For Immediate Release:
April 29, 2022
CONTACT
Adam Pratt, UIC GEO Co-President:
205-317-9124, adampratt95@gmail.com
Jared O’Connor, UIC GEO Co-President:
239-209-2381, jjoconno91@gmail.com
UIC graduate workers ratify new contract
CHICAGO – Graduate workers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) ratified their new contract today, with 97% of voting members accepting the three-year agreement. The workers, members of the UIC Graduate Employees Organization (UIC GEO, IFT Local 6297), spent six days on strike demanding a fair contract with a living wage and stronger workplace protections. Details of the agreement are available on the union’s website.
Upon ratification, UIC GEO Co-President Jared O’Connor released the following statement:
“When we fight, we win. I’m proud of our members who stood up for better workplace protections and fair pay. It wasn’t easy, but our persistence paid off, and we have a contract that our members approve of. We went on strike for six days to secure a contract that will bring stability to our work. In this agreement, we have expanded supports for victims of harassment, decreased fees, and secured a fair wage for UIC graduate workers. We are grateful for the wide support we received from fellow university workers and our labor family, and for our members willing to stand together for our cause.”
The UIC Graduate Employees Organization, Local 6297 of the Illinois Federation of Teachers-American Federation of Teachers, is the member-run union that represents more than 1,500 Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) represents 103,000 teachers and paraprofessionals in PreK-12 school districts throughout Illinois, faculty and staff at Illinois’ community colleges and universities, public employees under every statewide elected constitutional officer, and retirees.
For Immediate Release:
April 25, 2022
CONTACT
Adam Pratt, UIC GEO Co-President:
205-317-9124, adampratt95@gmail.com
Jared O’Connor, UIC GEO Co-President:
239-209-2381, jjoconno91@gmail.com
NOON TODAY: UIC grad workers rally for fair contract
CHICAGO – Graduate workers at the University of Illinois in Chicago will rally today at noon as their fight for a fair contract continues. While progress has been made on some substantive issues, the University refuses to offer a wage that workers can live on. This is especially important for international graduate workers who cannot obtain employment outside of campus due to their visa status.
“We are rallying today to share our stories about graduate working conditions at UIC,” said UIC GEO Organizing Chair Matt DeVilbiss. “Costs are rising and workers are hurting, but UIC won’t budge from a measly 2% raise. Our work, time, and energy support this institution, and they return the favor with poverty-level pay. It’s insulting.”
WHAT: UIC GEO Strike Rally
WHO: UIC Graduate Employee Organization (UIC GEO, IFT Local 6297) members
WHERE: UIC Quad: 803 S Morgan Street Chicago IL 60607 (Parking is available east of the Quad in the UIC parking structure at Polk and Halsted. Access the Quad by walking east from the parking structure and through Student Center East.)
WHEN: Monday, April 25, NOON
Bargaining will continue this week. Tomorrow, faculty members intend to deliver letters of support for graduate workers to University administration. Faculty will not be able to enter final grades if the strike persists through finals.
The UIC Graduate Employees Organization, Local 6297 of the Illinois Federation of Teachers-American Federation of Teachers, is the member-run union that represents more than 1,500 Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) represents 103,000 teachers and paraprofessionals in PreK-12 school districts throughout Illinois, faculty and staff at Illinois’ community colleges and universities, public employees under every statewide elected constitutional officer, and retirees.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
April 15, 2022
CONTACT:
Adam Pratt (GEO co-president), 205-317-9124, adampratt95@gmail.com
Jared O’Connor (GEO co-president), 239-209-2381, jjoconno91@gmail.com
UIC Grad Workers to Strike on April 18 for a Fair Contract
- It would be the second contract cycle in a row that graduate employees at a UIC went on strike
- Over 75% of union membership voted to authorize a strike, with 97% of voters approving
- Over 1500 Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants have been working without a contract since August 15; negotiations have dragged on for 12 months
- Grad workers are paid as little as $20,615 for teaching courses of up to 60 undergraduate students, while paying up to $2,000 in annual university fees
- UIC is thriving, with enrollments at record highs, top administrators getting large bonuses, and a U of I system budget increase for the third year in a row
Over 1500 Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants at the University of Illinois at Chicago will withhold their labor indefinitely beginning April 18 unless a fair contract agreement can be reached between the UIC Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) and the university administration. Over three quarters of GEO members voted in late March to authorize a strike, with 97% of voters approving.
