First of all, we would like to thank the members who came to Worcester to observe the negotiating process and offered comments, evidence, and professional expertise during our caucus. The solidarity and unity on the MSCA side of the room was empowering and inspiring.
We had hoped to finish bargaining over ground rules and even begin presenting some of our proposals on Tuesday. However, we left the table after 5 hours of bargaining without an agreement over ground rules. We did have some movement and found some points of common ground, but the major point of contention remained over the ability of members to participate in the bargaining process.
We believe that the best way to ensure that our members participate is to have negotiations entirely online, or at a minimum to provide a hybrid option when and if negotiations are in person.
With four years of practice with online, hybrid and zoom meetings, we know that the zoom and hybrid meetings can work very effectively. Our preference would be to have all bargaining take place over zoom – it has no commute times, it has built-in accommodations to facilitate participation for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, it provides accessibility for people with physical disabilities, it is neurodiverse-friendly, and it allows parents with small children to participate, to name only a few reasons.
Management’s preference is that all bargaining take place in person. We are willing to compromise and have some in-person bargaining meetings (as was the session on the 6th), but with a hybrid option for those silent representatives to observe negotiations and participate in caucus discussions. We made it clear to management that any technological glitches would not hold up negotiations, interrupt them, or cause them to be canceled. Management remained adamantly opposed to a hybrid approach.
Bizarrely, management argued that fully in-person meetings were the most equitable solution. By that they mean all participants in a session having the same experience (e.g., same visual cues and attention). They denied that their desire to restrict online and hybrid options was about limiting participation among members. We see through this double-speak. Unlike management, we believe that we should conduct bargaining according to the best practices of universal design and that the language of equity and inclusion should not be a disguise for restricting access and harmful practices.
We are eager to get to the business of bargaining and present our proposals to improve our working conditions, which are the learning conditions of our students. Our next bargaining session is over zoom on Tuesday, August 20th starting at 11am. We hope to move beyond the discussion of ground rules at that session, and start negotiating a better contract.
Please join us as a silent representative! Your presence sends a powerful message to management about the engagement of our members; your comments during caucuses help us understand the issues that you care about and provide rich evidence and ideas for our presentations to management; and those of us on the bargaining committee find strength and power from knowing you have our backs.
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