Fellow Graduate Workers,
We write out of concern about offer letters for summer and fall. The University-wide policy (link), which was adopted from our union contract, is that offer letters for fall and summer should go out by April 15th. The deadline has passed, but it has come to our attention that multiple departments have not yet sent appointment letter offers out. This policy was put in place by mutual agreement between graduate workers and the University over twenty years ago. Departing from that policy is causing unnecessary stress and financial uncertainty for graduate employees.
If you have not received your appointment letter, you should:
- Contact your DEO or department administrator to ask when appointment letters will be going out. Include a link to the policy and explain why this is important to you. Copy [email protected] and your COGS steward.
- Contact your COGS steward and organize other graduate employees in your department to also email the department and/or sign a joint letter.
- Forward your department’s response to [email protected] so we can take steps to enforce the university-wide policy through the grievance procedure.
Appointment letters are a permissive topic of negotiations, which means the University is allowed to negotiate the issue with the union representing graduate workers. We could then agree to legally binding language in a union contract to prevent the unnecessary stress and uncertainty many graduate workers are now suffering. This is a case in point: we need the permissive topics of bargaining restored to the contract when the graduate workers represented by COGS go back to the negotiations table in the Fall–after we win the recertifcation election!
Please reach out to us with any concerns or questions. And please get in touch with us if you have not received your offer letters yet.
In solidarity,
Bargaining & Grievance Committee
UE Local 896 COGS