Daily Archives: March 5, 2025

Bargaining Update 2-26-2025

Where we are: USA’s Bargaining Team is continuing to work on counters to the University’s proposals. Since November, we have been waiting for counters from the University. Today they provided 4 counters and outright rejected 7 of our proposals without a counter. Executive Director of EH&S and Emergency Management Jeff Hescock joined the University’s team today to discuss and answer questions around the University’s counters to our Health & Welfare and Health & Safety proposals.

You can view our Proposal Tracker here.

USA Member and Silent Bargaining Rep Coordinator Chris Weeks made a stellar presentation to management about our transformative 7-step proposal. It includes cost estimates to the University. Check out the slides here!!

University Counter to USA Proposal 1: Article 16 Health & Welfare

USA’s Original Proposal
University’s Counter

  • Rejects the $22.50 per full-time employee increase to university contribution to the Health and Welfare fund and proposes an increase to $18.00.
  • University rejects facilitating the joining of our trust with another. States that their responsibility ends when they transfer the funds to the trust.

University Counter to USA Proposal 4: Article 25 Health & Safety

USA’s Original Proposal
University’s Counter

  • 25.4: Management counters with language about the University providing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that specifies requests coming from supervisors instead of members.
  • 25.19: University does not want to specify which groups can attend Joint Health & Safety Committee meetings
  • University outright rejected our new sections 25.21-25.24; rational provided by Jeff Hescock is that the procedures and protections we’re asking for already exist. We maintain that we are asking the university to commit to protecting things like accessible restrooms, accommodations for pregnancy-related conditions, and the ability to refuse working in unsafe conditions without fear of retaliation.
  • 21.25: Asking the university to encourage supervisors to grant release time for employees to attend the University’s health and wellness events. Management rejected this with the reasoning that this is already clear in communications from the University to supervisors. We maintain that establishing contract language would show that the university agrees that attending these events are a legitimate use of employee time.

University Counter to USA Proposal 3: Article 8 and Article 12 Shift Differentials 

USA’s Original Proposal
University’s Counter

  • 8.7 Shift Differential: Rejected all of our increases to second and third-shift differentials. Proposed a minor increase from $37.50 to $56.25 per week.
  • 8.9 Weekend Differential: Rejects our proposal for a shift differential increase from $1.00/hour to $2.50/hour, and proposes an increase to $1.50/hour.
  • 12.10 Holiday Shift Differential: Rejected our proposal to increase the holiday shift differential to 1.5x pay and add more holidays to the list of those eligible for shift differentials.

University Counter to USA Proposal 14: Farm Superintendent Pay Grade

USA’s Original Proposal
University’s Counter

  • The University rejects USA’s proposed increase to Grade 20 and counters with Grade 17. The current grade is 16.

Without providing counters, the University outright rejected the following proposals: