One members recap of Thursday March 25 bargaining session

Today felt to me as one of the more positive sessions we've had. Both sides seemed to actually dialogue and respond to each other on some points and said they "heard" (even if did not necessarily agree with) the other side's perspective on a few things. I don't think any tentative agreements were reached today though. A partial summary follows hopefully other folks who were there can chime in.

KEY THING I noticed (somebody else pointed this out): their level of willingness to hear us out and dialogue with us seems correlated to the presence of UNTF observers in the room, there were 2 such folks today. So it is crucial that different UNTF members come to at least 1 bargaining session; the ones who come always find it interesting and you don't have to say anything, just sit quietly in the back row (you can even be like your students and slyly read your State News during the boring parts...).

Discipline section: frank exchange on what a process for discipline should look like. Our proposal describes a 3 step process, they seem to want a more informal process which of course would leave the union out of the loop.

Grievances: they still really seem to want the union member to sign a grievance but conceded the union does own the grievance. One of their team expressed the concern about having an "out" for a member who REALLY does not want a grievance filed on their behalf. We responded with our concern that out of fear and powerlessness a member may be afraid to press a grievance but does that mean they don't want to? Other people who were there may wish to clarify my explanation of this.

Health and safety: they had given us a counter proposal deleting major portions of ours: our request for some kind of process to ensure employees know the basic MSU resources re: these issues. They repeated their view that health/safety issues vary by unit and that maybe we should develop these in an ongoing conversation with the administration outside the contract. Seems to be a misunderstanding on their part about what we are asking for: we are not asking to develop detailed instructions re: classroom violence etc. we are just asking that MSU (either centrally or via its colleges or units) commit to ensuring employees know some basics and where to go for help and information.