Contract negotiations began one year ago, on April 12, 2021. TAs and GAs have been working without a contract since August 15. GEO is seeking living wages, fee waivers, fair appointment policies, expanded protections against harrassment and discrimination, and other workplace rights. The university administration has consistently rejected all of these proposals.
Despite being highly educated professionals providing skilled labor for a multibillion-dollar institution, UIC grad workers live on the edge of poverty. They make as little as $20,615, even when serving as the primary instructor for courses with as many as 60 undergraduates, and are simultaneously required to pay up to $2,000 in annual university fees.
Grad workers’ low pay and high fees negatively impact their academic progress, professional development, and overall health, which only undermines UIC’s educational and research mission.
“The financial anxiety of being a graduate student is crushing,” says Massie Jones, a graduate student in the Biological Sciences department. “I worry about being able to pay rent and basic bills every month and am afraid of having any sort of car trouble or medical issue that requires a “safety net” of cash because I have no safety net. Healthy groceries are frequently not an option as they are typically more expensive. As graduate students, we work long hours (an eleven or twelve hour day is common) in teaching, research, and learning capacities and feel strongly that being compensated fairly for our work is essential to our health.”
UIC is offering grad workers minuscule raises, which would not even come close to keeping up with inflation, and is rejecting proposals for new fee waivers and better re-appointment policies. At the same time, UIC is flourishing. Enrollments are at record highs, admin salaries and bonuses soar, and the university’s endowment is posting huge returns.
“I can’t go to therapy cause I don’t have money. I can’t get my crown done because I don’t have money. I can’t visit my sister and her kids who were just born cause I don’t have money. So I’m very anxious cause if one bad things happens I don’t have money,” says Caroline Bailey, a graduate student in Psychology. “I spent my entire paycheck on insulin pump supplies last month because our insurance is not designed for people who use hard medical equipment,” adds Margo Arruda, a grad student in English.
Nearly half of the employees represented by GEO are international graduate student workers, whose visa statuses prevent them from accessing many of the financial resources available to domestic students. Despite their extra financial hardships, in recent years UIC has begun charging international grad workers additional fees that domestic grads don’t have to pay.
“As international students we can’t work over 20 hours or outside campus to supplement our income and don’t have access to loans,” explains Natalia Ruiz Vargas, a TA and PhD student in the Biological Sciences department. “When you apply for a Student Visa to come to the US you need proof that you can support yourself. The main thing you use is your offer letter, in my case, with the TAship offered. I say main because the Office of International Students will tell you themselves that what UIC pays you will not be enough to support yourself in Chicago and you need to show that you have enough funds in a bank account to cover the rest.”
One of the most important topics to GEO in these negotiations has been how the university handles cases of discrimination, harassment, workplace bullying, and sexual assault. GEO has sought changes to UIC’s responsible employee policies to give survivors autonomy over how and when investigations are launched or reports filed. GEO has also been fighting for contract language that would codify the process by which survivors obtain supportive measures such as changes to their work schedule or office location when they’ve been assaulted, harassed, or bullied in the workplace.
“The University has fought us tooth and nail over this proposal for over a year, refusing to respect the experiences and autonomy of survivors of harassment and discrimination,” says Veronica Shepp, GEO bargaining committee member and PhD candidate in Criminology, Law, and Justice. “After 12 hours of negotiating on Thursday night, I am cautiously optimistic about securing supportive measures for graduate workers and providing GEO with enough power to grieve the decisions if supportive measures are unreasonably denied. Although I am cautiously optimistic, this proposal remains critically unsettled as we prepare for a strike on Monday.”
