Dear Colleagues,
Bargaining resumes today at 9 am and is expected to last until 5 pm. Our expectations for today are the same as last week:
- Admin should be ready to respond to our counter proposals onArticle 15. They have had an extra week to review it.
- We anticipate hearing their reasoning for gutting so much of Article 15 in their initial counter to us–“It’s the status quo” isn’t a good reason. A union contract protects what we like about the status quo and it changes what we don’t.
- We hope to get a response and counter-proposal to our wage, healthcare, and time off proposals. We have waited more than two months for this response. Employers do not take this long to respond to those unless they have the explicit intention of delaying the bargaining process. We are ready and waiting to collaborate with Admin on these issues.
- We expect some indication that the Admin team is working on their own proposals outside of bargaining hours. They admitted to us that they only do bargaining work during the bargaining session. That is the kind of job performance that we all know would not be tolerated in our own work, and it is a deliberate tactic employers use to delay the bargaining process. This process is a lot of work and it is typical for both teams to spend time on their own writing and responding to proposals.
We want to make it very clear to the Augsburg community about what the Administration’s bargaining team is doing:
- Delaying is union-busting
- Not paying bargaining team members is union-busting
- Negotiating for the weakest possible contract is union-busting
- The Augsburg leadership approves of these tactics–we have not seen or experienced any evidence to the contrary
These are deliberate tactics employers use to make the bargaining process as difficult as possible to their union employees. Not only is it incredibly disrespectful to staff, it also follows in the footsteps of corporate union-busters.
Union-busting is not an Augsburg value. It’s sad how divisive the administration is being at a time when we’re trying to bring everyone together.
The administration can change their course at any time and treat us with the respect we deserve. The bargaining team represents all of us. The proposals reflect all of our needs and aspirations for a better Augsburg.
We still set our expectations high for the administration today, because Augsburg values mean holding people accountable and bringing our best to the table.
Our bargaining moves more quickly if we are all putting in a little work. We need you to help us (and yourself) by signing this petition that demands the administration bargain fairly and quickly. Sign here.