Bargaining Session: 5/30/2025
Your USF GAU Bargaining Team started off today’s session by presenting our counterproposals for the USF Board of Trustees’ (USF BOT) counterproposals on Articles 2 and 3. We had some great discussions about our proposed changes to Article 2, and we feel confident that we will continue getting closer to finding common ground in our next session. On Article 3, we are excited to announce that the USF BOT agreed with our proposed changes, and we were able to sign a Tentative Agreement (TA) on this article! Unfortunately, the BOT did not come to the meeting with any counterproposals prepared for Articles 4 or 5.
Next, we heard a BOT proposal for Article 6, and then presented our counterproposal for Article 6. One of the big changes we would like to make to the article is striking the averaging of hours, because it can be (and has been) used to exploit GAs when supervisors “bank” hours to be used later in the semester, leading to some GAs working horribly excessive hours especially during Exam Season. While we previously reached some common ground in previous sessions on the striking of “average hours” language, the BOT pushed back on it hard this time, but not to worry! Your GAU Bargaining Team held the line and rebutted every pushback to fight for your labor rights and protect GAs from being exploited in the workplace. While we weren’t able to reach common ground on this verbiage during this session, the BOT will bring a counterproposal back to the table at our next session on June 12.
We then heard a proposal from the BOT for Article 7, and presented our counterproposal to the article. The BOT had a few questions and then took a short caucus, after which they agreed to our counterproposal with a minor edit, and we were able to reach a TA for Article 7!
Next, the BOT presented its proposal for Article 8. We asked a few clarifying questions, and then we tabled the article to be countered and discussed at the next session. We are still considering edits to the article to further increase protections from discrimination for all GAs, so we will present our finalized counterproposal for Article 8 at the next session.
When we reached Article 9, neither of us had any proposed edits to the article, so we were able to TA the unchanged article and move on to Article 10! The BOT gave us their proposal for Article 10, for which we were able to ask clarifying questions, before concluding the meeting for the day.
Overall, we were able to make great headway during this session! We left the table having made headway toward finding a common ground, and with three more articles TA’d, which leaves us with 4 articles tentatively agreed to.
Our next session will take place on June 12 in SVC 2070 (on the second floor of the Student Services Center, room 2070). We hope to see you there!
