WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BARGAINING SESSION?

During our 21st bargaining session our lead negotiators, Nachiketa Adhikari (Math) and Sam Froiland (History) presented a proposal with the articles Appointment Terms, Evaluations, Hours of Work, Management Rights, Expenses, and Personnel Files. We exchanged this for our proposals of Time Off for GEO business and requiring the University to revise and maintain the online links contained in our successor contract. The University countered with a proposal containing all of our articles with the exception of our Hours of Work Package. After receiving input from our members during caucus, we ended the session with a counter proposal with improvements to the Hours of Work section. Read more below for highlights from the session:

WHAT WERE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SESSION?

We made a lot of progress throughout the session and with strong member participation we believe we can reach an agreement in the next session that will:

Reduce overwork by defining stronger parameters for what constitutes overwork.

Reduce late appointment letters by increasing the fee charged to university administration from $70 to $100 when they provide appointment letters late.

Allow graduate workers to self-describe identity on employment forms where legally possible.

“It is very good that the administration continues to negotiate the separate sections that we’re bargaining on instead of take-it-or-leave-it proposals. They’re feeling the pressure!"

-GEO member

WHAT CAN MY CO-WORKERS AND I DO?

WE are only as strong as WE OURSELVES make the GEO! Participating in GEO events and organizing activities helps increase our bargaining power and lets you meet your fellow graduate employees! Stay tuned for the podcast next week when we hope to reach agreements with your participation at the session!

Our next General Membership Meeting (GMM) will be key in helping us developing our bargaining campaign, strategy and communications based on membership priorities. We hope to see you next Tuesday, February 7th, 6:15PM-7:45PM at Room 4035 of the Campus Instructional Facility. Do you have a comment or idea you want to share? Fill out the form https://tinyurl.com/GMMComment

Join us for our next bargaining session on Friday, February 10th, 12:45-5:30 PM at Illini Union Ballroom. Bring a friend, tell the colleagues in your department! Sign up for a role here: https://tinyurl.com/GEOBARGROLES Mark your bargaining calendar with the flier below!

NO NEW EPISODE OF AFTER BARGAINING THIS WEEK

We have decided to postpone this week’s episode to next week. Stay tuned for new updates. Meanwhile, you can listen to our previous episodes and share this flyer with your friends and colleagues. Short, crisp, and to the point. https://tinyurl.com/yc8kszu6

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BARGAINING SESSION?

With the theme “NEW YEAR, NEW CONTRACT,” victory is OURS! During our 20th bargaining session we managed to sign two tentative agreements in seven sections (articles) which will become part of our new contract: Tuition Waivers, Recognition, Non Discrimination, Grievance Procedure, Use of University Resources, Leaves and Holidays, and No Strike/No Lockout. Our lead negotiators Chelsea Birchmier (Psychology) and Sam Froiland (History) negotiated several gains including medical condition as a protected category, improved immigration leave protections, paid parental leave for up to 6 weeks, unprecedented additional days for bereavement leave and protecting grad workers’ ability to choose the grievance procedure for discrimination. Read more below to find out more, what’s next and how you can get involved. Listen to the episode below to learn about what tentative agreement is and much more!

WHAT DID WE WIN?

We, OUR Union, want to win the fair contract that we all need in the most expeditious and effective way possible. Food prices increased 10% in December according to the Consumer Price Index and the longer we are without a contract the harder our conditions will be. We achieved and will continue to achieve the leverage and power to advance negotiations by GEO members showing up consistently to bargaining sessions and making our voices heard. The highlights of what we won include:

Non Discrimination:

The inclusion of medical condition as a protected category.

Leaves and Holidays:

6 weeks of paid parental leave.

An increase from 3 days to 5 days paid bereavement leave for close relatives and loved ones.

Up to 3 days (with supervisor request) of paid bereavement leave for distant relatives and gender neutral language— and according to admin, no other Union on Campus has this leave of up to 3 days paid bereavement leave for distant relatives.

A process through which graduate employees can request paid time off for religious observances.

Strengthened immigration leave policy such that the university must make a good faith effort to place a grad worker in the same assistantship they were hired for when experiencing immigration-related delays in travel.

Tuition Waivers:

Continuing our 20-year-long struggle, we managed to protect the guaranteed tuition waivers and access to public education that we had won in the previous bargaining cycle of 2018.

Grievance procedures:

Maintained the integrity of our ability to grieve discrimination and harassment in our contract except in cases of Title IX, sexual misconduct policy, and imminent safety violations.

Expanded the number of days to submit a grievance when a graduate worker experiences a contract violation.