Unions across the U of I system have shown support for UIC GEO and their non-discrimination and anti-harassment proposals. Faculty, staff, and grad unions at all three U of I campuses were joined by the unions representing nurses and residents at the UIC hospital in sending letters to administrators expressing support for GEO’s proposals and calling for such policy changes to be adopted more widely in the U of I system. UIC United Faculty will begin bargaining their next contract with the university on Wednesday, April 20th, and will be prioritizing many of the same survivor-oriented policies as GEO.
“UIC United Faculty stands in robust solidarity with the GEO as it proceeds with its planned strike,” states Robert Johnston, UIC United Faculty’s chief steward and professor History. “The UIC administration apparently has not learned any lessons from the strong strike that the GEO conducted only three years ago. Our union continues to insist that the administration settle a just and fair contract with some of our community’s most vulnerable—and valuable—members, graduate student workers. In particular, we join powerfully with other unions at UIC in supporting the GEO’s insistence that the university’s anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies be truly just and effective. And as always, we call for the administration, and Board of Trustees, to change the university’s toxic anti-union culture and move toward a relationship of collaboration instead of conflict with labor.”
This would be the second contract cycle in a row that grad workers at UIC were forced to go on strike for a fair contract. In March 2019, grad workers at UIC were on strike for three weeks before an agreement was reached. In the same month, UIC United Faculty came within hours of a strike. UIUC grad workers went on strike in 2018, and the staff and nurses unions at UIC went on strike in 2020.
“I was very involved in the last strike,” says GEO organizing chair Matt DeVillbiss, a TA and PhD Candidate in the Math department, “and it was clear then–and it’s clear now–that the university has little respect for workers in the system and grad workers in particular. But, it’s exciting to me that when workers stand up for ourselves, we get things done.”
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The UIC Graduate Employees Organization, Local 6297 of the Illinois Federation of Teachers-American Federation of Teachers, is the member-run union that represents more than 1500 Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants at UIC. GEO was legally recognized in 2004 and won its first three-year contract in 2006. GEO ratified its fifth three-year agreement in 2019 that expired in August 2021.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uicgeo/
Twitter: @uicgeo
Website: http://uic-geo.net
For Immediate Release: UIC GEO Calls for a Strike Authorization Vote
For Immediate Release: UIC GEO Calls for a Strike Authorization Vote
April 18, 2013
Last night at the General Membership Meeting, the GEO voted to begin a Strike Authorization Vote. If passed, the vote would authorize an elected Strike Committee to call for a strike of Teaching and Graduate Assistants at UIC. The vote was called after almost a year of contract negotiations with the University during which the GEO sought to address important issues such as wages, health care, tuition differentials, and fees—issues that have a direct impact on the viability of pursuing graduate education at UIC. We voted to proceed with the Strike Authorization Vote because the University has been unwilling to address our concerns regarding the disparity between the high cost of living in Chicago and the low wages graduate workers earn, and the unchecked tuition differentials that depress those wages even more. The GEO believes that all workers deserve a living wage.
The University has the money to pay its workers a living wage. We reject the disproportionate increases in upper level administrators’ salaries while tuition and class sizes increase and wages and positions for maintenance, office staff, faculty, and graduate workers decrease. We reject the University’s attack on our democracy’s most precious resource—an equitable and accessible public education system. Our fight at UIC is connected to an attempt to halt the continued disinvestment of cities and citizens across the country carried out through an attack on workers and the vital public institutions for which they work. We are rising up in solidarity to demand equitable wages, access to affordable health care, and transparency in the administration of this public institution in order to make education accessible to all. We are proceeding with the Strike Authorization Vote because we believe that UIC can be more than it is—we are fighting for UIC, for what it can be.
