGE and our undocumented graduate workers.
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Summary from Monday, March 27
The meeting started off with the Administration presenting counter proposals to Articles XX (Support for Undocumented Workers) and XXI (Visa and Immigration Support). We are still negotiating on the turnaround timing of specific forms that are processed by OGS, and a member of OGS may join a future bargaining session to help us come to a consensus on Article XX. After a discussion about Article XXI, we are very close to coming to an agreement.
Next, we presented edits to Article XIV (Access to workplace resources). In that proposal, we are asking the University to make a commitment to limit the use of spyware and privacy invading software on University-owned devices that are used by GSAs.
Jonathan, admin’s lead negotiator, mentioned that we will likely get a response on our benefits proposals (parental leave, healthcare, dental and vision insurance, etc.) in a session on April 10th; if you are curious to hear about how the negotiations are going over healthcare, please plan to come to that session!
Finally, Jonathan began presenting the University’s counterproposals to compensation (Articles XXXV - XXXVII). He informed us that the University is setting up a 5 year financial plan and they would like for this contract to be valid for 5 years, instead of our current 3 year contract, as a result. The University rejected our request for higher pay for hourly workers ($25/hour) and presented us with $20.80/hour for hourly workers for fiscal year 2023-2024, to increase by 2.5% each year under a five-year contract. This is less than a 2.5% raise on the current rate. This means that the University is offering us less than a half of a percent point (less than %0.5) raise on what they currently offer us under our existing contract. That commitment was the same for 9-month stipends and 12-month stipends, so the 9-month stipend would be increased from $33,813 to $34,659 and the 12-month stipend would be increased from $36,934 to $37,857.
These figures pale in comparison to our proposal of a living wage for the DC metropolitan area of $45,802 for 9-month stipends and $49,466 for 12-month stipends. The University rejected our request that if inflation surpasses the annual raise of 2%, then the pay increase will be adjusted accordingly to match inflation. The University also slashed the Emergency Assistance Fund from $150 per student to $75 per student, which is only $25 more than what they agreed to 3 years ago.
The responses we received today to our compensation proposals were appalling; Jonathan defended the dismal wages they presented us with by explaining that, “things are challenging from a budget standpoint,” for the University, and that they have to make decisions on how to, “balance a lot of things to get a budget that will work and is sustainable.” We acknowledge that, although this is incredibly frustrating, the disparity from our initial economic proposals and the Administration’s counter-proposals brought forward today is part of a normal exchange of discourse at the bargaining table.
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Summary from Monday, March 13
We covered a variety of proposals and issues in today’s in-person session, starting with edits to Article XVII (Payday). Many students, especially first year students, struggle financially in the first few weeks of the semester because of the delay in receiving their first paycheck. Previously, we suggested adding language to Article XVII that would help Graduate Student Assistants (GSAs) get paid slightly earlier, but the administration struggled to accept these changes under certain bureaucratic constraints, so we are going to continue working together with them in future sessions to solve this problem.
The University agreed with many of the edits to Article XX (Support of Visa and Immigration Process for Graduate Student Assistants) that we brought forward at a previous session, and we will likely reach a Tentative Agreement on this Article very soon! These edits will ensure that the Office of Global Studies (OGS) returns immigration documents to GSAs in a timely manner so that they may begin their assistantships more smoothly.
After admin finished presenting their proposals, we presented changes to Article XXVI (Dental Insurance) which will expand the current options for PhD and Masters students seeking dental insurance, and hopefully improve the poor coverage we currently have access to.
Finally, we presented edits to Article XXI (Undocumented Students) and Article XX to try and strengthen protections for undocumented GSAs. We have gone back and forth several times with the University on these issues during the bargaining process, as the administration has been unwilling to commit to protecting the rights and privacy of undocumented workers, but today’s negotiations went well. We will likely TA on the articles relating to this issue in the near future.
Finally, we reached a Tentative Agreement for edits to Article XII (University Holidays and Closures). Article XII now contains language which guarantees that GSAs will not be obligated to perform service responsibilities on days outside of their appointments.
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Summary from Monday, February 27
Our first in-person bargaining session of the year was a resounding success– With 45 GAGE members in attendance plus 8 members of the bargaining team, we showed the administration the singularity of our mission and the power we have as a collective. We hope to keep this attendance high in future sessions, so please keep showing up and showing out!
The meeting started off with testimony from 10 GAGE members who candidly shared their experiences and struggles as graduate student workers at Georgetown. All the testimonies pointed toward the critical personal and financial situation that the administration has put us in by denying us a living wage and essential support systems.
