My name is Lee Kennedy-Shaffer and I’m in biostatitics. As the bargaining team prepared for mediation, we were empowered by our fall 2019 strike and excited to enter a new stage for our struggle. Tuesday was the first full day of mediation with a federal mediator, Martin Callaghan from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services.
To give you a sense of it, mediation involves discussions, where the two parties (the University administration and our union bargaining committee) are together in a room with the mediator, and discussions where we’re apart, talking with the mediator and telling them the grounds for our demands and having honest conversations about compromises that we can reach. These conversations will be mostly off-the-record, to facilitate the parties’ ability to reach agreements efficiently. We will make efforts to keep you in the loop on this process as much as is permitted and we will schedule town halls to get together as soon as the spring term starts. We will also continue posting our on-the-record proposals on our website.
We have two more days scheduled in January, which presents an opportunity for our campaign. As we give space for negotiations to continue, we—as workers—will reflect on our fall 2019 strike, learn from our decisions, and continue to make our organizing networks stronger to be prepared to keep fighting for a contract that meets the needs of student workers. We will be launching a strike exit survey in the upcoming days to facilitate these conversations.
We continue to be confident that we can make progress through mediation. However, if the administration continues to be intransigent on core priorities like fair protections against discrimination and harassment, compensation and benefits, we will need to continue to organize and take further action to win a fair contract.In solidarity,
Lee Kennedy-Shaffer
Biostatistics
