OCTOBER 18, 2022
Subject: Progress at the Bargaining Table
Subject: Progress at the Bargaining Table
Hello Again!
It’s Jenise Brown, your co-chair of the Bargaining Committee. It is a little over a year since the first time that I wrote to you after our very first bargaining session. We have made a lot of progress since then!
To start, I want to thank you. We had a terrific action around the opening of the Carnegie International, with a strong group of members in attendance informing the public about the poverty wages that the museum was and still is built on. The event was also a chance to support the many workers who came together to make the CI possible and honestly, it was just a good time. We on the Bargaining Committee will continue to press on this issue and work with the amazing Contract Action Team to plan for more actions to get a fair economic proposal from CMP. (Wanna get more involved? Join the CAT!!)
Since the CI action, we have had two full-day bargaining sessions. There was a change in the tone at the bargaining table: it was apparent that management had a new understanding of our seriousness, and they had an increased focus on reaching agreements. During our first session on September 29th at Carnegie Science Center, the parties came to five tentative agreements. A tentative agreement (TA) is when both parties at the bargaining table agree to contract language for a specific item and agree to be finished negotiating that item. All the TAs as a group become the final contract that, once the entire negotiation is complete, is ratified by the membership (that’s you!). We had a total of ten TAs going into the September 29th meeting, so getting five in one day is a big deal! I take it as proof that your actions beyond the bargaining table are what really matter to getting lasting change and protections in our museums.
The second bargaining day on October 4th at Carnegie Museum of Natural History was also full of productive conversation, and we are poised to get another three TAs from this session. All eight of these agreements are important non-economic parts of our contract. I want to highlight three of the completed tentative agreements.
One TA is a grievance procedure that ends in binding arbitration. This means that if there is an action that violates the contract, there is a procedure in place to be able to challenge the action and have it remedied. If both parties cannot agree to a remedy after going through the procedure, a third party arbitrator would make the final decision. Having impartial enforcement of our contract by a third party protects our members and creates a strong contract. In exchange for this, we agreed to a no strike, no lockout policy that says we will not participate in strikes or other similar activities during the term of the contract, and that management will not prevent us from working. I believe this is a great example of both sides coming to an agreement that will benefit all of our members and the museums as a whole.
Another TA is that both sides have also agreed on terms for a Joint Labor-Management Committee that will be formed after the contract is ratified. This creates a forum for UMW to continue our productive discussions with museum management and to find mutually beneficial resolutions to questions that weren’t considered during negotiation.
The third TA I am highlighting is that we agreed on terms for just cause discipline. This is an important piece of any contract - it is much like a member’s “Bill of Rights” in the event they are subject to discipline. It requires the employer to show clear evidence for why the member is being disciplined, specifies a process for what happens when a member is disciplined and what the expected repercussions are, and limits how the discipline can and cannot be used for determining future discipline.
This is just a high level synopsis of what is happening at the bargaining table. If you have any questions, please reach out to your CAT members, Bargaining Committee members, or as always email us at [email protected]. All of us on the Bargaining Committee would love for each and every one of you to be as involved as is right for you. It is all of our contributions together that create this great Union.
This is a huge moment for UMW and I am excited to be a part of it. I want to close with something I said when we opened these negotiations, and that guides me still.
“UMW is serious about elevating the voices of the most marginalized workers and making structural changes to create equity. These issues are systemic, longstanding, and are not the fault of anyone currently here negotiating, but it is our responsibility to solve them. UMW acknowledges and appreciates the progress CMP has made toward this, but there is substantially more to be done.”
In solidarity,
Jenise
Jenise Brown (she/her) works as a part-time educator at CMNH and has been in her position for four and a half years. She is an ecologist with degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of South Florida, where she spent a lot of her time in a pond looking for frogs. Her favorite part of her job as an educator is to take students to ponds... to look for frogs! When she is not working at the museum or aboard Explorer working for Rivers of Steel, you can find her gardening, hanging out with her partner Jason and their two cats, doing union stuff, or helping out with other community and civic engagement.
