Thanks to the everyone who attended bargaining yesterday. Unfortunately, we had another challenging bargaining session with Columbia. We had further discussion about our concerns that the University proposal on Recognition could improperly exclude paid-direct Postdoctoral Research Fellows from coverage and rights under our contract. Our conversations on this topic have been frustrating in part because the University has repeatedly changed its position on the number of people they believe might be excluded under their proposal. Yesterday’s discussion became quite intense across the table. Unfortunately, rather than continue attempting to work through our differences, Columbia’s team chose to end our bargaining session one hour earlier than scheduled.
Prior to the discussion on Recognition, we spent more time on Discipline and Discharge, Employment Files and Leaves, which we hope ends up helping us ultimately reach fair agreements on those topics. For example, on Discipline and Discharge, where both the University and the Union proposals include “just cause” protections against arbitrary termination, we continued a discussion from our last session on other areas of difference in our positions. We also attempted to work through a few remaining differences around the nature and timing of researchers’ right to access and be assured of the contents of their Employment Files.
We still have more work to do on these proposals before reaching agreements and we were disappointed that the University chose to walk out on the session when it got particularly challenging as opposed to remaining committed to working through differences to reach a fair agreement.
Our next bargaining session September 5th at the Medical Center from 1:00pm-5:00pm. Please RSVP if you would like to attend a bargaining session.