Graduate Student Union moving forward with negotiations

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The Graduate Student Union has made progress to have contract negotiations available for graduate students and assistants.

It also will host a 7 p.m. Thursday meeting to discuss bargaining with the Central Michigan University administration.

GSU Director of Union Relations Mike Hoerger said the optimism for the group has been encouraging.

“At our last general membership, meeting the turnout was so huge, everyone could hardly fit inside,” the Midland graduate student said. “It’s encouraging to see that only a couple weeks into the semester, we’ve got the type of power that I believe can push the top dogs of the university to do what they know in their hearts is right for CMU.”

The meeting Thursday is in the Bovee University Center St. Clair and Huron rooms. The union will elect officers and adopt a bargaining platform for the general goals and priorities for the contract the GSU will be bargaining at the meeting.

“We’re going to discuss and introduce new officers and members will provide feedback on issues most important to them and what they care about,” said Ferndale graduate student Alyssa Warshay.

As of now, GSU bargained and tentatively agreed on non-economic issues with the administration, such as workload issues, issues related to the professional development of graduate assistants and general employee rights and management rights.

Warshay said a lot of the bigger issues on campus have not been discussed yet, such as health care, salaries and similar negotiable topics.

The GSU has not discussed these issues yet because students were in transition during the summer.

“We haven’t had a big membership meeting yet — we are waiting for as many members as we can get together, and letting new graduate assistants know we’re having a meeting,” Warshay said.

Warshay plans on running for president because she would like to reach out to as many graduate students across all departments and have as much participation as possible.

“I want them to know the more that everyone participates the better represented we are as graduate students and graduate assistants on campus. We’d like to hear from everybody to know what is important to them and what they want out of the union,” she said. “The union by definition is for all of us to join together and help each other out.”