No Strike/No Lockout

Addition of no lockout to the existing no strike clause, which forbids the university from locking out grad workers from our offices and Illinois accounts during a labor dispute.

If you would like to read the tentative agreements in full, attend an upcoming GEO event or email barg@uigeo.org to schedule a time with ben from Bargaining Team to view the agreement in the GEO office.

Although we celebrate the victory we accomplished last night, the fact that we waited 10 months for this accomplishment shows that we need a third party to mediate between us and admin to expedite bargaining. Mediation is a form of dispute resolution using a neutral third party; mediators are generally called in late in the bargaining process to help facilitate agreement. Unfortunately, yesterday was the second time admin refused to agree to bring in a mediator.

Some of the members of the GEO Bargaining Team, from left to right, Arthur Paganini (Mechanical Engineering), Dante Dabaghian (Law), Sam Froiland (History), Aaron Councilman (Computer Science), Karla Sanabria Véaz (Social Work), Chelsea Birchmier (Psychology), ben wallis (History), Abhishek Kodumagulla (Physics), Nachiketa Adhikari (Math)

“When they agreed to three days of leave instead of one, it struck me that [admin] can be inventive, they can think with us about these things, when they tell us no that’s not the truth. They don’t refuse to bargain with us because they can’t, they refuse because they don’t want to.” —Sharayah, GEO member

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Our next bargaining session is on Friday, February 3rd, 12:45-5:30 PM at Illinois Union rooms A & B. Bring a friend! Sign up for a role here: https://tinyurl.com/GEOBARGROLES

GEO will hold a Bargaining Information Meeting Thursday, February 2nd, 6-8 PM in Siebel Center for Computer Science 1404. Dinner will be provided. Open to all Graduate Students.

Our next GMM is February 7th, 6:15PM-7:45PM at Room 4035 of the Campus Instructional Facility. The topics under discussion are bargaining strategy and communications.

NEW EPISODE OF AFTER BARGAINING

Tune in and give a listen to Graduate Employees' Organization and their success on the 20th bargaining session. Chelsea and Sam, the lead negotiators, join the After Bargaining podcast to share why this session was a success. The GEO signed seven tentative agreements and the leads provide intricate details of what these agreements are and what they mean to graduate workers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Share the episode with your friend! Listen here! or here: https://anchor.fm/after-bargaining

The GEO met with the University administration’s bargaining team to continue negotiating our new contract, specifically the Recognition and Non-Discrimination articles. To open up the session, we read our statement condemning the admin for sending in armed police to forcibly remove graduate workers at our Tutor-in last week, when all we were doing was providing free food and tutoring to our students preparing for finals. The admin's bargaining team provided no response, again demonstrating their lack of respect for public higher education and for those who do much of the University’s academic work.

The rest of the session revolved around the issue of the grievance procedure and the admin’s proposal to modify the complaint process for graduate workers who have been victims of discrimination and harassment. These modifications are only for complaints of discrimination and harassment; the grievance procedure for other complaints (such as overwork) remains unchanged. The admin still insists upon us having to go through their inefficient, time-consuming Office of Access and Equity (OAE) process that oftentimes takes months to resolve, condescendingly telling us that they are “experts” in this field and know what is best for us. Their justification? The 2020 Title IX regulations require the University to use the same process for all sexual harassment claims. To address this, we presented a counter proposal with modifications to the Non-Discrimination article in which a grievance can be taken up after the required Title IX process, while also maintaining the right of graduate workers to directly utilize the much faster grievance process in other cases of harassment and discrimination.

Yet again, it was clear that the admin and Robb Craddock, the lead negotiator, do not respect graduate workers. Robb dismissed our concerns about graduate workers’ limited options for redress if the OAE process (for which the University has just four investigators, each handling 20-30 cases at a time) fails them, saying that having a parallel grievance process could lead to “two different distinct results which isn’t in anyone’s interest.” We disagree: having access to a grievance-arbitration process where an arbitrator (an entity external to the University, unlike OAE) could provide relief or restitution is very much in our interest.

To this end, the GEO recognizes how negotiations have been going rather slow, with no tentative agreements on any article yet. The GEO sees mediation as an important step to expedite the bargaining process and have tentative agreements. Towards the end of the session, the GEO asked if the admin would be willing to pursue joint mediation in the hopes of reaching agreement on a fair contract sooner, but the admin refused, stating that they “do not believe it is necessary at this time.”

