SENS-UAW Local 7902, which represents academic student workers at The New School, reached a tentative agreement with the university on their contract on Friday.
The articles negotiated until the end were related to healthcare, compensation, and the length of the contract. According to an Instagram post from SENS, the final draft of the tentative agreement contains articles promising 80% healthcare premium discounts for graduate workers, raises between 24% and 31% for all SENS positions, and tuition waivers for all PhD candidates and Teaching Fellows during the semesters they work.
“We got a really historic agreement,” bargaining committee member Danielle Twiss said over honks from car horns and cheers from picketers outside of the University Center.
During Friday’s negotiation session the union’s proposal for dental healthcare was removed from the table. According to bargaining committee members, this led to the university agreeing to a 3 year contract.
“We got a mandate from membership that ‘term of agreement’ took priority over dental this time around. That sets us up to bargain again, in just a couple of years,” bargaining committee member Aaron Berman said.
He said the three year life of the contract “was really important for members — particularly members on shorter degree terms like MA students — to be able to have a say in their living and working conditions in the time of their matriculation at The New School.”
Another issue important to SENS workers in the tentative agreement is the “codification of free reproductive care services.”
The university also agreed to develop a new guarantor program for international student workers, according to the SENS Instagram post.
“We were able to get language like NYU has that the school will not voluntarily supply any information to ICE or any immigration agency outside of what is legally required of them,” bargaining committee member Emmanuel Auerbach-Baidani said.
One issue that did not make it into the final contract was a side-letter regarding the New Student Workers’ Union (NewSWU). The letter contained an agreement that the university and the union would not appeal the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) decision regarding the admittance of NewSWU into SENS-UAW. Since the letter was omitted from the final contract, both parties reserve the right to appeal the NLRB choice.
“We’ve been anticipating an appeal since the moment that we started devising the petition and formally filing with the NLRB,” NewSWU organizing committee member Jovanna Liuzzo said. “I feel incredibly optimistic because when we’re together we can’t lose. Everyone understood with this contract that it is just one point in pushing for recognition for NewSWU,” they continued.
A university-wide message from Human Resources Vice President Sonya Williams said, “We want to share our sincere gratitude to the members of both the union and university bargaining teams for their dedication and tireless work.”
The final language of the contract will be released to the union by March 19, after which SENS will hold a vote on whether to approve it by March 31.