Comments
If you have been at UMass since 2015 or 2016, could you please DM me? I am looking for people to send me their Bursar bills from around that time - Specifically to track Family Health Plan costs. So if you are someone who had a family plan back please talk to me, and if you know someone else who might have been on the family plan then please please tag them or DM me their name!
Even if you have no info on family plans please DM me anyway if you've been around since 2015 or 2016, for important Bargaining research!
UMass Graduate workers are not eligible for unemployment benefits, and most are contracted for only 38 weeks a year. Many are international students, and are therefore not eligible for stimulus payments, relief under the federal CARES Act, federal or private student loans, and most other safety net programs. Furthermore, most international graduate students are unable to work off-campus, due to visa restrictions. Graduate workers have repeatedly voiced concerns about being able to provide for their families and survive over the summer, most notably in a petition that gathered over 900 signatures. Graduate workers recently hosted a âReverse Town Hallâ with 200 people in attendance online - UMass upper administration were invited, but not a single one bothered to attend. The Chancellor, Kumble Subbaswamy, was officially sent a list of demands with a deadline of April 23 to respond, while a drive-in protest with a caravan of almost 100 cars mustered at his campus residence. Neither of these actions moved the Chancellor to engage with the pressing needs of graduate student workers at UMass Amherst.
We call on UMass to do the right thing, bargain fairly, recognize the needs of graduate workers!
Important updates
Hey everybody! The Office of the Bursar will be putting holds on students' accounts from the 10th of June onwards.
If you owe rent or have any debts, please enroll in Fall 2020 courses before that date to avoid having issues in case your account will be put on hold!
Thank you!
The executive board of UAW Local 2322, representing about 5,000 workers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, voted to endorse the Sanders campaign, reported here for the first time. Anais Surkin, the localâs president, said that the board chose to endorse based on widespread support of Sanders by the members, and as a result of frustration with the UAW internationalâs lack of a process for backing candidates in the Democratic primary.
âWhat are they gonna do to us as a local if we endorse?â Surkin said. âWe can and should express the will of the membership⌠the [Sanders] campaign isnât focused just on the national leadership of unions. Itâs focused on member-to-member communications.â
Hi fellow GEO members,
Decades of increasing political and employer control have greatly diminished the power of all workers in the US. This especially affects vulnerable workers, including graduate student workers, in precarious conditions with little to no legal protections due to carefully crafted barriers constructed to prevent us from seeking legal protections and remedies from exploitative work conditions.
Across the country events are unfolding of critical importance to the level and success of labor struggles for graduate workers at Umass and working people and students everywhere. There is one national presidential campaign that is devoted to empowering unions and increasing the strength and ability for workers to organize and fight for our rights, and that's the Bernie Sanders Campaign.
https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1230288311006134274
The Sanders Campaign is actively building a mass movement, drawing in a broad, diverse coalition of working people, youth, and activists. Unions across the country are endorsing and advocating for the most pro-labor presidential campaign and movement in modern history. Sandersâ Workplace Democracy Plan, the Respect Graduate Student Workers Act, the Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education, Medicare for All and the Green New Deal will be critical to creating an economy that works for all of us, not just the Billionaires. By investing in regular peopleâs daily lives, cancelling all student debt, guaranteeing good paying union jobs and the right to organize, we can reverse the long decline of wages and living standards.
GEO Members for Bernie is a group of rank and file GEO members working to elect Sanders. We are organizing for a GEO endorsement for Bernie. Join us on February 26th at 6pm in S330 Life Sciences Lab to vote on the Bernie endorsement at our membership meeting. I encourage fellow GEO members to join us at the Umass for Bernie facebook group (
https://www.facebook.com/groups/601399810426507/) or to email us at
[email protected].
I am seeking to get accommodations in my capacity as a teacher and sought help with accessible workplace. Theyâve directed me to Disability Services. Is this right?
Faculty and Graduate Students from LLC and other departments came together to make a clear statement; white-supremacy and racism aren't tolerated here! Besides posters with slogans in the windows of Herter Hall, we just have published this statement. Please share and take action!
When was our first pay day for the semester supposed to be?
Hey guys! When is the benefits fair going to take place and where? Thanks!
Today's Child-In was pretty awesome!!!!
UMass Amherst folks...If you are a grad worker, work with grad workers, depend on grad workers, study under grad workers...check out how this administration "values" us as we attempt, 5 months AFTER we first presented our proposals in collective bargaining, to finally get some kind of an economic package counteroffer as we negotiate our new contract. Today we came to Barbara Krauthamer, the new Graduate School Dean, for her support in our efforts to bargain for livable wages. We waited for her for 20 minutes. Check out her responses to us starting at 19min in. IF YOU CARE ABOUT US AS STUDENT WORKERS, PLEASE SUPPORT US.
GEO-UAW is a loud and proud unit of UAW Local 2322. GEO-UAW is the union for graduate employees at UMass Amherst, and is a unit of United Auto Workers Local 2322.
