Author: geoumassboston

If you have not yet had your parking pass properly canceled or have not yet been reimbursed for your parking pass from March 15th onward, you may still have some steps to do. The university has done this entire process in a way that’s just uneven and painful for membership and we cannot understand why they won’t just cancel and reimburse.

The text below is copy and pasted directly from the email that went out from Human Resources. If you have not yet received a parking pass reimbursement from March 15th onward, or are still having your parking pass deducted, fill this out.

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We are writing to remind faculty and staff of the campus process for cancelling parking passes, which may be found on the HR Website.  For a limited time, we will be amending the cancellation process to provide that cancellation requests received in HR by Thursday, May 7 will be processed retroactive to March 15.  Cancellation requests received after May 7 will be processed as of the start of the pay period in which they are received, in keeping with the standard policy.  

In order to cancel your payroll parking deduction please complete the Employee Parking Pre-Tax Payroll Deduction Form indicating that you would like to cancel your pass. Then email the form to hr@umb.edu. Please note, that all forms need to be submitted to HR by Thursday, May 7, 2020 in order to be considered for the limited time retroactive cancellation.

On Thursday May 14th the university is going to hold a virtual town-hall–we encourage all of you to attend to ask your questions about the finances of the university and get information, as that seems to be the topic at hand.

The deadline for the questions for the Town Hall is this Thursday. We encourage you to email any and all questions you have to chancellor@umb.edu… and in case you needed some, we’ve prepared a handful below.

• “When does our new chancellor take charge and become the proper chancellor?”
• “Are you taking money from reserves to pay for additional support to students during COVID? Why not?”
• “How is the 13 million being paid to UMass Boston as part of CAREs being allocated?”
• “What are you going to be doing to ensure the continuation of research on campus, considering how much money comes in from research projects and the common good they work toward?”
• “Are you going to honor employment commitments made to incoming and continuing PhD and Masters degree candidates in the upcoming 2020-2021 academic year?”

We encourage you to send any of those questions, along with any of your own questions, for the townhall–again, send them to chancellor@umb.edu

The university is going to allocate time for questions after the town hall as well… so if you’ve got some more that you want to ask, you’ll have the time to do it.

https://geoumb.org/umass-boston-geo-information-for-members/

Our extended update can be found below under “GEO Coronavirus Update”.
Right now, we are working with the university to make sure all of our members are made safe in the middle of this crisis. We are working to ensure no members experience disruptions to their pay and benefits.

Find our membership survey, the UMB United Petition to Chancellor Newman, and our COVID-19 Bargaining Platform and Demands here.

Find important resources on the virus here.

PLEASE reach out if you have any questions. You can email us for any reason at geo@umb.edu or UAW1596@aol.com. If for any reason you wish to reach out to us individually, you can reach Warren at whinckle@gmail.com, Chris at Christopher.Whyna001@umb.edu, Kathy at kmelish@aol.com, Drew at drewbevis@gmail.com, or Katsy at katsyris.riveraki001@umb.edu. 

