Ready to walk at University of Oregon

MEMBERS OF the Graduate Teaching Fellow Federation (GTFF) at the University of Oregon are heading for the picket lines on Tuesday, December 2.

Late in October, GTFF workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike to get a fair contract. The union has been bargaining with the university administration for a year and working without a contract for over six months. Throughout the bargaining process, the administration has repeatedly shown disregard for the quality of life of its receive and the quality of education its students are offered.

The main demands of the GTFF are a living wage and two weeks of paid medical and parental leave.

Currently, when Graduate Teaching Fellows (GTFs) are sick or injured, they must either come into work or miss pay for their absence. When GTFs, who teach one-third of all classes at the university, are forced to come into work when they are ill, the quality of education suffers.

By denying GTFs paid leave, the university is effectively denying them the right to be sick or injured, or have children. In other words, the university is denying them the right to be human beings.

Paid leave is also an issue of gender equity. The immense workload expected from GTFs coupled with the responsibilities of caring and providing for children, all without access to even minimal leave, often discourages many women from furthering their education. And when men don't have access to paid parental leave, the responsibility of caring for children is often shifted to their female partners, which reinforces institutionalized sexism and harmful gender roles.

Coincidentally, this particular claim is backed up by the research of University President Scott Coltrane, a leading national spokesperson for the importance of paternal leave policies. In a show of astounding hypocrisy, Coltrane has spoken at the White House about the importance of paid leave for working parents, but has failed to put forth any meaningful offers to implement this policy for the workers on his own campus.

GTFs are also asking for their minimum wage to be raised 5.5 percent. According to the union, 56 percent of all graduate student teachers make a wage lower than the university's own estimated cost of living in the Eugene, Oregon, area. Many are under the poverty line.

While the university claims that GTFs make between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, this includes their tuition waiver, which is standard for all graduate schools and doesn't pay for food, rent or other basic living necessities.

In reality, GTFF president Joe Henry told the Daily Emerald, "GTFs make somewhere between $9,000 and $12,000. People are struggling, selling plasma, and going into debt."

The difference between the proposals offered by the administration and the GTFF is $324,000 over two years. That's roughly 0.4 percent of the university's $65 million budget surplus. GTFs teach one-third of all the classes at the university, and yet they aren't even worth 0.4 percent of its budget, according to the administration.

To make this even more insulting, the university awarded a $940,000 severance package to ex-President Michael Gottfredson this past year, even though it wasn't legally obliged to pay.

The administration has also spent over $125,000 on a lawyer to negotiate with the GTFF--just $21,000 more than it would cost for all GTFs to have two weeks paid leave for two years.

INSTEAD OF working with the GTFF to reach a contract that treats graduate student employees like human beings and allows them to afford basic living expenses, the university administration has focused primarily on how best to break a strike, should it occur.

In a widely criticized confidential memorandum, the administration advocated intimidating faculty into participating in strikebreaking work, changing finals to multiple-choice Scantron tests, and making finals optional for students.

In response to the memo, the University Senate adopted a motion to formally rebuke the administration for "planning for a threatened strike by graduate teaching assistants in a manner that bypasses the faculty and stands to bring about the dilution and degradation of teaching standards."

Program directors and deans also responded with a letter criticizing the administration's tactics:

We refuse to be forced to privilege the interests and convenience of some to the detriment of the interests and wellbeing of others, especially given that the latter includes some of the most vulnerable members of our community...Even in those units where the proposed solutions might be practical and not compromise pedagogical integrity, nevertheless, many of us feel that to impose these solutions in our departments and programs would be wrong, for nearly all the solutions would involve us and/or our proxies having to take on the role of scabs.

The faculty have been joined in their solidarity with the GTFF by a number of student groups, including the Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO), the student government. The ASUO published an open letter calling for fellow students to support the GTFF, noting that GTFs' working conditions are students' learning conditions.

The University of Oregon chapter of Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) has also helped shape the discussion on campus, organizing a panel of GTFs, professors and students to discuss the negotiations from the GTFs' point of view. This was significant because the information most undergraduates receive comes directly from the administration, in one-sided and often aggressive e-mails.

On November 17, at a rally outside the administrative building, both SLAP and ASUO members voiced their frustration with the administration. "The university," declared ASUO President Beatriz Guitierrez, "wants to give me an education where my instructors are treated like they don't deserve to have families, or they don't deserve to be sick. I don't want an education like that."

Meanwhile, SLAP members Lillian Huebner and Vincent Hand wrote in a joint statement, "Our tuition shouldn't be wasted on presidential severance packages and union busting lawyers. We as undergraduate students are sick and tired of the administration putting our education in the backseat to make way for their politics."