After four months of contract negotiations with the University, members of the Graduate Employees Organization voted to stage a walkout early next month at their membership meeting yesterday.
Of the 262 members who cast ballots, 209 voted in favor of holding a one-day walkout March 10 and a half-day walkout March 11 if a contract settlement is not reached.
The members also voted in favor of holding an open-ended strike beginning March 15 if the University does not comply with GEO's contract requests by that date.
GEO Secretary Treasurer Sandra Eyster said the number of GEO members in favor of a walkout or strike is proof of the organization's dissatisfaction with its current contract. Eyster added that she hopes the March walkout would be powerful enough to
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| DAN O'DONNELL/Daily Graduate Employees Organization President Eric Dirnbach listens as union members discuss a possible strike at a GEO membership meeting yesterday in the Michigan League.
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"We're going to have to have one hell of a walkout on the 10th and 11th," Eyster said. "We have to let the University know what we can and will do to get them talking."
GEO Steward Nages Shanmugalingan said the purpose of a walkout, and if need be, a strike, would be to end the teaching contributions of all graduate student instructors, effectively shutting down the University.
Shanmugalingan added that if GEO were to go on strike, it would encourage all GSIs, including those who are not GEO members, not to teach their discussion sections.
GEO Chief Negotiator Eric Odier-Fink said that while a strike is, by no means, the organization's most desirable option, GEO officials decided it may be the most effective tool to make the University respond in contract negotiations.
"The bargaining team feels we need a credible threat of a strike to get a settlement," Odier-Fink said. "I hope the University will move."
Many GEO members expressed their support for a walkout and a strike yesterday, but the desire for a job action was not unanimous. Rackham second-year student Jason Aubrey, a mathematics GSI, said he believed arbitration between GEO and the University was a better solution.
"Unlike a job action, arbitration would guarantee that we get nothing worse than what we have and there is a good chance we could get more," Aubrey told the crowd of 340. "We should not vote for a job action since our goals in such an action are not clearly defined. We do not know what we are getting into and we do not know under what conditions a job action would end."
GEO Steward Sylvia Orduño explained that the length of the strike would depend on the University's response to GEO's contract requests.
"The strike is open-ended because we don't know how the negotiations are going to move," Orduño said. "The last time (GEO) had a strike was in 1975, so we're going to have to figure this out along the way."
GEO members staged a two-day walkout in 1996 concerning contract negotiations.
Aubrey also said he lacked confidence in GEO's leadership and claimed he was not the only member of the organization who was feeling doubtful of the bargaining team.
"There is a growing perception among some of the members that the leadership is out of touch with the average graduate student, that they are not advocating so much for our interests as they are zealously defending their own agenda," Aubrey said.
But GEO bargaining team member Lisa Kellmeyer said she and her team were only arguing the issues the membership supported.
"We are driven at the bargaining table by what goes on with you," Kellmeyer said. "We can only push at the table what (the members) are willing to push outside."
GEO Steering Committee and Strike Committee member Cedric DeLeon added that the GEO members, not the leadership, came up the proposals currently being debated at the table with the University. He added many members suffered from a misconception of negotiations, stating the difficulties those involved in bargaining faced.
"What do we do when the University says no to everything?" DeLeon asked. "What do we do when the University says 'Drop dead, we don't have respect for you, you're just a bunch of kids'? Do we lay down and die or do we stand up for what we believe in?"
After the membership meeting concluded, the GEO stewards convened to discuss the issues most important to the organization. GEO spokesperson Chip Smith said the stewards planned on assembling a package composed of the "must-haves, the walkout issues" to present to the University at today's negotiation session.
After being made aware of which issues are most essential to GEO's membership, Eyster said the University will have until midnight on March 14 to compromise with GEO before an open-ended strike occurs.
Chief University Negotiator Dan Gamble could not be reached for comment.
02-25-99
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