We followed those testimonies with proposals for an increase in the Emergency Assistance Fund (EAF), improved healthcare, and higher wages. The changes we presented to Article XXXVII (Emergency Assistance Fund) will triple the current size of the EAF, which is a necessary change given that the fund ran out in January 2023 when it was supposed to last until July 2023. The changes we presented to Articles XXV (Healthcare), XXVII (Vision Insurance), and XXVIII (Mental Healthcare) will improve current options offered by the University by expanding them. Our intention with this proposal is that by providing all graduate workers (including masters students!) with more and better insurance options, we can make healthcare more affordable and cover a broader range of services/situations. Finally, we presented changes to Article XXXV (Pay Rate for Hourly Positions) and XXXVI (Ph.D. Stipends). We proposed an increase in the Ph.D. stipend for 9-month contracts to $45,802.00 and 12-month contracts to $49,466.00. We also proposed an increase in the hourly wage to $25.00 per hour. These numbers are based on The MIT Living Wage Calculator for the D.C. area; these wages are extremely reasonable and will allow graduate workers to finally make a living wage amidst all the inflation and financial strain we have dealt with over the past few years. These proposals also contained clauses that will adjust yearly raises based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) when inflation becomes extreme (as it has in the past few years).
We want to thank those who attended from the bottom of our hearts, especially the folks who gave testimony. For those who couldn’t make it today, we hope you can make it to a future session! The next Bargaining session on March 13 will (very likely) be in-person (1:30-3:00pm, location TBA), and high attendance at that session is going to be paramount; the administration will be giving counter-proposals to the articles we presented today, so if you want to see how our negotiation over wages, healthcare, and other proposals turn out, March 13th will be an excellent opportunity.
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Summary from Monday, February 6
The meeting started off with testimonies about financial stress, parental leave, and several other topics from four GAGE members. These testimonies were moving, thoughtful, and will hopefully help the administration understand the extent of hardship that many GAGE members face.
The administration presented counter-proposals to several Articles we discussed in previous sessions, including Article V (Union Security and Dues/Agency Fee Deduction) and the suite of articles to increase support/protection for undocumented students that we originally presented at our most recent bargaining sesison on January 23.
Article XXI: The administration is reluctant to make any promises about keeping ICE off campus, keeping a student informed about immigration investigations, or protecting the privacy rights of undocumented students.
Article VII: The administration also is unwilling to add citizenship/immigration status as a protected category against non-discrimination.
Article XX: The administration did not agree that they should arrange for a Graduate Student Assistant to continue to perform their duties remotely outside the United States if that student is detained or deported (when reasonable).
We presented counter-proposals and edits to several sections, including Article XVII, XXIV, IV, XX, and XXII.
We presented an edit to Article XVII (Payday) to try and mitigate some issues with how unpredictable payment has been for many students over the past few years. In past sessions, we have gone back and forth with the University on this issue because they were unable to promise any sort of streamlining of the payroll system.
We presented edits to Parental Leave (Article XXIV, Section 3) that would increase parental leave from six to ten weeks.
We presented edits to Notification of Bargaining Unit (Article IV) which asked for two lists per year of barinig unit workers who leave employment from Georgetown, instead of one.
We presented counters to Support of Visa and Immigration Process for Graduate Student Assistants (Article XX). The University previously rejected our proposed 2 weeks of turn-around on processing of F-1/F-2 and J-1/J-2 visa applications by OGS, so we proposed a new maximum of 4 weeks for processing.
We presented edits to University Holidays and Closures (Article XXII) in response to some issues that our members have dealt with. Some departments in the past have required students to work during breaks and holidays, so we wanted to codify language which does not compel GSAs to work during University breaks.
Two more impactful testimonies were shared before we finished the session. In the last few minutes of the session, we tentatively agreed upon edits to Article V (Union Security). Overall, we are seeing a lot of push-back from the administration on some of the proposals we are putting forth because they are unwilling to commit to making reasonable efforts to respond to our concerns, or they are worried about legal issues that are sometimes valid, but often vague. Going forward, we are hoping for more commitment and clarity from the University, and we are looking forward to the next session.
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Summary from Monday, January 23
This session was split into admin counters and our counters once again. We began with admin counters.
Jonathan countered on Article III (Union Rights) and there was some back and forth around access to academic list serves for distributing GAGE information. Ultimately, we let this point go and tentatively agreed upon Article III, which you can find here.