As of now, GEO has suspended all of our normal activity (including, but not limited to, elections, all member meetings, other meetings, and our Spring Party. If you have questions about your SSF grant, email the SSF manager Katsy at katsyris.riveraki001@umb.edu). Our number one goal right now is to ensure all GA’s and graduate students are safe and receiving the correct information, while making sure there is as minimal disruption to your work as students, teachers, and researchers as possible during this crisis.  Right now, the university is not closed. Measures have been put in place to increase social distancing and reduce the number of people on campus. Classes have been made virtual and many–but not all–employees have been switched to remote modalities. If you have been deemed essential, or required on-site, email the union (geo@umb.edu). If you do not know, ask your supervisor and email the union (geo@umb.edu).   It is important to note that we are in DAILY discussions with management and the administration and that new information is coming down the pipe seemingly by the hour. We will be sending as many updates as necessary… but the university’s response so far has lacked both transparency or clarity. We’re doing what we can to speak directly to membership about all of this: it’s the best course for us with management being as difficult as they are. If you haven’t, please fill this survey out so we know your concerns and immediate needs.  COVID-19: The University’s Plan and our Response On Thursday, we entered discussions with the university and presented a series of proposals that ensured the public health and safety of the community. These proposals included guaranteeing sick leave for employees who could not work, ensuring employees caring for sick or displaced family members–those quarantining, those at home due to school closures, and more–were not penalized, and plans to minimize exposure to all members of the campus community. You can read the full proposal here. We believe the University’s response to our proposal to be wholly inadequate and irresponsible in its attempt to address this emergency situation. The FAQ issued on Friday left questions unanswered, gaps open, and employees at the mercy of the whim of their supervisors. Some of these gaps include the absence of additional leave-time, the lack of provision of personal protective equipment, and a failure to adequately address the minimization of exposure to the virus. Furthermore, the designation of which employees are required on-site has been left up to that employee’s manager. In a communication from the Provost last week, managers were told to “err by designating more rather than fewer people as ‘required onsite”. The university has not issued proper guidance to researchers and research support. It has not issued proper guidance to staff. It refuses to offer concrete information about what steps it is planning to take.  We ask that everyone show solidarity to the PSU and CSU at this time.  Their unions are working hard, but much of their membership are being given inadequate guidance, leadership, and directives, and many are being deemed as essential or required-on-site. We are asking all members of the UMass community to sign the petition linked below demanding UMass Boston prepare and adequately protect its community and workers.  Immediate Next Steps If you have been deemed as required on-site–for any reason–we ask you to take the following steps. Prioritize your and your own family’s health and safety. If you or anyone in your household is high-risk (60 years or older or suffering from underlying medical conditions), immediately inform HR (Marie.Bowen@umb.edu) and GEO (geo@umb.edu and uaw1596@aol.com).  If your child’s school is closed and you must remain home to care for them, immediately inform HR  (Marie.Bowen@umb.edu) and GEO (geo@umb.edu and uaw1596@aol.com).  If you are asked to do anything that you believe endangers your health or safety, immediately inform your supervisor (by email) in writing, and GEO (geo@umb.edu and uaw1596@aol.com).  If you have been deemed as required on-site or essential, let GEO (geo@umb.edu) know. We want to know why you’re required on site and what you’re being asked to do, make sure you agree with the required on-site designation, and ensure that you are being provided with what you need to stay safe. If you are being asked to work from home and have any concerns, email GEO (geo@umb.edu and uaw1596@aol.com). And finally, if you are exposed to someone who develops COVID-19, or if you develop COVID-19 symptoms, please inform both UHS (Robert.Pomales@umb.edu) and your town’s public health department. This is essential to allow the right steps to protect the general public can be taken.  It is possible that UMass will shut down, close campus, and suspend operations in the coming days or weeks. We don’t know. But if that happens, or if anything changes, we’ll be in touch with you. Please check your email regularly. Keep in touch with us.  In Solidarity, Warren, Chris, Kathy, Drew, Katsy, and the entire GEO You can email us for any reason at geo@umb.edu or UAW1596@aol.com. If for any reason you wish to reach out to us individually, you can reach Warren at whinckle@gmail.com, Chris at Christopher.Whyna001@umb.edu, Kathy at kmelish@aol.com, Drew at drewbevis@gmail.com, or Katsy at katsyris.riveraki001@umb.edu.

GEO is holding spring elections to fill two half-time assistantship positions on the organizing committee, with a start date of Fall 2020. If you are a dues-paying member of the GEO (you are a GA who pays dues), you’re eligible to self-nominate, run, and vote in the elections. (If you’re not… become one by filling out this form and sending it back to us.)

The schedule for this spring Election is as follows:

• March 2 – March 16: Self-Nomination Period
• March 23 – April 5: Campaigning Period
• April 7 – April 9: Voting and Vote Counting

If you’re interested, be sure to self-nominate before March 16, and get ready to campaign and win some votes. If you have any questions, email us at geo@umb.edu. The elections self-nomination form, as well as additional information on elections and the GEO Organizing Committee, can be found here! (Or you can click “ELECTIONS – SPRING 2020” in our menu.)

