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At a press conference this week, grad workers announced that the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), U-M’s accrediting body, will move forward with our complaint about the grade falsification scandal. Grads filed the complaint with the HLC after Provost McCauley and Dean Curzan pressured department chairs and non-instructional staff into submitting fabricated grades for the students of striking workers. The evidence that workers compiled (bit.ly/FakeGrades) was enough to raise “potential concerns regarding the institution’s compliance with the Criteria for Accreditation”, according to an email from the HLC. A loss of accreditation would have severe consequences for U-M. According to GEO spokesperson Amir Fleischmann “this shows the power of our strike: the only way Admin could get grades in without us was by falsifying hundreds of grades. This risky maneuver has now jeopardized U-M’s accreditation. They won’t be able to do it again.”

Following the press conference, dozens of grads attended a raucous meeting of the Board of Regents. During public comment, numerous grads gave statements lambasting the administration for their mishandling of the strike. Regent Behm, a Democrat, chastised GEO member Bailey Sullivan for speaking about the Stephenson harassment scandal instead of the topic she signed up for – apparently uninterested in the latest instance of U-M’s decades-long harassment crisis. Notably, Stephenson’s victims would have been protected by GEO’s Transitional Funding proposal, but not HR’s current offer. Behm claimed grads aren’t negotiating, but refused to put the Rackham Plan (which HR has refused to discuss) on the table. He continued to condescend to grads during public comment, displaying a startling lack of knowledge about our working and living conditions, and even going so far as to imply that grad workers should take out loans if our stipend isn’t enough.
“What’s striking,” GEO President Jared Eno said in his comment to the Regents, “is the complete disconnect between what you all seem to believe and the reality of grad workers’ lives.”
From the Bargaining Table
On June 16th, grad workers reached Tentative Agreements (TAs) on four items, with important wins for healthcare, employee rights, and class size policies. On healthcare, grad workers won a $500 cap on out-of-pocket costs for physical therapy, and guaranteed access to both therapeutic and elective abortions under GradCare. Other TAs will limit work outside of normal business hours, and require departments to create and publicize class size policies to help ensure manageable workloads for grad workers.
According to GEO lead negotiator, Evelyn Smith, “today’s session makes clear that grad workers were not cowed by recent attempts at brinkmanship”. On May 12, HR passed a full contract proposal and announced their intention not to respond to union proposals until we had made significant movement across a majority of issues. Rather than respond to this insult of a contract–which included a measly 0.5% increase in their salary offer, for years 2 and 3 on the Ann Arbor campus–the Bargaining Team forced HR to negotiate on their terms and, in doing so, made important gains for grad workers.

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