Your bargaining team is headed into another session of bargaining today, and as they do, we wanted to update you on what's been going on this week.
We had bargaining sessions scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. At Tuesday's session, the Administration tried to cancel both Wednesday and Thursday meetings. At a time when we are all busy doing the final exam prep and grading of final papers for our students, our bargaining committee, who manage to prioritize both their undergraduates and our contract needs this week, were unfortunately not prioritized by the Administration.
Tuesday's bargaining session was a little frustrating. We presented the administration with a compelling economic proposal that was designed to help the nearly 50% of TAs who work here for the minimum salary first by prioritizing raising the base wage for them, doing the most good with the money MSU allocates for us. We were met with what seemed to us to be a fundamental insensitivity to the struggles that students go through when they make so little. We were asked "is it really fair to compare yourselves to the poverty line when you're only working 20 hours?" Despite the fact that many of us go above and beyond our hours to work with our students, providing one-on-one feedback to them and writing letters of recommendation, do an additional 30+ hours of research to work toward our degrees, and are active citizens in our departments, they ask why we don't take on part time jobs to supplement our income.
Consider this example from one of our international members: they were promised a quarter-time appointment in music, and are allowed to work outside of MSU only in the field of music because of regulations associated with their Visa. One member of the administration suggested they tutor her kids in music. First, getting paid under the table is illegal everywhere, and especially problematic when one could lose their visa, and second, with what time could this member self-advertise, pay for a car to travel to her house or pay for office space in which to provide those lessons? This doesn't even consider departments that contractually obligate people to not take positions outside of the department in order to receive an appointment.
We thought we were getting somewhere with mitigating their concern for overlap issues, a problem with their payment system that they have asked us to resolve in the contract, but were informed that they need more time to answer how they will implement the appointment period suggestions we made in our platform to mitigate those concerns relative to pay periods and class schedules. We pointed out that they had had our proposal for some time and that they were employees paid to do this work. We also believe that, at an R1 research institution, they have enough paid people on staff to do the research in a timely manner. They took up much of our bargaining session doing this research. Again, they are paid to do this, and we are TAs and RAs volunteering our time. Yet we are generally meeting the deadlines we agree upon and have much more research evidence that we bring more than a mile with us to Nisbet Hall, while they do their research in offices above our bargaining room. We are truly impressive students, and MSU should be proud of our diligence.
We are having trouble understanding why our perspectives, and our proposals, are provoking such curious responses form the administration. Given that our teaching contributes approximately $226 million dollars to the university's revenue (2014-2015) and around 30% of the teaching (which wer're pretty sure is the reason MSU exists) the fact that we are asking for around 2.2% of their budget to sustain us doesn't seem outrageous at all. Asking for salary above poverty line for 2 people, and for healthcare to keep us prepared to teach the ~40,000 students at MSU each year seems pretty reasonable to us.
Not happy? Come out to our MARCH FOR THIS, this Friday at the Rock, 12:30.
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