This May, after a tremendous amount of work by graduate students throughout campus, we finally won an amazing contract. We secured substantial pay raises across the university, drastically reduced the cost of dependent healthcare after the university had attempted to increase it, and increased the size of our tuition pool. There are Teaching Assistants who can, for the first time since coming to graduate school, afford healthcare for their spouse. I myself met an international student who had followed the work of the GEU from his home town in India, and who said without the work of graduate students in the union, he would not be able to be here. Thank you to all who fought for our contract!
It’s of course been a few months, over which our bargaining team was not quite done. We’ve been reviewing the language in the contract so that it is ready to print- a substantial undertaking. I’d like to thank those who volunteered numerous hours to getting our contract into a publishable state, including former Vice President of Organizing Carolyn Pratt, current Vice President of Grievances and Contract Enforcement Kelly Stec, and President Elle Gulotty, as well as our lead organizer Meredith Place!
Thanks to their hard work this summer, we can now present our contract in online form. You will soon see the contract on our website with some handy hyperlinks to help explain some details. For now, however, please find the contract on Michigan State University’s Human Resources Page: http://www.hr.msu.edu/documents/contracts/GEU2015-2019.pdf
In Solidarity