It’s Jenise Brown, your co-chair of the Bargaining Committee. It is a little over a year since the first time that I wrote to you after our very first bargaining session. We have made a lot of progress since then!
To start, I want to thank you. We had a terrific action around the opening of the Carnegie International, with a strong group of members in attendance informing the public about the poverty wages that the museum was and still is built on. The event was also a chance to support the many workers who came together to make the CI possible and honestly, it was just a good time. We on the Bargaining Committee will continue to press on this issue and work with the amazing Contract Action Team to plan for more actions to get a fair economic proposal from CMP. (Wanna get more involved? Join the CAT!!)
Since the CI action, we have had two full-day bargaining sessions. There was a change in the tone at the bargaining table: it was apparent that management had a new understanding of our seriousness, and they had an increased focus on reaching agreements. During our first session on September 29th at Carnegie Science Center, the parties came to five tentative agreements. A tentative agreement (TA) is when both parties at the bargaining table agree to contract language for a specific item and agree to be finished negotiating that item. All the TAs as a group become the final contract that, once the entire negotiation is complete, is ratified by the membership (that’s you!). We had a total of ten TAs going into the September 29th meeting, so getting five in one day is a big deal! I take it as proof that your actions beyond the bargaining table are what really matter to getting lasting change and protections in our museums.
The second bargaining day on October 4th at Carnegie Museum of Natural History was also full of productive conversation, and we are poised to get another three TAs from this session. All eight of these agreements are important non-economic parts of our contract. I want to highlight three of the completed tentative agreements.
One TA is a grievance procedure that ends in binding arbitration. This means that if there is an action that violates the contract, there is a procedure in place to be able to challenge the action and have it remedied. If both parties cannot agree to a remedy after going through the procedure, a third party arbitrator would make the final decision. Having impartial enforcement of our contract by a third party protects our members and creates a strong contract. In exchange for this, we agreed to a no strike, no lockout policy that says we will not participate in strikes or other similar activities during the term of the contract, and that management will not prevent us from working. I believe this is a great example of both sides coming to an agreement that will benefit all of our members and the museums as a whole.
Another TA is that both sides have also agreed on terms for a Joint Labor-Management Committee that will be formed after the contract is ratified. This creates a forum for UMW to continue our productive discussions with museum management and to find mutually beneficial resolutions to questions that weren’t considered during negotiation.
The third TA I am highlighting is that we agreed on terms for just cause discipline. This is an important piece of any contract - it is much like a member’s “Bill of Rights” in the event they are subject to discipline. It requires the employer to show clear evidence for why the member is being disciplined, specifies a process for what happens when a member is disciplined and what the expected repercussions are, and limits how the discipline can and cannot be used for determining future discipline.
This is just a high level synopsis of what is happening at the bargaining table. If you have any questions, please reach out to your CAT members, Bargaining Committee members, or as always email us at [email protected]. All of us on the Bargaining Committee would love for each and every one of you to be as involved as is right for you. It is all of our contributions together that create this great Union.
This is a huge moment for UMW and I am excited to be a part of it. I want to close with something I said when we opened these negotiations, and that guides me still.
“UMW is serious about elevating the voices of the most marginalized workers and making structural changes to create equity. These issues are systemic, longstanding, and are not the fault of anyone currently here negotiating, but it is our responsibility to solve them. UMW acknowledges and appreciates the progress CMP has made toward this, but there is substantially more to be done.”
In solidarity,
Jenise
Jenise Brown (she/her) works as a part-time educator at CMNH and has been in her position for four and a half years. She is an ecologist with degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of South Florida, where she spent a lot of her time in a pond looking for frogs. Her favorite part of her job as an educator is to take students to ponds... to look for frogs! When she is not working at the museum or aboard Explorer working for Rivers of Steel, you can find her gardening, hanging out with her partner Jason and their two cats, doing union stuff, or helping out with other community and civic engagement.