We are rising in solidarity with workers everywhere. We are rising in solidarity for graduate workers at UIC and we demand a fair contract now!
UIC Graduate Employees Organization, AFT local 6297, AFL-CIO
IMMEDIATE RELEASE: IMPENDING STRIKE PLANNED BY UIC GRADUATE UNION
Chicago, IL- On Friday, April 5th, the 1,500 member Graduate Employee’s Organization at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a labor union representing graduate student employees at UIC, filed a notice of intent to strike with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board after ten months of acrimonious, sometimes explosive, bargaining. The nearly unanimous vote authorizing this move came after a packed meeting of the GEO’s general membership, in response to an inflammatory contract proposal by the administration that included provisions inhibiting GEO members from participating in labor demonstrations, and refusing to yield on the university’s practice of charging unlimited tuition differentials against student workers. Currently the graduate student workers at UIC, work for less than 15k dollars, annually, at a school where the average administrator earns a six figure salary.
The GEO says that unless the administration resumes negotiations in earnest the 1,500 teaching and graduate assistants will strike, interrupting undergraduate classes across the campus. The GEO contract technically expired in August and since then the administration’s bargaining team has persistently cancelled meetings with the GEO, even after the GEO brought in a mediator to help facilitate good faith bargaining. Despite the higher costs of living in Chicago, most UIC graduate workers earn less in comparable pay than their counterparts at the Urbana Champaign campus, and significantly less than the 17k dollars that the UIC department of financial aid estimates is the minimum cost of living for graduate students in Chicago.
For more information on the GEO’s contract negotiations and current events visit: http://uic-geo.net/mainsite/
For Immediate Release: UIC Grad Employees Ramp Up the Pressure: “Work With Us! Don’t Make Us Strike!”
UIC GRAD EMPLOYEES RAMP UP THE PRESSURE
“WORK WITH US! DON’T MAKE US STRIKE!”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: UIC Graduate Employees Make Their Voices Heard
UIC Graduate Employees Make Their Voices Heard
Chicago— At noon on Tuesday, February 26th, the Graduate Employees’ Organization, a labor union representing graduate student employees at UIC, called their members to action. Graduate employees, faculty, students and community supporters showed their solidarity- amidst blistering winds and snow blown faces- and demanded that the University present their graduate employees with a fair contract.
At noon, more than seventy supporters gathered to protest the University unfair treatment of their graduate employees. Currently, graduate employees are earning 140% above the federal poverty line, which economically situates them between “very poor” and “poor”.
“We are not doing this for our own selfish motives, we want to improve UIC. That will only happen if the
UIC administration respects us and we respect each other. We deserve better wages and we deserve to be able to afford to pay our tuition. A lot of undergraduates aren’t able to pay their tuition here and we’re not either,” said Piere Washington a teaching assistant in the Sociology Department.
The primary points of contention include high healthcare premiums, low wages, and increasing fees.The health insurance option that the university offers its graduate employees, for a fee, is not a licensed insurance company and thus its policy holders are not afforded the same protections and rights under Illinois law as licensed insurance holders. Karen Cralli, a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies was forced by UIC’s unlicensed insurance company, Campus Care, to make a choice: massive medical debt or death.
“Campus Care does not cover the majority of medically necessary, life-sustaining treatment for my blood disorder. When Campus Care put me in a position to choose between death and debt, I chose debt. No one should ever be forced to make that choice… Graduate employees deserve the same choices as other UIC employees—we should have the option to enroll in an insurance plan that won’t force us to choose between debt and death,” says Cralli.
The Graduate Employee Organization will be back at the bargaining table with the University on
Thursday, March 7th for an all-day bargaining session.
For more information on the GEO’s bargaining session and contract negotiations visit https://
www.facebook.com/uicgeo and http://uic-geo.net/mainsite/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: UIC Graduate Employees Show Their Strength
UIC Graduate Employees Show Their Strength
Chicago— At noon on Tuesday, February 26th, the Graduate Employees’ Organization, a labor union representing graduate student employees at UIC, will be rallying in the UIC Quad urging the administration to be more reasonable at the bargaining table.
