Thank you all for attending a town hall on our upcoming bargaining committee elections and for your helpful feedback on the size and composition of the committee and the election timeline.

In the discussions there was agreement on the timeline and that a committee composed of seven members was appropriate. However, overall, a clear preference for candidates running at-large rather than based on jurisdiction emerged. Based on this, we plan to move ahead with seven at-large candidates for our first bargaining committee.

We feel confident we can elect a strong, representative, and successful bargaining committee like those at other universities with similarly diverse workforces. We also look forward to implementing some of the additional ideas we discussed that will help ensure an effective and representative bargaining committee, regardless of who gets elected. These ideas include town halls, issue-focused meetings, working groups for specific topics, additional surveys, as well as maintaining a strong organizing committee. Implementing these items together will help keep us all informed of what is happening at various points in our negotiations.

The next step is to send out a notification of nomination, after which anyone who chooses to run will have the opportunity to accept the nomination and begin their campaign to be elected. If you are interested in running for the bargaining committee and would like to learn more about the responsibilities involved, or talk to someone with first-hand experience of the bargaining process, please feel free to reach out.

Thank you,

Steven Cook (Department of Biological Sciences)
Tulsi Patel (Pathology and Cell Biology)
Andrew Zaharia (Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute)