Adopted 10/12/2010
| Title | Purpose | Specific Proposals |
|---|---|---|
| Disability Access | To improve the accommodation process, employment conditions, and academic/professional success of graduate student employees with disabilities. | Extend the ten term rule for students with disabilities. Include accommodation language in offer letters so the accommodation process can begin early. Develop an employment accommodation request form with specific milestones and timelines for getting accommodations in place. Develop a centralized fund that is specifically set aside to pay for accommodations. Centralize the accommodation process in one person or office other that the Office of Institutional Equity. Faculty and administrative staff in all hiring departments should be given training in how to effectively work with employees with disabilities. Ensure that access to employment accommodations does not require Employees to disclose their disability to academic advisors. |
| GSRA Representation | To restore to GSRAs the rights currently held by GSIs and GSSAs to negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment. | Secure the employer’s commitment to recognize GSRAs’ right to organize. |
| Parents’ Rights | To decrease the disproportionate financial burden on employees who have dependents and make working conditions more conducive to work-family balance. | Increase child care subsidy to cover full cost of child care. Improve existing on-campus child care centers by extending hours, expanding capacity, and increasing flexibility. Institute flexible, short-term drop-off of child care service on campus. Make the workplace accommodating to parents who bring children to work. Provide nursing mothers with a right to breastfeed at work. Provide reasonable break times for nursing mothers to express breast milk at work and provide lactation space that is sanitary, private, and free from intrusion by others. Make the childcare subsidy available to all graduate employee parents. Six weeks paid parental leave separate from sick leave. Extend the ten term rule for parents. Require Administration to publicize and clarify method by which eligibility for child-care subsidy is calculated. |
| Wage Increase | To ensure a reasonable salary increase to reflect our historically low wage level. | 3% wage increase first year, 3% wage increase second year, 6% raise increase third year. |
| Comprehensive Health Benefits | To expand and equalize the benefits for graduate student employees to reduce overall financial burdens for common expenses and ensure parity of coverage. | Remove mental health and physical therapy caps. Include coverage for alternative therapies. Maintain current co-pays and establish a cap of copays per individual per year. Increase benefits under vision plan to be able to get two modes of corrective eye wear in a year. Upgrade dental benefit to Dental Option II. University must cover chronic conditions. Default low fraction employees to GradCare rather than to no insurance. Access to UHS specialists over summer. Maintain current premium rates for individual and dependent care. Make GSI/GSSA with less than .25 FTE appointment eligible for same benefits as grads with greater than .25 FTE appointments. Require departments to notify employees when GradCare coverage ends. |
| Flexible Pay Schedules | To allow GSIs and GSSAs the option to be paid on a schedule they may prefer over being paid once a month for four months. | Provide Graduate Student Employees with options to be paid bi-weekly, have their paychecks distributed over longer periods of time, or be paid at start of month rather than end. These would be opt-in things. |
| SEVIS Reimbursement Transparency | To ensure IGSIs get SEVIS fees reimbursed. | The University must inform, in writing, or departments must post, detailed, step-by-step instructions for how IGSIs can get their SEVIS fee reimbursed. |
| Protection for ESL GSIs | To protect GSIs who have passed English proficiency exams from being fired from their positions for lacking English language proficiency. | An ESL GSI who has established English language proficiency by passing the University’s Graduate Student Instructor Oral English Test shall not be pulled from their teaching assignment on the grounds that they lack English language proficiency. |
| Immigration Process Protection for IGSIs | To better protect international graduate student employees during the process of immigration necessary to come to the University of Michigan. | Establish a University fund to pay for unanticipated legal fees and lawyer costs that are necessary for foreign students to become GSIs at Michigan. Require the University be held to its employment offer as extended in a letter even if the GSI is delayed in arrival due to immigration process problems. |
| Job Posting | To create standardized, university-wide policies for posting GSI and GSSA positions. | Clarify and standardize the job posting process and timeline across and within departments. Make job posting language more enforceable. Require hiring units to publicly post all job openints, even those restricted to their unit, on a centralized website similar to M-Jobs. Selection process must be finished 30 days after a posting or 60 days before the semester begins, whichever is later. Any GSI hired by a department must have active healthcare by start of term, or 7 days after accepting appointment, whichever comes later. Any GSI hired by the first day of the term must be paid on the first GSI pay day. |
| Contract Fixes | To strengthen contract language and GEO’s voice in University decisions. | Have a GEO member on any University-wide committee or HR committee that makes decisions regarding employment policies and benefit packages. Introduce a clause prohibiting academic retaliation based on activity or membership in the union. Require departments to respond to inquiries about the denial of employment. Mandate that hiring units develop policies for allotting GSI office space, office sharing, and office access; graduate employees must have input to these policies. |
| Work Necessities | To ensure GSIs are provided access to the equipment and supplies necessary to perform their jobs. | Policies regarding copying, printing, and distribution of class materials should be readily available and easily interpretable. Printing and copying limits for GSIs and GSSAs shall not be set below 2000. All IT policies (specifically regarding the maintenance and repair of equipment necessary for the fulfillment of job duties) should be readily available and easily interpretable. Standardize classroom capabilities and/or provide clear means for accessing those resources. Department- and university-level handbook with all relevant policies and information should be distributed at the beginning of the term and updated as changes arise. |
| Work Environment | To ensure that GEO is consulted prior to a reduction in GSI kitchen or office space and that GSIs have adequate and accessible office space to do their jobs. | All GSIs required to hold office hours must have access to private, clean space furnished with a desk and at least two chairs. Departments must not reduce existing office and/or kitchen space. Ensure that kitchens are accessible. Music students will get keys for Burton Tower after-hours. |
| Retirement Benefits for GSIs | To provide GSIs and GSSAs with the ability to establish a retirement fund. | Graduate Student Employees should be able to contribute to a 401K with employer match like other University employees are able to do. |
| Occupational Safety | To ensure Graduate Student Employees are not put in harms way in the course of their duties. | Require that departments provide the training necessary for GSIs to run labs safely and effectively as part of the GSI appointment. |
| Regular Work Hours | To address persistent problems with mandatory late night and weekend work. | Hiring units may not require an Employee to work specific hours either late at night or on the weekends, unless the hiring unit obtains the Employee’s voluntary consent to these hours prior to the appointment’s start date. If the Employee does – either before appointment or at short notice – agree to work such hours, then the hiring unit must pay any necessary transportation costs. |