Graduate employees have been without a contract for the past six months and this has resulted in a wage freeze for their approximately 1,500 members. The primary points of contention include high healthcare premiums, low wages, and increasing fees. Graduate employees have demanded that their compensation match UIC’s own figure of the annual cost of living, $17,958, and the administration’s proposals have thus far fallen more than three thousand dollars below this figure.
“Rally for Graduate Employee Rights” will continue the momentum from the graduate employees’ previous event, “Show Us Some Love UIC” where graduate employees delivered hundreds of Valentine’s Day messages to the chancellor in the effort to get the Administration to be more reasonable at the bargaining table.
“UIC calls itself a world class university. But when it comes to employee compensation, benefits, and working conditions, UIC is anything but world class,” says Kevin Carey, a PhD candidate in the department of English. Grad employees find it particularly egregious that UIC has dramatically increased the salaries of many administrators already receiving very high salaries. UIC’s chancellor, for example, received a 10% raise this year, bringing her salary to $411,752.11 while grad employees receive wages well below the cost of living for Chicago and often pay thousands of dollars in fees each semester.
“UIC is a public university, and education should be its primary aim. This does not square well with the fact that those working in classrooms are receiving less than a living wage while administrative staff are drawing exorbitant salaries. UIC’s priorities are backwards,” says Greg Sutliff, a teaching assistant in the Philosophy department.
Throughout the course of negotiations, members of the union have emphasized that their work is essential to the functioning of the university. “Teaching assistants are responsible for a large amount of the undergraduate teaching at UIC, and other graduate assistants perform vital administrative duties,” says Jes Cook, a teaching assistant in the Sociology department. “UIC works because we do.”
For more information on the GEO’s “Rally for Graduate Employee Rights” and contract negotiations visit https://www.facebook.com/uicgeo and http://uic-geo.net/mainsite/
For Immediate Release: Frustrated UIC Graduate Employees Bombard Chancellor with Valentines
Chicago—The Graduate Employees’ Organization, a labor union representing graduate student employees at UIC, has been without a contract for the past six months. This has resulted in a wage freeze for their approximately 1,500 members. The primary points of contention include high healthcare premiums, low wages, and increasing fees. Graduate employees have demanded that their compensation match UIC’s own figure of the annual cost of living, $17,958, and the administration’s proposals have thus far fallen more than three thousand dollars below this figure.
At noon on Valentine’s Day, graduate employees will be urging the administration to not break their hearts, as they deliver hundreds of Valentine’s Day messages to the chancellor in the effort to get the Administration to be more reasonable at the bargaining table.
“UIC calls itself a world class university. But when it comes to employee compensation, benefits, and working conditions, UIC is anything but world class,” says Kevin Carey, a PhD candidate in the department of English. Grad employees find it particularly egregious that UIC has dramatically increased the salaries of many administrators already receiving very high salaries. UIC’s chancellor, for example, received a 10% raise this year, bringing her salary to $411,752.11 while grad employees receive wages well below the cost of living for Chicago and often pay thousands of dollars in fees each semester.
“UIC is a public university, and education should be its primary aim. This does not square well with the fact that those working in classrooms are receiving less than a living wage while administrative staff are drawing exorbitant salaries. UIC’s priorities are backwards,” says Greg Sutliff, a teaching assistant in the Philosophy department.
Throughout the course of negotiations, members of the union have emphasized that their work is essential to the functioning of the university. “Teaching assistants are responsible for a large amount of the undergraduate teaching at UIC, and other graduate assistants perform vital administrative duties,” says Jes Cook, a teaching assistant in the Sociology department. “UIC works because we do.”
For more information on the GEO’s “Show Us Some Love, UIC” campaign and contract negotiations visit https://www.facebook.com/uicgeo and http://uic-geo.net/mainsite/
