Bargaining update 6/7: Fighting for equal rights for all union members

We spent much of this bargaining session discussing inequities in our current contract language around grant-funded employees, as well as several other issues. The company gave us promising (but not perfect) counters on two big issues.

Probationary period for new employees: The company presented a counter to our proposed probationary period change, which requires the company to provide at least four weeks notice to someone at risk of being terminated for performance reasons during the probationary period. In the counter, the company seems amicable to that requirement, but they stipulate that the remedies for grievances around the four week notice requirement would be either re-employing someone who was terminated prematurely for the duration of the required notice, or paying them for that same amount of time.

While the spirit of that counter is promising, it raised some concerns. Namely, if the point of the notice is to allow an employee time to correct their performance issues and maintain employment, the company cutting a check for a couple of weeks worth of pay won’t address that. We’re going to consider and discuss and make a decision prior to our next bargaining session.

Equal rights for grant-funded employees: The other big item on the table is that we received a speedy counter from the company on our proposal to completely scrap the existing language around grant-funded and backfill employees. The current memorandum of understanding undermines the seniority ranking in the event of a layoff, makes grant-funded and backfill jobs hinge on continued grant funding and removes their right to grieve performance-based terminations.

The good news first: The company’s counter would more or less restore the seniority order for all employees, strikes the line making backfill employees first out in the event of a layoff regardless of seniority and reduces the risk of grant-funded/backfill employees losing their jobs in the event that we lose a grant.

The bad news: The company’s proposal still allows grant-funded employees to be terminated for performance related reasons without having access to the grievance process, and gives the company authority to skip grant-funded employees if making layoffs in seniority order.

According to the company, both of those rules are necessary because the performance of a grant-funded employee could more directly affect the budget. On the one hand, the company says an underperforming grant employee could cost the paper money by risking grant renewal. On the other, laying off a grant employee could likewise risk funding. We have concerns about giving grant employees “super seniority” over others in the event of a layoff and oppose the company withholding the fundamental right to grieve from these employees.

Other than that, we are getting increasing pushback from the company’s representative, who wants us to move quickly and is, again, urging us to withdraw or pare down our own proposals without counter proposals from the company. We have been moving very quickly. We have tentatively agreed to several items and are close on several more. We only have a handful of economic proposals on the table, so at this point in time, we are not planning to take anything else off the table before we hear a response from the company. We’ll bargain again on June 21, at which point we will introduce our full counter to their wage proposal.

We’re making serious headway but it’s not over yet.