Bargaining Today and Some Good Budget News!

12/3/2021

Dear FSU Members,

Thanks so much to those of you who joined in yesterday’s all union meeting – with around 200 UMB union members.   We sent a clear message – from all the unions – to the Chancellor that labor relations need to improve if we want to be a health-promoting university.  Please join all the unions next Thursday in Quinn at 12:30 to make sure this message is heard.

TODAY from 3:30 to 6:30 we are bargaining:   (contact FSU or Steve Striffler for registration information).

Finally, we wanted to share some good budget news from the MTA regarding funding for higher ed and public education in general.  The details are below – but what this means most immediately for us is that there is money to do right by the employees who work at UMass Boston.

From the MTA:

We wanted to share the news that the consensus ARPA bill that will pass the legislature tomorrow (it passed the House today) will include  $137 million for public higher education (as well as $242 million for K12 education). That’s close to $400 million for public education in this bill. A lot of credit goes to you and your members for advocating — with emails and calls, photos of decrepit buildings, and by sharing our social media ads — for the House numbers in the final bill.  

The highlights are below.  There are also some smaller grants to individual campuses and programs which our GR staff will share.

This is a victory, hopefully the first of more to come.  There is another round of ARPA funds (about $2.5 billion) for us to advocate for, as well as a spring campaign around adjunct justice, student financial aid, and strong budgets for our campuses.  We also need to make sure that funding of the contracts is a first order of business in January.

We wanted to share this good news right away (knowing that the Governor could delay final passage with a veto, which would surely be overriden by the legislature), and hope that you will share the news with your members — and let them know that it was their advocacy that won the day.