The members of COGS have strongly rejected the Regents’ and the University’s initial offer of Tuesday, February 21, 2017. Their initial offer destroys contract protections for all of our benefits except wages.
The members of COGS said NO to this offer because it is unreasonable and immoral. It is not a fair agreement, especially given that the Regents and the University agreed to these benefits many times over the past 20 years.
The Regents and the University clearly thought these benefits were reasonable two years ago because they voluntarily agreed to them. But they saw their chance to try to silence graduate workers and gut our contract, and as we saw this past Tuesday, they stalled bargaining with graduate workers until they could.
The answer of the graduate workers to their behavior is NO. We will not be silenced. We will not cave to the Regents and the University’s attempts to steal away the benefits we secured. We will not be going anywhere.
The members of COGS will continue to have a voice in the conditions of our work. We will keep fighting to keep what we and graduate workers before us have fairly won.