Treasurer: Steve McAllister

VP-Organizing: David Craig

VP-Grievances: Mara Williams

VP-Operations: Jacob Barto

VP-External Relations: Sarah Prazkievicz

VP-Communications: Dana Rognlie

Bylaws Amendment: PASSED

STEWARDS

(Write in candidates will be notified separately and given a chance to decline the position)

Romance Languages: Anna Giannetti

Geology: Joseph Byrnes, Scott Maguffin, Kristen Sweeney

Biology: Ashley Bateman

Political Science: J. Stienmetz, Kyle Stevenson, John Valdez

Geography: Emily Slager, Alanna Young

Anthropology: Joseph Henry, Jonathan Tubin

Philosophy: Phil Mayo, Alan Reynolds

English: Anna Carroll, Matt Hannah, Parker Krieg

Physics: Eryn Cook, Tyler Harvey, Kyle Lynch-Klarup, Wes Miller, Ian Pilgrim

Journalism: Ben Birkinbine, Lauren Bratslavsky, Jenny Dean, Jacob Dittmer, Staci Tucker

Sociology: Brian Ott, Jeff Ewing, Cassie Comley, Ryan Wishart

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To illustrate their generosity, they offered us the hypothetical example of a full-time Biology GTF who keeps her health insurance over the summer. Let’s walk through her adventure in generosity.

The UO has generously agreed to let her keep her full tuition waiver. They pointed out to us that at least two schools that they know of, but chose not to name, do not offer their graduate employees a full tuition waiver, so our Biology grad should be very grateful that the UO covers her full tuition.

The UO will not be raising her wages this year. Wage increases were reserved for those earning the minimum wage and Biology GTFs earn well above the minimum wage.

The UO is proposing to cut her fees by $210 a year. This is the center-piece of the UO’s generosity. Fees will go from $140 a quarter to $70 a quarter, a 50% reduction!  Again, the UO pointed out that many unnamed schools offer no fee reduction at all, so their generosity is particularly notable with regards to this offer.

The UO will require her to pay $144 during the regular academic year for health insurance. While the UO did not describe this particular feature of their proposal as generous – in fact, they sort of ignored it altogether – they did note that our health care plan is extremely generous. Biology currently pays for her summer insurance, so she’ll see no savings from the UO lowering summer insurance costs.

In the end, our hypothetical Biology GTF will come out ahead $69 a year. That represents a .375% increase in her take home pay.

But let’s say that your hypothetical Biology GTF is not your typical GTF and the UO just chose a particularly bad example to illustrate how generous their proposals really are.  Let’s look at your typical GTF.

Again, the UO is willing to cover any increases to the cost of tuition over the next two years, which, as they stressed, they do not have to. They also did some work trying to point out to us that this represents real lost revenue to the UO because if you did not have a GTF position with a full tuition waiver, you’d be forking over tens of thousands of dollars just to go here.

The typical GTF will continue to earn a wage just above poverty-level, $12,800 or so a year. Huzzah! There will be no guaranteed raises for the typical GTF, which means that she stands to lose about 3% of the value of her wages due to inflation. But maybe her department will give her a raise.

The typical GTF will see that $210 reduction in fees and that $144 cost for health insurance, netting $69 a year. Under the UO’s proposals, the typical GTF will see a reduction in her costs for summer health insurance, from $242.43 to (an estimated) $191.52. A savings of $50.91.

The UO’s proposals would benefit the typical GTF roughly $119 a year. That’s a .99% increase in take home pay! Which will really help offset some of that increase in inflation.

It is important to note that this “generosity” comes while the UO is sitting on a mountain of cash. As has been noted before and fully acknowledged by the UO’s bargaining team, the UO has $90 million in unrestricted reserves that they could do just about anything they wanted to do with it. It would cost them $450,000 to eliminate fees completely. They are very much not interested in doing that. They have chosen, instead, to be generous to other people on campus.

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1 Sarah Praskievicz
2 Judith Lechner
3 Steve McAllister
4 Sierra Deutsch
5 Jeremy Strickler**
6 Aquila Flower
7 Bryce Peake
8 Jacob Barto
9 Heather Wolford
10 Anna Sloan
11 Emily Slager
12 Dan Andersen
13 Caroline Stauss
14 Dana Rognlie
15 Wes Miller
16 Greg Liggett
17 Anna Moore
18 James Daria
19 Sara Nienaber
20 Alanna Young
21 David Craig
22 Dylan Brady
23 Heather Norland
24 Jessica Hejny
25 Alayna Linde
26 Scott Maguffin
27 Josh Plencner
28 Phil Mayo
29 Eryn Cook
30 Herbert Grotewohl
31 Chris Thomas
32 David Root
33 Will Burchard
34 Jesse McAlpine
35 Colin Corbett
36 Joe Wyer

The top 24 vote-getters will be your Delegates to the convention in April.

*Any ties were broken with a coin flip.
** For official purposes President Jeremy Strickler will be the ranking delegate to the convention as per the Bylaws.

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Using the UO’s own data, Professor Bunsis laid out where the university’s money comes from (tuition and grants), what they do with it (spend it on administration), and how much they have (a lot).

Professor Bunsis gave the presentation as part of an event organized by the United Academics and it is chock full of useful information.

For our purposes, the big fact that he presented is that the UO has about $89 million in unrestricted reserves. That’s $89 million that they could use to raise our wages, eliminate our fees, improve our office conditions and improve our health care.

So far, the UO hasn’t said much in bargaining about money, other than to politely demur when we suggested that they had plenty of it. Based on past experience, we anticipate that they will try to say that while the university may have money, the pot of money that they use for GTFs is very tiny and shrinking all the time.

You can imagine what our response will be.

Oh, hey, look, the Register-Guard agrees!

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