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Teaching Assistant Strike Averted
University of Washington teaching assistants called off a planned strike in December after the Graduate Student Employee Action Coalition (GSEAC) reached an agreement with the university’s administration in which the university will join the union in lobbying the state legislature to authorize collective bargaining among the graduate teaching assistants.
Hundreds of them had planned to strike over the administration’s refusal to recognize GSEAC as a union. GSEAC, which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers, represents between 1,300 and 1,600 teaching assistants each academic quarter, or about 85 percent of the teaching assistants at the university, according to GSEAC spokesperson Melissa Meade. In an agreement reached hours before the scheduled start of the strike, the university recognized the union and agreed to "meet and confer" with representatives to discuss a contract. A bill that would allow formal collective bargaining to begin is pending in the state legislature.
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