Yesterday our elected bargaining committee and representatives from the UAW met with the bargaining team from Johns Hopkins, which included admin, faculty, and counsel. We made introductions, and each bargaining committee member shared their hopes for bargaining and how their experiences make them personally invested in the outcome. Everyone expressed a desire to be respectful, productive, and efficient so bargaining can move as quickly as possible.
We all collectively agreed not to formalize any written ground rules, and, as such, observers (members of our union who aren’t on our elected bargaining committee) are allowed in the room during future bargaining sessions. We also discussed the location of bargaining sessions; while this first session was on the East Baltimore campus, we would also like to have some sessions on the Homewood campus, as a significant number of our members work on each campus. The team from Johns Hopkins suggested a third location, Johns Hopkins at Eastern, and we agreed to allow that option if space is not available on-campus.
We offered JHU admin more than ten potential dates for our next bargaining session, which is scheduled for Thursday, February 12th at 9-11am. At this session, we’ll begin presenting our non-economic articles. We will confirm the location of this next session once we have agreed to it with the administration and their team, and will pass along an RSVP form for those who wish to observe our future bargaining sessions.
We are very encouraged by a positive first bargaining session, and we hope that the respectful atmosphere and emphasis on efficiency will continue.
