Bargaining Resumes with SENS-UAW Local 7902, Academic Student Workers
A Message from Sonya Williams, Vice President for Human Resources
This week, the university bargaining team and SENS-UAW Local 7902, the union representing our Academic Student Workers, held our first meeting of 2024 to make progress towards a renewed agreement.
Looking to build on our recent success in reaching a contract for our Student Health Employees (SHENS-UAW Local 7902), the university is approaching bargaining with a refreshed approach for the new year, including welcoming a new member to our negotiating team.
The university opened the session by expressing the desire to refresh its approach and make progress in these negotiations. To that end, we indicated that we would present several packages addressing various non-economic issues that remain on the table to attempt to move negotiations along. The union began by summarizing its overall priorities and concerns before sharing several package proposals for non-economic issues. The university reiterated its commitment to listening, to being open, and to leaning in to find areas of compromise and common ground.
The university presented its non-economic proposals, which it consolidated into packages in an effort to resolve a number of non-economic issues and move as soon as possible to discussing economic issues including wages and healthcare at future sessions.
We had a productive discussion of select proposals including Bargaining Unit Information, Academic Student Worker Rights and Responsibilities, and Meeting Space. Based on those discussions, the university team will review the union’s package proposals and look for areas where the packages overlap and could be revised/consolidated in the hopes of reaching agreement with the union on these issues.
Future bargaining sessions are scheduled for January 26, February 9, and March 8. We remain ready to meet as often as needed so we can reach a new agreement that recognizes and rewards the hard work of our part-time student employees.
As negotiations continue, we will share community-wide email updates when there are important developments and will otherwise post updates on our Union Negotiations page.
You can sign up to receive these updates directly in your inbox here. Links to observe bargaining sessions will continue to be posted online prior to each session. You can also follow @KnowOurNewSchool on Instagram and @KnowNewSchool on Twitter/X for the latest updates.