Current Issues
Our collective bargaining agreement with the university expires August 15, 2012, and we have some important decisions to make. Come to the first General Membership Meeting (GMM) of the semester to learn more about the bargaining process! We will select our bargaining team and vote on our bargaining platform.
Wednesday, February 1st at 5:30 PM
University YMCA – 1001 S. Wright St.
After a long public discussion at the last General Membership Meeting, GEO members voted to endorse the proposed Calvin Miller Solidarity Statement. The final draft of the statement is as follows:
The GEO stands in solidarity with Calvin Miller and other people who are targets of police violence or racial profiling in Champaign-Urbana. We call for the immediate creation of a permanent Civilian Review Board to investigate this case and future cases. This Board should not include any members of the police department and should have full investigative and subpoena powers. We condemn racism and race-based excessive force within the Champaign and Urbana police forces, and we demand equal protection and treatment. We recognize that these issues have a long history in this community and require long-term fundamental change. We stand for policies rooted in justice, peace, and equity, rather than excessive force and violent practice. Therefore we call for the following additional actions toward that end:
- The police department must listen to community input as the new police chief is selected.
- Champaign City Council meetings must remain public.
- We insist that Champaign and the University use their resources to fund economic development in poor neighborhoods and communities of color in Champaign-Urbana. In particular, we call for the continued full funding of programs such as the Summer Youth Employment Program to ensure that at least 150 Champaign students ages 14-18 can gain valuable job skills and build connections to employment opportunities in their local community.
The 1,750 graduate employees, represented by Graduate Assistants United (GAU), at Southern Illinois University Carbondale have now been working without a contract for more than 480 days. They are joined by tenured and tenure-track, civil service employees and non-tenured faculty – together making up 3,500 unionized employees on the SIUC campus.
This past Monday members of GAU voted to set a strike deadline. If no agreement has been reached by 12:01 AM November 3rd, union members will walk off the job, commencing one of the largest higher education strikes in history.
Their demands are simple: a contract that guarantees quality, affordable health care to graduate employees, the option to buy coverage for spouses and children, and an end to skyrocketing fees, which have doubled over the past 5 years. Faculty are fighting to preserve tenure (the administration wants the right to lay offtenured faculty due to financial reasons) and civil service employees and those non-tenured faculty are fighting layoffs and furloughs.
It’s not too late to help our fellow graduate employees in Southern Illinois. You can email or call the SIUC administration to settle these contracts today! Help keep grads and faculty in the classrooms and offices and off the picket lines!
Ms. Misty Whittington
Executive Secretary of the Board
Office of the Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees
(618) 536-3357
Rita Cheng: rcheng@siu.edu
SIUC Chancellor
(618) 453-2341
Glenn Poshard: poshard@siu.edu
SIU President
(618) 536-3357
“The faculty union at the University of Illinois at Chicago won another victory Friday, with a ruling by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board rejecting a request by the university to stay an order certifying the union. The union is the result of a major organizing drive conducted by the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers, which have hoped that the effort at UIC would pave the way for more faculty unions at doctoral institutions.”
Read more at the Inside Higher Ed ‘Quick Takes’ Blog.
The members of the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), Illinois Federation of Teachers Local 6300, AFL-CIO, stand in solidarity with the members of the Graduate Assistants United and their fellow unions on the Southern Illinois University (SIU) campus as they fight to secure a freeze on fees that have gone up more than $1,000 since 2006 and adequate health care for their members and their members’ families.
Members of the GEO support the Carbondale graduate assistants as they work to find an agreement with the University and consider the need to strike in the face of insufficient bargaining progress. In 2009 the GEO held a successful strike in order to secure tuition waivers, which were a part of the contract that our members were not willing to compromise on.
We also stand in solidarity with the three other unions that are currently in negotiations with the SIU administration (the Association of Civil Service Employees, the Non-Tenure Track Faculty Association, and the Faculty Association). We are particularly concerned that the SIU administration is seeking the authority to lay off tenured professors, at the administration’s sole discretion, for financial reasons. This bypasses and undermines the tenure system. Many of us will become faculty members in the future and feel strongly that the integrity of our universities and the future of our academic careers are dependent on respecting the tenure system.
