TAU to WMU

October 18, 2006

Proposed Ground Rules for Bargaining

1. The parties shall conduct negotiations at mutually agreeable locations on the Western Michigan University campus.

2. The specific dates of the negotiations, and the length of each negotiating session, shall be mutually determined by the parties.

3. When the parties tentatively agree on the content of a subject matter of an Article, the language shall be initialed and dated by the Chief Negotiators or their designees, and copies provided to both parties’ team members.

4. Each side will make every effort to give 24 hours' notice of cancellation of a negotiating session.

5. Western Michigan University will provide photocopying at no charge to both teams as needed for bargaining during negotiation sessions.

6. Each side shall have full authority to designate bargaining team members for each meeting.

7. Negotiation sessions will be closed to all representatives of the media.

8. Each party will be responsible for maintaining their own minutes of the meetings. There will be no audio and video recording and all pagers and cell phones will be turned off or set to silent use.

9. Either party may call a caucus at any time. The length of a caucus shall be at the discretion of the party initiating it, which will make a good-faith effort to provide the other party with an estimate of the time required.

10. Proposals shall not be considered withdrawn from consideration without formal action: explicit withdrawal, tentative agreement, amendment, etc.

11. All "Tentative Agreements" shall remain so until a whole agreement is reached and ratified.

12. For the convenience of both bargaining teams, proposals will be provided in a digital format wherever possible.