First, the good news: UM’s newly unionized workers have a new contract with a 30% pay increase and improved healthcare plans. The new contract takes effect next week. The UM contract is causing other local employers, notably FIU, to re-evaluate their employment agreements. The Miami Herald offered this summary of the new UM contract:
The 400 Unicco workers at University of Miami would be guaranteed minimum hourly rates ranging from $8.55 to $10.80 as part of their union-negotiated contract, which runs from Sept. 1 through Aug. 31, 2010. They would also get:
- Raises: Sept. 1, 25 cents an hour. In September 2007, 40 cents an hour. In 2008 and 2009, 50 cents an hour each year.
- Healthcare: VISTA Healthcare program will cost employees $13 for individual coverage. Family coverage will cost more than $500 a month.
- Other: One to three weeks of vacation, three personal days, nine holidays.
Further details at the picketline blog (now brought to you in horrible pink background — what were they thinking? — certain to evoke subliminal associations with pinkos and the like…)
The bad news is that we’re learning more about how UM handled student discipline cases arising out of strike support activities, and the allegations are not pretty. Prof. Jane Connolly has written two open letters describing what she knows about the process in two cases. They’re available at picketline blog, but I’m going to reprint them in full because they claims of self-dealing and fundamental unfairness by the UM administration are serious — and reflect what I’ve head elsewhere. I hope the UM administration has a good response to these charges, other than the oft-repeated claim that its rules give it the discretion to do what it did, but I have yet to hear such a response.