We know that labor solidarity in education
In solidarity,
The members of the UIUC Graduate Employees Organization
The members of the Graduate Employees Organization, Illinois Federation of Teachers Local 6300, AFL-CIO, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, enthusiastically endorse the America Wants to Work National Week of Action sponsored by our parent organization, the AFL-CIO.
We stand in solidarity with the National Week of Action in two ways: first, as we enter a bargaining year, our daily, weekly, and monthly organizing efforts share the common goal of increasing access to high quality graduate employment opportunities at a major public University in the United States. In particular, our organizing efforts around increasing union membership, securing full tuition waivers for graduate employees, and insisting on fair wages and benefits have the goal of making graduate research and employment accessible to minority and working class students in the United States and Illinois.
Second, as we organize around our membership and our contract, our members continue to participate in solidarity actions with local, state, and national unions around the country. Specifically, we endorse all actions in Champaign-Urbana connected with the AFL-CIO National Week of Action, including the Occupy C-U rally in Champaign on October 15. We encourage our members to join other local unions and activists to demonstrate for the right of all working people to have access to good jobs.
Check out the Facebook Event page for Occupy CU (10/15) here: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=302100619806388
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: TEACHING ASSISTANTS’ UNION WINS LANDMARK ARBITRATION CASE AGAINST MAJOR PUBLIC UNIVERSITY
Urbana-Champaign, IL (October 3): The Graduate Employees’ Organization at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has won a landmark arbitration ruling in a contract dispute with UIUC administrators over tuition waivers.
An independent arbitrator has ruled that an attempt by University of Illinois officials to reduce tuition waivers for some incoming graduate employees represents a clear violation of the contract between the union and the Illinois Board of Trustees.
Tuition waivers are a benefit of employment, which represent no cost to the University. Preventing reduction of tuition waivers will preserve quality of education at Illinois, organizers say, while protecting vital labor standards.
In November 2009, over 1,000 Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) members went on strike to prevent the reduction or elimination of tuition waivers for graduate employees. This was the fifth largest work stoppage in the United States in 2009. They GEO won contract language protecting tuition waivers for current and future Teaching and Graduate Assistants at UIUC.
In the Summer of 2010, the GEO learned of a policy change affecting tuition waivers for incoming graduate employees in several departments in the College of Fine and Applied Arts (FAA). Effective Fall of 2010, incoming graduate employees in these departments were no longer granted waivers for out-of-state tuition. Even with temporary scholarships, many Fine and Applied Arts graduate employees, earning between $7,000.00 and $9,000.00 per academic year, were left with additional fees totaling up to $1,000.00.
This change in tuition waiver policy was a clear violation of the GEO’s contract with the Illinois Board of Trustees. In 2010, the GEO filed a grievance alleging a contract violation, while GEO members launched a public awareness campaign that included email and letter drives, communication with elected officials, testimony to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, and other events.
By attempting to charge incoming graduate employees tuition in clear violation of its contract with teaching and graduate assistants, administrators have cost the University of Illinois as much as $100,000.00. This is yet another example of flawed budget priorities at UIUC, where the most vulnerable members of the University community are frequently asked to shoulder the burdens of budget shortfalls.
After an arbitration hearing in mid-July, an independent arbitrator on September 20 declared the University’s tuition waiver policy in violation of its contract with the GEO. The arbitrator ordered the U of I administration to make whole any harm done to graduate employees.
The arbitration victory marks a significant achievement for GEO members. According to GEO communications officer Rodrigo Pacheco-McEvoy, “not only does the ruling secure tuition waivers as a benefit of employment for graduate employees, which is absolutely necessary to maintain accessibility to public higher education at UIUC; it also helps protect the arts from budgetary cutbacks.”
While the GEO has much cause to celebrate, the story of tuition waivers and the arts at UIUC is not over. The GEO is entering another bargaining year. According to GEO Co- President Miriam Larsen, “our members are fully committed to protecting the tuition waivers that make a high quality graduate education accessible to a diverse student body.”
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For more information, please contact Rodrigo Pacheco-McEvoy, Communications Officer, at 858-382-2271 or rodrigo.pacheco.mcevoy@gmail.com. More information can also be found on the website at uigeo.org.