“I am glad we fought for the grievance procedure, and learned of its importance at the bargaining session.” - Wyatt (Mathematics)

“The OAE's job is to make sure that the University doesn’t get sued. I’ve known people that have gone through the OAE process and the case coordinators are always apologizing that they can't do more for us because of what their bosses and the University administration are telling them to do.” - Grace (Mathematics)

How can I and my co-workers/friends participate and support?

Tell your friends and co-workers about what is going on in bargaining and invite them to attend the next session with you!

Consider sharing a testimonial during the sessions (can be done anonymously). Email barg@uigeo.org.

Consider joining the bargaining team or the bargaining support team! Questions about what that entails? Email Sam at officer1@uigeo.org!

Share our “After Bargaining” podcast with your friends so they can stay tuned in to what’s happening in bargaining. Our latest episode can be found on our bargaining page here https://www.uiucgeo.org/full-contract-bargaining-2022. The new episode will be up soon!

The After Bargaining podcast episode (forthcoming)

The After Bargaining episode that summarizes the happenings of the bargaining session will be published on Saturday. Stay tuned. In the meantime, listen to previous episodes and share them to stay up to speed with bargaining.

With approximately 140 attendees and nearly 4hrs of negotiations, VICTORY IS OURS! After months of hard work, we managed to push the administration to unpackage their “take it or leave it proposal” to advance negotiations in good faith. In other words, for the first time since March 2022 the administration came back with a unique proposal with only two sections “Recognition” and “Non-Discrimination” that we were discussing for over a month (i.e., it did not come with other articles attached). This is the result of showing our power!

We met this critical goal towards winning a living wage and year round health care with other issues of access and justice for all our members. The lead negotiators, Karla Sanabria-Véaz (Social Work) and Essam Elkorghli (Education) led the GEO inside the bargaining room after a very successful rally and showed the administration our power to reach agreement in important issues for all graduate students such as non-discrimination and harrasment. Members gave testimonials about discrimination related to English Proficiency requirements for international students and about including parental status as a protected category. A quote of two of our testimonials is included below.

“I had to take a semester-long class on how to speak English and communicate to my students. Even if this was the case that my English is incomprehensible, what can one semester do for my English?

Not only is this [EPI] dehumanizing, but it is also an international division of humanity. Where the people of the Global South can’t speak English, while the Global North can; where White speakers of English are not questioned [if] their English is good enough.” - PhD Student from an English-speaking country in Africa

“I found out I was pregnant just before starting my first year of graduate school. I was due at the end of May. Because of that timing, I knew there would be no financial support for me over the summer. My nine-month appointment would be up, and maternity leave would swallow up a summer appointment. For the whole school year, my partner and I lived frugally to save enough money to pay for my own maternity leave. This is why it is important to include parents in this nondiscrimination article. Because the underlying culture of academia expects us to sacrifice ourselves and our families on the altar of scholarship.” -Tabbey Cochran, Ph.D. Student History

WHERE DOES OUR POWER COME FROM?

Our power comes from ourselves and our labor when we unite to show the administration that the University works because we do. The GEO is democratically run by ourselves as graduate workers and union members. Yesterday, we showed our power by picketing, chanting and attending the session to signal to the administration that our demands of Access & Justice, Waivers & Wages, and Health & Safety, are of all our members’ and not only from the dozen members of our bargaining team. This day exemplifies what democratic organizing looks like and that our most powerful weapon is when we show solidarity with one another by showing up in massive numbers as one of our members, Sam Cross, reflects:

“I have been a member of GEO since I came here in 2020, but this was the first bargaining session I have attended. I wanted to see what the bargaining process looked like, and it was both inspiring and encouraging to see that our ideas as members could reach the administration through the organization of the Union. I was impressed with how democratic process was. During caucus the stewards would make sure that everyone understood what was being discussed and what the implications would be, as well as ask for input, so that all members present were a part of the bargaining process.” - Sam Cross (Physics)

WHAT'S NEXT TO KEEP BUILDING OUR POWER?

DIVIDED WE BEG, UNITED WE BARGAIN! The momentum must continue, and we must contribute to the collective and democratic process of bargaining. Contribute whatever time and experience you have so we can collectively pressure the admin and win the contract that we demand. Join us for our next bargaining session on Thursday, 15th/12 starting from 1:30pm-5:30pm at a soon to be announced location, and consider supporting the bargaining team by volunteering for a role here: https://tinyurl.com/GEOBARGROLES. No task is too big nor too small for YOU or your co-workers to get involved in the Union. Below are some good places to start!