Jonathan then countered on Article IV (Notification of Bargaining Unit). Admin proposed that they send us two lists a semester of bargaining unit members, as well as a list of graduated employees once a year.
In response to Article XX (Immigration Visa Support), Jonathan held off on responding to the economic piece of the proposal, and informed us that OGS cannot commit to processing visas within the two weeks that we requested. We plan on countering with slightly vaguer language next session. And finally, in response to Article XXIII (Personal Days), Jonathan let us know that the 5 day limit was orginially proposed in accordance with a pre-CBA policy, so they would not consider extending the limit to 10 consecutive days. We have asked to see this policy.
We then presented our new Union Security proposal (Article V). We initially took out the proposal regarding a fine for not authorizing either agency fees or union dues, but we are re-introducing it with 2 minor changes. We are proposing a $400 fine for those in stipend roles. We are proposing decreasing the fine to $100 for hourly workers. There were a couple of other small changes we proposed, which admin’s team said they would look over.
The final piece of language we presented was in regards to Undocumented Workers and Support for Visa and Immigration Process. You can see our proposal here. Summarized, we essentially asked that admin inform us if/when ICE is on campus, asked for folks going through immigration hearings to have time off to attend said hearings, and added “citizen or immigration status” to the list of things that are protected under our non-discrimination clause.
After a 20 minute caucus, we reconvened. We asked a few questions about specific proposals that haven’t been on the table for a few sessions, namely Article XIV (Workplace Resources), Article XVII (Payday), and Article XXII (Holidays). We informed admin that we intend for our next session on February 6th to consist of testimony.
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Summary from Friday, December 17
This session was split into admin presenting all their counter proposals, a 20 minute caucus, and then our presentation of our counter proposals and proposals.
Jonathan presented admin’s counters to the proposals we made last session:
We tentatively agreed upon the off-campus housing website proposal - this will be a new article in the contract that will ensure that the off-campus website will contain more relevant housing details than it did previously and that the Labor Management Committee can discuss changing or adding to these details going foward
Admin countered Union Security (Article V) and stood firmly behind the $350 fining system we currently have instead of accepting our proposal which would make union dues/agency fees a necessary term of employment
Admin countered Access to Workplace Resources (Article XIV) and adjusted some of our language in terms of how long laptops and other peripherals could be loaned
Admin proposed to defer Gym (Article XXX) until we discuss all economics later in the Spring semester
Admin countered edits to University Holidays (Article XXII) saying that they do not think that the additional edit that would ensure Univeristy Holidays applied to all departments is necessary
They are looking into an instance where bargaining unit members were denied holidays and will get back to us
Admin countered Article XXI (Undocumented Students) and refused to commit to keeping ICE off of Georgetown campus
Finally, in response to the Payday Article (XVII) proposal, admin confirmed that members of the bargaining unit are paid biweekly - we asked for that language to be included in the article to ensure this remains the case
After a twenty minute caucus, we came back together. GAGE presented two counterproposals: the first was in response to Notification of Bargaining Unit (Article IV) in which we proposed that admin send us an updated list of bargaining unit members once a month; the second was in response to Union Rights (Article III) in which we adjusted langauge to include GAGE staff in Section 5 (access to campus space).
Finally, we shared two final proposals for the year, edits to Article XXIII (Personal Days) and edits to Article XX (Support for Immigration). We are proposing increasing the number of personal days before the time off is considered a leave of absence, and for Georgetown to better support the processing and financing of immigration documents for international workers.
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Summary from Friday, December 2
We started off by providing a counter to the Online Housing Tool proposal notes that Admin gave us last session (we initially presented that tool at the first bargaining session and Admin gave their counter-proposal at the last session). This proposal would codify a commitment by the university to maintain a robust online housing tool. No TA's were made.
Jonathan presented Admin’s counters to the proposals we made last session:
We tentatively agreed upon combining Scope of Work (Article XIII) and Article XIX (Limits on Hours Worked)
Admin countered Union Rights (Article III) and adjusted language around bargaining issues of health and safety
Admin Countered Notification of Bargaining Unit Information (Article IV) and said that providing bargaining unit lists would be an administrative hardship and proposed an alternative.
Admin proposed to keep Payday (Article XVII) the same as it was before with no edits.
Overall, they agreed with many of our edits and proposals and we will likely TA some of those proposals at the next bargaining session.
We caucused for 10 minutes to discuss counter-proposals.
