2020 has been a challenging year for all of us - continued violence against Black and Brown people in our country, pandemic and economic recession leading to record unemployment, and now wildfires like we haven’t seen in recent history have savaged much of the state. Through all of these struggles, SEIU members have continued to work on campus and remotely. We have been supporting students in too many ways to mention, keeping our campuses safe, and working to get this pandemic under control, among countless other essential services our campus community relies on.
In short, We are Essential.
We head into bargaining in a much different financial reality than we did two years ago. Instead of record revenue and a plan to raise taxes on corporations we’re looking at a record budget shortfall. Our work during bargaining will be critical in order to win a fair contract that defends our pay and benefits that we have fought so hard for and includes improvements on key issues that improve working conditions and get recognition for the essential work we do every day. In times like these, we need to look to key non-economic issues as well as economic issues we can win on.
To do this we must:
The goal of this survey is to get quantifiable data on issues and priorities. Filling out this survey is the first step of this campaign, together we will show the Universities we are all essential. Please have all responses in by December 4th.
During the last bargaining cycle we were able to pass historical revenue reform that led to salary increases at levels we hadn’t seen in decades. Despite the record revenue we saw initial proposals from the Universities to triple what we pay for our monthly health insurance premium share and 0% raises. We fought back and won coming within hours of going on strike. One year later it's hard to believe how different things look. While Oregon has been able to weather this recession better than many states because of the revenue reform we helped pass, our state is still in a dire financial situation. We’re reeling from a worldwide pandemic, record unemployment, and now a devastating wildfire season. Without federal funding for states we will likely be looking at massive cuts proposals from the Universities, and with federal funding we need to be prepared to fight to protect jobs, wages and benefits by being clear about our priorities.
A note on PERS: We don’t bargain over PERS issues, but we do expect to see proposals around PERS at the Legislature. We will send out separate, PERS-specific survey questions later in the process to get member feedback.
Given that context, please answer the following questions relating to wages and benefits:
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