Five weeks in limbo

 We awoke this morning to the news that a tentative agreement had been reached, and we'd be voting on it tonight. I just cast my vote. I won't talk about specifics because I'm not sure I have any, but eleven intensive days of bargaining (and coming up against the tomorrow deadline, after which Bad Things happen. Worse things than would happen anyway.  Much worse.) seemed to actually see more action than the previous weeks/months of bargaining. Take that for what it's worth.

Lots of governance issues agreed on, at least one kind of watered down to make it acceptable to admin. and probably others, but the things that I was most concerned about were agreed to, albeit in watered down form. A half dozen really egregious admin demands that I didn't know had been demanded were withdrawn. So while those issues aren't 'settled', at least they're off the table for life of this contract.

Salary grids adjusted, pending arbitrator decisions about actual $$$. I hope my instructor friends are happy. Some will benefit a lot from the new salary grids. Others not so much, but nobody loses anything, except potentially in the maximum potential lifetime earnings category.

What I want to point out is this is the nature of compromise. Nobody is objectively 'happy' with the result, but everybody finds it acceptable enough to go ahead with it. UMFA executive unanimously recommends ratification, thinking we're not going to do any better, and in fact chances are good we'll do pretty well in arbitration on the numbers. There is of course a significant faction of members who don't like it, feel like we've given up to much (again), want to stay on strike and really put the screws to admin, Bad Things be d*mned. So ratification isn't a slam dunk.

So two hours and change of meeting, and now we vote. Until 11:30pm. So we should know something sometime after 11:30pm. But exactly when isn't clear, but it has to be enough time so that people with 8:30am classes in the morning have time to do something about it. I don't teach until Wednesday, so I can wait to find out in the morning. Which may be when I end this daily-strike-diary nonsense.  We'll see.