Dominick presented changes to Union Security (Article V). Wayan presented edits to Access to Workplace Resources (Article XIV). Hadiyah presented edits to Holidays and Closures (Article XXII) and Yates Gym Membership (Article XXX). Nick presented edits to Undocumented Students (Article XXI).
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Summary from Friday, November 18
The session started off with introductions by the University team and then by our bargaining team.
After intros, the University handed back their counter proposal to our proposal regarding the online housing portal. They proposed to include links to pages with relevant housing resources and lists of landlords that are ‘in good standing’, which is along the lines of what we proposed. Admin's team suggested we treat the proposal differently than a contract amendment, since it doesn’t require substantial revisions to contract language.
We then passed edits of 5 different proposals over to Admin. You can click on each proposal to see our proposed changes.
Management Rights (Article 2), and Union Rights (Article 3) worked in tandem to make sure that health and safety would be a bargainable topic in future. Additionally, we added language to Article 3 that would allow GAGE employees to reserve space on campus for meetings.
We then shared our edits to Article 4, which would essentiall improve the accuracy and efficiency of sharing Bargaining Unit lists. We also shared a proposal which combined two articles (XIII and XIX), in order to simplify the contract as it stands. We made no edits to the content of these articles, aside from combining them.
Finally, we shared a revised Payday article which would ensure graduate workers would receive pay no later than the 1st and 15th of each month.
Admin's team and our team caucaused after we shared all of our proposals, and had no questions when we came back together. We closed out the session and agreed that we would try to schedule more meeting times in the Spring semester sooner rather than later.
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Summary from Friday, October 14
The session started off with introductions by the University team and then by our bargaining team. Jonathan (Georgetown's lead negotioator and legal counsel) and Hadiyah (GAGE's lead negotioator) went over and agreed upon our general purposes for being here:
Improving and making adjustments to the current contract.
We had some difficult disagreements last time and we won’t always see eye to eye, but we can get past that to come to a solution/agreement on an issue
This will be a good faith discussion where both sides will be creative to resolve things. Nobody wants disputes.
Common goal: improve the Georgetown Community
Sometimes the stress gets the better of us, but it’s important to keep in mind that we all have the best of intentions, and we want to have a contract that is SUSTAINABLE.
We also agreed on some ground rules:
No recording of these sessions or screenshots
Both sides are allowed to take notes
All presentations will be shared with both sides
Cameras on
Be respectful and mindful in chat and other areas
Assume best intentions regardless of who is speaking even if we’re disagreeing
Only members of the bargaining team should speak - if you are not on the team, you should be prepared to be muted for the entirety of the session
Hadiyah read the opening statement.
We agreed on some mechanics/specifics for further meetings:
Once we reach tentative agreement on a proposal (TA), we will send some notification to each other (email, etc.) and get confirmation before moving forward. Every proposal will have a tentative agreement before we move to ratify. Once we TA something, we put that proposal to the side until we ratify.
We will decide if individual sessions will be virtual or in person before that meeting
We will cover non-economic proposals (ones without a dollar cost, more theoretical) first and economical proposals later
We will come up with some sort of timeline so that we don’t spend too long on the non-economic proposals and save enough time for the economical ones
We talked about the differences between 2 types of proposals;
Conceptual proposal: similar to the online housing tool proposal we brought up in this meeting, not necessarily directly related to the contract that we currently operate under, but instead is an addition
Contract-specific proposals: addendums or edits of things currently in the contract. These will have specific Article numbers, etc.
Future meetings will be 2 hours long every other week and we expect to pass 3 proposals per meeting
GAGE will caucus and communicate in a separate Google Meet session when appropriate.
Jon mentioned that they are excited to hear our proposals and that they already have some of their own proposals prepared.
Proposals shared
Hadiyah shared the “Online housing tool proposal” via screen share and has sent the Georgetown folks a link as well. She explained that we are proposing this because the survey showed us that housing is one of the major struggles our bargaining unit are facing. This would be an effective way to support our members.
Georgetown’s response:
They will take our proposal and caucus on their own and come up with a solution for our next meeting.
Final thoughts after meeting:
Everyone is willing and ready to work together on this
Make sure you understand the ground rules before joining a bargaining session
We will come up with a timeline soon to decide when we want to finish up non-economic proposals before moving on to economical proposals.
Georgetown has prepared for this; they have their own proposals and ideas to bring forward.
Georgetown really likes the current contract, and they want our new one to last.