-Post the organizing TO-DO list in your office and share with friends so you can commit to at least one event.
-Consider sharing a testimonial during the sessions (can be done anonymously). Email barg@uigeo.org
-Joining the bargaining team! You can nominate yourself or a friend at https://tinyurl.com/jointheBT. Questions about what that entails? Email Sam at officer1@uigeo.org!
-Share our “After Bargaining” podcast with your friends so they can stay tuned in to what’s happening in bargaining. Our new episode can be found in our bargaining website here https://www.uiucgeo.org/full-contract-bargaining-2022
-The GEO will have a General Membership Meeting on Monday, 5th/12, at Channing Murray Foundation (1209 W Oregon) at 6pm.
-All Day, All Night Tutor-In, which is a tradition of Teachers Assistants to offer free tutoring for extended hours. Join us from Noon-8am on Thursday, 8th/12, at the North Lounge, Illini Union. RSVP here (tinyurl.com/TUTORIN22). Show up and make your labor visible & support your students.

NEW EPISODE OF AFTER BARGAINING

Essam and Karla are hosted by Abhishek Kodumagulla and Chelsea Birchmier to share the details of a victorious day. They speak about the rally before the session, the proposals that were handed back and forth during the session, and the powerful testimonials shared by members during the session. This episode includes a bonus where the four bargaining team members end the episode with a union song. Tune in to learn about what was inside the proposals and celebrate a successful day of organizing!!! Listen here: https://anchor.fm/after-bargaining

WHAT DO WE (GEO) WANT?
The GEO surveyed over 1,000 graduate workers in Fall 2021 to understand the interests of membership for our current contract negotiations. Non-Discrimination protections is an issue that the University is legally required to bargain with us and is something that our members overwhelmingly care about. GEO’s proposal seeks additional protected categories such as medical conditions and parental status, and provides more guidance on how to use our Grievance Procedure for discrimination claims if a graduate assistant decides to do so, instead of the Office of Access and Equity. We want the administration to not retaliate against any graduate worker that decides to pursue a grievance with the University. We also want a fair contract that is not packaged which forces us to drop all of our demands, including non-discrimination, overtime pay and the ability for us to decide the health care provider in order to accept the University’s proposals which include a meager wage increase of 4% and only 2 out of five years of summer health care. The hard work of our bargaining team was recognized by Kyle, who attended his first bargaining session yesterday.

“Attending the session in person sheds a different light on what’s going on in this process and what’s going on on both sides. There’s a different context when you actually attend one of these and gives a lot more appreciation for our bargaining team on what we have to put up together and do.” -Kyle, GEO member and first time bargaining session attendee.

WHAT DO THEY (THE ADMINISTRATION) WANT?
The University claims that because we’re proposing expansive changes to 25 out of 27 articles, we’re stalling negotiations. We want to be clear that GEO is here to win the best contract for our members, not to pay lip service to ideas of nondiscrimination or seek cosmetic changes, much less to negotiate provisions worse than the status quo, like the ones the administration is proposing around the usage of the grievance procedure to solve discrimination allegations. The current provisions of the contract allow for graduate workers, when faced with sexual harassment and retaliation, to decide between going through our grievance process or through the University’s ineffective Office of Access and Equity (OAE) to gain a remedy and effective resolution for such traumatic experiences. OAE can take several semesters to resolve, leaving many graduate workers without the ability to resolve their grievances before graduating. However, the university is proposing something worse that we currently have by requiring graduate workers to go through the useless, employer-friendly OAE before using our grievance procedure. In other words, the university seeks to be the sole decision maker in determining whether or not we were actually harassed and if we deserve a remedy.
What happens next?

The Bargaining Team has canceled the scheduled bargaining sessions of November 10th and 17th due to a variety of reasons, including personal, academic, and health. We want to ensure that the Bargaining Team is at sufficient capacity to negotiate for us in pursuit of a fair contract. We will announce the date of the next bargaining session soon.

Our current material conditions are getting more precarious as graduate workers. The only way we can improve our quality of life and make public education accessible for all graduate workers is by fighting back with our power. Here’s how you and your co-workers can get involved:
-Reach out to the Stewards Co-Chairs Grace and Clara (sc@uigeo.org) to know how to talk to your friends and co-workers to inform them and get them involved.
-Consider sharing a testimonial during bargaining sessions (can be done anonymously). Email barg@uigeo.org to share.
-Join the bargaining team! You can nominate yourself or a friend at https://tinyurl.com/jointheBT. Questions about what that entails? Email Sam at officer1@uigeo.org!

