Several rounds of massive budget cuts and an early-retirement program designed to lower faculty payroll have severely hurt the quality of education at UMass-Amherst. In fact, the university has about 200 fewer full-time professors now than it did ten years ago, despite its steady enrollment of about 20,000 students. To cut labor costs, the teaching burden is shifting from full-time faculty to adjuncts, but also to graduate students, who now teach 25% of all courses and are a cheap alternative to having real professors.
As a recent Boston Globe article has shown, graduate students make considerable sacrifices to study at UMass. To make matters worse, they have also been working without a contract for over a year. GEO, the union representing graduate students on campus, has been negotiating with the University during that time, and it is clear that UMass is complicit in pushing Governor Romney’s right-wing agenda.
For starters, the University shows its commitment to "family values" by proposing the elimination of affordable University Child Care, an invaluable service for families. Many grad parents – because they live below the poverty line – do not pay for their child’s care, but under the University’s proposal these parents would be paying almost $5000 for the same care.
Secondly, although the issue of same sex partner benefits never came up in the first year of bargaining, UMass has abruptly made a new proposal to end health benefits for same-sex partners unless they have a valid marriage license. The irony here is that while Romney is aggressively fighting gay marriage rights, his office is also demanding that same-sex couples have a marriage certificate to obtain benefits at UMass.
While it appears Romney has done little more than fight gay marriage and Matt Amorello, he’s also been busy fighting public higher education. He has twice vetoed retroactive pay raises (in the last six months) for University employees, the second of which was thankfully overridden by the state legislature, showing just how far out of touch Romney is with the "reality based community" who understand the value of a vibrant public university. Governor Romney and Chancellor John Lombardi should be ashamed of their contempt for public higher education.
UMass has abruptly made a new proposal to end health benefits for same-sex partners unless they have a valid marriage license.Depending on how “abrupt” the transition is, this is IMO the correct course of action. Same-sex couples should be held to the same standards as opposite-sex couples if marriage is an option. Romney isn’t necessarily behind this; a lot of corporations have done the same, and the rest are considering it. I’m married, but for several years beforehand, my partner was able to ge my health benefits by virtue of our proving financial interdependency (cohabiting, joint checking account, signing an affidavit) while my female coworker was unable to get benefits for her live-in boyfriend.
If Romney ever plans on running for president and being taken seriously by other republicans, he cannot allow unions in his state to win decent contracts.
UMass has abruptly made a new proposal to end health benefits for same-sex partners unless they have a valid marriage license.