Bargaining # IT’S OVER
My lovelies, my colleagues, my enemies, friends, and frenemies…
Bargaining Is Closed.
It has been a vicious, hard-fought year, with contributions from ALL of you—from impact statements to rallies to showing up on zoom and making sure we never let up the pressure. And thanks to ALL OF THAT, we have some absolutely HUGE wins.
In addition to aaaallll these positives from last Tuesday…
$1,000 bonus this Fall (2021) semester (before winter break)
$500 bonus Spring (2022) semester (before summer term)
The minimum stipend increases to $16,000 before Spring (2022)
The minimum stipend increases AGAIN to $16,250 before Fall (2022)
A 1% PERMANENT raise next Fall (2022) for EVERYBODY (so whatever your current stipend is, take 1% of it and add it to your current stipend. That’s what you’ll be making next Fall).
ONE week extra pay, EACH semester, before the start of courses (if your department isn’t already paying you for prep time)
FSU will cover the $166 increase in health insurance premiums this year, and then…
…lock in that SAME percentage of coverage for NEXT year (2022-2023)
NO limitations on outside employment
Additional language giving victims of domestic abuse paid time off for medical treatment/legal appointments/&c.
Language codifying work-from-home and other accommodations for people who are caregivers or disabled themselves.
Plus everything else we’ve already sent you emails about, obviously
…we also won, on Friday:
An additional 1% non-recurring bonus added to your salary for academic year 2022-2023 (that’s on TOP of the 1% raise)
The 1% permanent raise is applied AFTER the increase to the minimum stipend (so if you’re at the minimum stipend of $16,250, your actual salary will be $16,412.50, PLUS the 1% 1-year bonus [an additional $164.13, at the minimum stipend]).
The percentage of our health insurance premiums that FSU is paying right now (79.9% for .5FTE GAs; 58% for .25FTE GAs), is now LOCKED IN to the contract, which means that a) no matter how high health insurance premiums go, FSU has to pay at least that much, b) FSU now has a self-interested reason to work to keep health insurance premiums down, and c) future bargaining teams can now work to increase this percentage, rather than fighting the uphill battle to cover the entire cost of the increase every year (FSU will already automatically be covering at least 79.9%).
Now What?
Now, we’ve got two things left to do:
The CBA Town Hall, Thursday, 10/28, from 11AM-1PM and RATIFICATION (voting!), Monday-Wednesday, 11/1-11/3, from 11AM-2PM
For the Town Hall: This is an event on zoom, where we will answer ALL your questions about our wins (and our not-so-wins!) with the contract this year. If you’d like to go through the contract, ask questions, or just want everything explained to you so you don’t have to read 70 pages of legalize, tune in for that.
If you can’t make the Town Hall on Thursday, we will also post a PDF of the slideshow on our website later this week, and will make sure to link to it on our social media as soon as it is ready. Then you can peruse it at your leisure! The complete PDF of the ENTIRE new CBA will ALSO be available on our website at the same time, if you want to go through the provisions more carefully yourself.
For Ratification: This is an event IN PERSON (gasp!), where you can VOTE on BOTH the Fall 2021 MOU, AND the 2021-2023 CBA. We will be under the HCB concourse with a table and TWO voting boxes and ballots: one for the MOU, one for the CBA. ALL GAs get to vote on EACH—even GAs who are NOT members of the union. These contracts affect ALL of us, so we want ALL of you to have the opportunity to vote on them.
Thank you guys so much for all of your work this year. Thank you for your stories, your emails, your inputs, your attendance. You all truly make that old union motto come to life: united we bargain, divided we beg! In Solidarity, Vincenza Antonetta Berardo Chief Negotiator & Bargaining Chair