University Curiously Walks Away from Bargaining

By Mike Degen

Negotiations between university representatives and the graduate student union came screeching to a halt last week when the university canceled two and a half days of bargaining. The university’s decision came after graduate students met with state senators in Juneau on February 20th to discuss the university’s R1 status. 

There are many moving parts here.

Currently, UAF is at R2 status and seeking to upgrade to R1 status. With an R1 designation, the university would attract more funding from various sources. To attain R1 status, a university must spend over $50M in total research and development spending and graduate seventy doctoral degrees annually. If the university becomes R1, students, staff, and administration would all benefit. Both the union and the administration want UAF to be an R1 research institution. 

The school needs more money to achieve R1 status and is asking the state legislature for funding. On February 20th, several graduate students met with state senators and presented information about R1. In this presentation, the graduate students noted that it took a lot of work to attract doctoral students because UAF graduate student pay is lower than the average in the country. The administration saw this as incendiary even though the graduate students made a fair point: compensation packages must be competitive to attract more doctoral students. This hearing was public and can be found here.

The university responded on February 22nd by canceling bargaining for the remainder of the week. Bargaining is not set to resume until March 18th. Time is of the essence here because if the contract is not submitted to the state legislature by April 25th, it will not be approved until Fall 2025. 

It’s important to note that this follows a pattern of behavior from the university: they’re trying to stall. A public spreadsheet made available by AGWA states that AGWA owes the UA administration four articles. The UA administration owes AGWA fifty-six. These numbers are as of February 29th.

For those unfamiliar with bargaining, AGWA needs to respond to four points made by the UA administration, while the UA needs to respond to twenty-five. The number appears lopsided in that the UA administration is taking longer to respond to articles even though they have people working on bargaining full-time. 

If a new contract is not agreed on by April 25th, they can keep graduate student worker compensation unchanged for another year. Ironically, while attempting to keep graduate student workers’ pay low, they voted to raise tuition prices.

Photo via AWGA’s Instagram

As a result of the university’s decision to walk away from bargaining, on Tuesday, February 27th, the union and graduate students held a strategy session followed by a sit-in at President Pitney’s office. Over sixty students attended. One graduate student noted that President Pitney made more in one month ($33,000+) than graduate students made in a year (this student made $17,000). 

Stay tuned for further updates regarding negotiations.