GEO responds to Administrative Law Judge’s decision to call more witnesses in GSRA fact-finding hearing

For Immediate Release: Thursday, 16 February 2012

GEO Staff Organizer Jim McAsey; jim.mcasey@geo3550.org  Phone (office): (734) 995-0221
GEO Communications Chair Liz DeLisle Rodrigues; commchair@geo3550.org      

GEO responds to ALJ’s acceptance of additional testimony

On Wednesday, the administrative law judge currently hearing the petition of the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) for an election to form a union of Graduate Student Research Assistants (GSRAs) at the University of Michigan announced that she will accept testimony from a few additional witnesses beforeconcluding the hearing process next week.

GEO President Samantha Montgomery said “We are glad that the hearing record is nearing completion; we are confident that the process will conclude smoothly, and we look forward to getting to an election.”

Attempts by the Mackinac Center and the Michigan Attorney General to intervene in the hearing as parties have been repeatedly rejected by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, the Michigan Court of Appeals, the state Supreme Court, and by a state circuit court.

“We look forward to the timely conclusion of this hearing process, and to an election,” said Electrical Engineering and Computer Science GSRA Jeremey Moore. “We want what we have wanted all along, which is to vote.”

GEO, an affiliate of AFT Michigan, is the labor union representing approximately 1800 graduate teaching and staff assistants at UM. GEO is the second-oldest graduate employee union in the United States, having won its first contract in 1975.