UI graduate student union begins bargaining with Iowa Board of Regents team
The University of Iowa graduate students union and Iowa Board of Regents presented initial union contract proposals Thursday. In this photo, Campaign to Organize Graduate Students members protest at an Iowa Board of Regents meeting on Sept. 27, 2023. (Photo by Brooklyn Draisey/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
The University of Iowa graduate student union is seeking a 25% increase in wages over the next two years, leaving the union's president and members dissatisfied at the Iowa Board of Regents bargaining team's offer of annual 3% increases.
The Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, or COGS, met with the Iowa Board of Regents bargaining team Thursday to start negotiations for its 2025-2027 contract. Both groups brought initial proposals forward, with COGS expected to send a formal response signaling their dissatisfaction with the board team's offering in the near future.
Union President Cary Stough said the board bargaining team's suggested annual 3% increase in base salaries for the next two years for graduate students working as teaching and research assistants across campus is nowhere near the COGS request for a 25% increase over two years.
'We were not totally surprised, but we were disappointed,' Stough said. 'The crowd, at least when it was announced to them, were mixed with feelings of shame, anger, indignation, and we laughed because we knew that even after … presenting our months and months of research and data collecting, that they weren't going to listen to it at all.'
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According to the union's current contract, the base salary rate for the 2024-2025 fiscal year is $21,969 for a 50% academic year appointment and $26,841 for 50% fiscal year appointment.
Comparing the two organizations' initial proposals, Stough said the COGS contract was more than 25 pages compared to the less-than-five page document from the board bargaining team.
In addition to the salary increases, which Stough said reflect rising costs of living in Iowa City, the union is seeking to move the first day they receive a paycheck from Sept. 1 to Aug. 1 to help pay for moving costs, university fees and more, and putting language about paid time off back into the contract. Stough said information on paid time off was removed from the union contract in 2017 and put in the university's Student Employment Standards.
COGS included these topics in the proposed contract based on data from a bargaining survey the union sent to its members, Stough said.
Board of regents spokesperson Josh Lehman said in an email COGS members are valued by both the board and the university, and they recognize that graduate education is a vital part of both the university's work and mission and higher education in general.
'The university recognizes it must maintain the competitiveness of the UI's graduate assistantships, in order to continue to attract and retain excellent graduate students,' Lehman said in his email. 'In addition to the contract proposal, the university covers all or most of the tuition and health benefits for graduate assistant employees with an appointment of 25 percent or greater.'
About 100 union members and their supporters showed up for the bargaining session, Stough said, in order to show both the board and the state that they are an 'organizing force' that can coordinate quickly. Even with this showing, Stough said the union doesn't have faith in the board coming back with a proposal that meets all of their wants and needs.
Stough said the union will send a formal response to the board bargaining team early next week, and the next closed bargaining session is set for Feb. 20. They will also follow up with questions from union members who couldn't be in the room during bargaining and send them to the bargaining team.
'We will be satisfied when we have our meeting on the 20th and they come back to us with a robust, more than two-page contract with a lot of stuff we asked to put back in,' Stough said.
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