As part of bargaining for our 2020-2023 contract, we’ve developed a bargaining platform using extensive feedback and survey of all-membership. The bargaining platform is a list of goals which the Bargaining Committee will negotiate for in good faith–and it is important that the Bargaining Committee has the confidence that it is representing all UMass Boston GAs as they go into negotiations.
SIGN AND RATIFY THE Bargaining Platform. It is important that you fill out this form with correct information so that we can use it properly, and so that your voice and vote are heard.

You can sign and ratify our Bargaining Platform electronically by clicking here.

CAPS courses–courses run by the College of Advancing and Professional Studies–have long been a source of confusion and frustration. If you’ve ever taken a course online, over the weekend, or not during the normal Fall or Spring semesters, you’ve probably been in a CAPS course–and been confused about the costs and how it interacts with your tuition waivers.

CAPS had its own policy for waivers that UMass used to try to bypass our collective bargaining agreement. Instead of applying normal tuition waivers, CAPS policy was to only give full-time employees a 50% waiver; all others received a 25% waiver.

But now, finally, CAPS will use the normal graduate assistant tuition waivers! GEO has been in meetings with management since 2015 to normalize this process. Back in March of this year we finally had enough and threatened to take the school to arbitration court. After a long fight, the University finally recognized that tuition is tuition! We’ve won!

For any CAPS course that is part of your degree, and has no on-campus alternative that the student could take, the waiver will now look like the normal tuition waiver.

Graduate assistants can now expect to see those CAPS tuition fees waived at the same percentage as any other course. CAPS courses do have a different price, so if you have questions, come see us for more information–but no matter what your FTE status, CAPS courses have become cheaper under the current system than they’ve been in the past. A lot of members in the GEO bargaining unit will benefit from this immediately and in the future. 

The agreement we worked out with the university only applies for courses that occur during the regular Fall and Spring semesters; we’ll be going back to the table and trying to negotiate an even stronger deal come bargaining. We’ll need your support! 

If you have any questions about this–or aren’t sure if you’re one of the students, get in touch with us! And if you have any other questions, email us at geo@umb.edu 

Thanks so much for your support!

Our All-Member Meeting is this Tuesday! And we’re switching it up a bit. Instead of our regular afternoon meeting, we’re going to be holding it in the morning! Campus Center room 3450 at 9am–even if you can’t come, swing by! Grab some coffee and a donut on us before you head off to class and work.

We’re going to be meeting for about an hour in the morning to discuss bargaining and the bargaining survey [see here!] We want everyone to feel like they have a solid grasp on the basics of bargaining as we head into the cycle in Spring; it’s an important part of our benefits, wages, and waivers as graduate assistants here at UMass Boston.

As part of the all-member meeting, we’ll discuss the bargaining survey. The bargaining survey went out TODAY, and we need as many people as possible to complete it. The bargaining survey will inform us as we craft our bargaining platform, which we’ll use to shape our decisions as we move into bargaining. In spring, we’ll have a ratification process occur to get the bargaining platform signed by as many GEO members as possible, so we can come to the table with the university with the full backing of our membership!

Weather alert? For updates on these events, follow us at:
Facebook: /GEOUMB
Twitter: @geo_umass

TAKE THE BARGAINING SURVEY HERE

Every three years we enter into a series of negotiations with the university that cover graduate assistant pay, waivers, and benefits–each cycle, we fight hard at the table to come to an agreement that better supports graduate assistants at UMass Boston, and each cycle, the fight is difficult. Last round, we entered bargaining with a university intent on cutting around 400k in benefits to Graduate Assistants–we walked away from the table fifteen months later… with an increase of support of approximately 3.5 million.

Bargaining is a long process, but it’s one of the most important ones in which the union engages. When we stand together and fight together, we can win at the table.

And the first step of bargaining is the Bargaining Survey. The survey is a series of questions about your experience as an employee at UMass Boston: it is a comprehensive survey meant to give us feedback about what matters most to you. When you fill out the bargaining survey, you give the Bargaining Committee–a group of volunteers and Organizing Committee Members–a solid basis on which to develop the Bargaining Platform. Check the QR code here:

If you have any additional questions about the bargaining survey, email us at geo@umb.edu !