Dear GSRA colleagues,
As the summer ends, the GSRA steering committee of GEO has been preparing for an election to form a GSRA union!
While we await the Michigan Employment Relations Commission’s order of an election, we need GSRAs to help create a current snapshot of GSRA needs and priorities by filling out a GEO GSRA bargaining survey.
The survey was sent out via email to GSRAs this week. If you did not receive one, please email gsra at geo3550.org to have it sent to you.
(For more information about this survey and its important role in building our union, click below to read the rest of this letter.)
The survey will be open until September 15; we expect to present the results of the survey at GSRA committee meetings, and at GEO department and membership meetings not long after the survey closes.
The questions in the survey are shaped by the input provided by more than a thousand GSRAs in one-on-one conversations in recent months, as well as by the results of the 2010 Rackham Student Government/GEO survey of GSRAs, which pointed to real issues in many key areas of our employment.
We think you’ll see—as you complete the survey—that the GSRA steering committee of GEO is working to identify the areas in which GSRA working conditions need the most improvement, as well as the areas in which UM’s existing practices in employing GSRAs are beneficial.
GSRAs want to improve our working conditions in ways that are measured and reasonable, not by imposing some template that will limit UM’s research prowess.
It’s important to us that we continue timely progress to our degrees, that faculty members remain free to hire the GSRAs of their choice, and that we win a contract in which the economic benefit to each of us is higher than the dues we set. (Did you know that no one pays union dues until a first contract is ratified? We expect that that will be in the Fall of 2012.)
GEO is run by and for graduate employees, and decisions for GSRAs will be made by and for GSRAs.
We invite all GSRAs to become more involved—start by requesting the survey and answering it as completely as possible!
Where indicated near the end of the survey, please take the opportunity to say how you’d like to participate in building a strong GSRA union, and make sure to provide contact information if you’d like to become more involved in the campaign. (Any use of the data we gather with this survey will be fully anonymized.)
If you have questions or comments about the survey—or want to become more involved—you can also contact us at: gsracampaign at geo3550.org.
In closing, we want to invite you to add the GEO North Campus General Membership Meeting to your calendars; it’s on Wednesday, September 21 at 6 pm in the East Room of Pierpont Commons. And if you’re in the mood to decompress, we’d also love to see you at the Welcome Back party at GEO’s Central Campus office (330 E. Liberty Suite 3) at 7 pm on Friday, September 23!
Yours truly,
Andrea Jokisaari
Chair, GSRA Steering Committee
Materials Science and Engineering
Samantha Montgomery,
President, GEO
Psychology/Women’s Studies
Comments are closed