BARGAINING
UPDATES

May 21, 2026

Key Takeaways

• It is open enrollment season. Health insurance premiums remain the same for bargaining unit staff!

• We continued discussions on Seniority and Layoffs.

Good news: our health insurance premiums are “frozen” while we negotiate our first contract – our plan options and premiums remain the same as they were last year. Meanwhile, non-represented staff are seeing another 8% increase in their premium; the same increase that they experienced last year.

We are committed to securing affordable health benefits for bargaining unit members in our contract. To this end, we asked the administration about the change to Caremark for our prescription benefits and how it might affect us. We had previously requested additional information; we are using this to assemble our Benefits proposal now, and we look forward to those upcoming discussions.

After a long delay, we finally received the information we requested from the administration about work schedules and lunch breaks that vary from the norm. This allowed us to present a counterproposal on Hours of Work during this session.

In addition, the administration made some incremental moves in our direction in their counters for Seniority and Layoffs. We responded with counters of our own in the afternoon, and we are continuing to make progress towards a mutual agreement.

The administration also presented a counterproposal on Bargaining Unit Work. Among the issues we hope to address with this proposal is to protect staff from subcontracting. Unfortunately, this long-awaited counter did not include meaningful movement in our direction so we hope to engage in more productive discussions around this topic in future sessions. 

In solidarity,

Your bargaining committee
Jen Goeckeler-Fried, Chair, Biological Sciences, DSAS
Kearsten Adams, Recording Secretary, Academic Advising, UPG
Shawn Alfonso Wells, Pitt Global Experiences, UCIS
Mark Brown, DLAR
Lydia Chmill, Disability Resources & Services, OTC
Emily Daller, University Child Development Center, OHR
Jay Hornack, Law
Adriana Maguiña-Ugarte, Anthropology
Todd Shaffer, Office of Student Life, UPJ
Michelle Utz-Kiley, Epidemiology, SPH
Dan Wyszomierski, UPCI/NSABP
Matt Nader, USW
Nate Kilbert, USW
Don Shaffer, USW
Bernie Hall, District 10 Director, USW