so good news. WE GOT A FUCKIN CONTRACT. We won't be walking out, they were scared gave us enough.

It's not quite what we wanted, but it's the largest gain in contracts in GEO's history and we did some good work.

We had a crowd of about ~450 at last night's ratification meeting

My day specifically opened with 2 hours of sleep into running a GEO sit-in, then planning this meeting, all while writing papers furiously for class

Also here are some pictures:

Issue by issue:

Wages: We asked for 5%/5%/5% over the next 3 years. We got 3.5/3.5/3.3. That's fucking good. Raises haven't been above 2% every year in decades and we finally pushed them to respond to the skyrocketing costs of living here.

Parental leave: We got an extra 3 weeks of parental leave for both birth and non-birth parents. Also parental leave can now roll over between semesters. It used to be if you had a child in December, you had to come right back at the start of January.

Childcare subsidies: they went up? not as much as we asked but, up is good

I'm fuzziest on details about this issue. I don't have the most context not knowing anything about childcare here

Healthcare: A contractual obligation to forming a committee with students of our choice to decide what "medically necessary" means in terms of trans care/coverage.

Obv medicalization is bullshit, but if we want things to be covered in insurance, that's the only route to take.

Mental health copay caps: We got a $700 cap on copays for grad student laborers for mental health visits. Nothing like this exists anywhere else in the country

I'm personally really stoked about the copay caps because it's something vitally necessary with the workload, and it sets a precedent of setting copay caps for particular kinds of care.

Hours caps: We got international students a hard cap of 20 hours of work a week. Any more is a visa violation, which they were totally cool with before this year.

They wouldn't give everyone this cap, and we know this will lead to discrimination in hiring and harassment; we have several hundred members ready to abuse the grievance process at every fucking turn about this. We also got them to cave and add anti-discrimination language

(caving to add anti-discrimination language is the saddest fucking toot, oh my god this country and university suck so much ass)

Diversity labor:

This is my issue! If you haven't been keeping up, Umich has a 5 year strategic plan to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. We knew grad students were implementing this plan as volunteers. We asked for 23 unionized and fairly compensated positions.

They didn't talk about it at bargaining bc it was a permissive issue, and refused to address it out of bargaining too

this especially was important to me because marginalized students are the ones who know best how to improve campus climate for ourselves. we understand our needs and /have/ to be the ones doing this labor if you want an inclusive university.

Many of us also feel forced into this labor, because if we don't do it, who the fuck will?

after refusing to address it anywhere for months, they finally gave us 6 positions at the eleventh hour right before our contract ratification meetings. Six is obviously not enough and we're going to keep pushing for more, but holy shit they really, really didn't want a walk out.

that they gave us any at all is a miracle. All of us were disappointed, but also 6 marginalized students are going to receive care that weren't before that. 6 students are going to have actual power to make things better.

All of us hung out at the union office and cried and got drunk till 3 am and oh my god WE HAVE A FUCKING CONTRACT