During Friday’s bargaining session, the Bargaining Team provided a counter proposal with the articles of Recognition, Non Discrimination, and No Strike/ No Lockout. Recognition refers to who are the members of our bargaining unit, and No Strike/ No Lockout provides additional labor protections for our members to not be locked out by the employer during any concerted action. The lead negotiators, Chelsea Birchmier (Psychology) and Karla Sanabria-Véaz (Social Work), provided rationales for their proposal including a testimonial from a parent for including parental status in the Non Discrimination clause, and a testimonial from another GEO member that received a paycut in their appointment letter. The administration has their own take of “Graduate Appreciation Week” by showing their unwillingness to reach agreement on these items. Why? Because our demands such as childcare subsidies, additional health and safety protections for natural disasters, and overtime pay “are too much and too many” as stated by Robb Craddock (lead negotiator representing the University administration). Until we drop them, the administration will keep presenting their “take it or leave it” proposals. Apparently, having a bargaining team that earns 1 million dollars in salaries is not “too much or too many” for admin. Keep reading to learn more!

WHAT DO WE (GEO) WANT?

At the beginning of the session, Karla reminded admin that while it was Graduate Student Appreciation Week, currently “graduate workers are struggling to make ends meet and pay our bills, the University administration is making very little movement toward fair wages that account for inflation, year-round healthcare coverage, the elimination of student fees, or issues of access and equity. Even more, using ongoing contract negotiations as an excuse, the admin violated our contract to revoke wage increases after grad workers had signed their offer letters. That’s not appreciation, it’s exploitation!” The bargaining process has shown that the administration is not treating us with respect as employees, organizers, and the ones who know best about our conditions. Since August, they keep telling us that our access and justice, along with our health and safety demands such as childcare subsidies, the ability to have a say in who will be our health care provider, and additional employee rights such as remote work are too ambitious. The GEO doesn’t want pizza, donuts, and coffee as tokens of appreciation. We want a contract that reflects our member voted on pillars and gives additional resources and labor protections to us, graduate workers, which comprise 50% of the educational labor on campus. Our previous packages have also included mandatory subjects of bargaining such as Leaves and Holidays, Appointment Turns and Non-Discrimination and the administration is obligated to negotiate with us over.

WHAT DO THEY (THE ADMINISTRATION) WANT?

Despite GEO presenting a package with two articles that we’re fully in agreement with the administration (Recognition and No Strike/No Lockout) and Non-Discrimination which includes substantial langauge from the administration and GEO’s additional protected categories such as parental status, union affiliation and medical condition, the administration is still unwilling to sign. The administration stated “at this juncture” they are not willing to pull items out of the comprehensive proposal into a package to reach agreements. In good faith, we presented a package proposal on October 7th with mandatory subjects of bargaining including what the administration termed as “expansive” items such as our original proposal of Leaves and Holidays that included paid personal leave, more sick days and others.

The administration claims to be invested in equity and diversity, but when the GEO’s contract speaks to the importance of child care, changing tables, fee waivers, and non-racist English language proficiency assessments, we are asked why the GEO cares about such a small number of people, and are pushed to focus on health care and wages only. Rather than responding to the complex and interconnected issues that grad workers face, admin repeats that they want to focus on “economic” issues. They are creating a false narrative of scarcity that we have to choose between increased wages and a more just university. However, child care is an economic issue. Ending international student fees. The English proficiency test includes burdensome fees. All of these are an economic issue. All of these issues impact our material conditions as workers.

The GEO will not simply abandon these demands to expedite bargaining. We want to settle, but we will settle when our demands that guarantee a fair wage and equity are met.

How can I and my co-workers/friends participate and support?

Our current material conditions are more and more precarious as graduate workers. The only way we can improve our quality of life and make public education accessible for all graduate workers is by fighting back with our power. Here’s how you and your co-workers can get involved:

-Sign up for a specific role at our next bargaining session on Thursday, 3rd/11/2022 from 8:45pm-12:30pm here https://tinyurl.com/GEOBARGROLES ! All tasks make a difference and you will be guided by a GEO member on how to do your role.

-Reach out to the Stewards Co-Chairs Grace and Clara (sc@uigeo.org) to know what talking points to use to invite your friend or co-worker to become a member.

-Invite your TA or GA friend or colleague to the Halloween Party on Saturday, November 5th so we can increase our membership! They just have to sign at the door or before the party and we will have FREE BEER, FREE FOOD, games and much more. You can use our email/text templates here.

-Consider sharing a testimonial during the sessions (can be done anonymously). Email barg@uigeo.org

-Join the bargaining team! You can nominate yourself or a friend at https://tinyurl.com/jointheBT. Questions about what that entails? Email Sam at officer1@uigeo.org!

During yesterday’s session, the lead negotiators Sam Froiland (History) and Nachiketa Adhikari (Math) were prepared to receive a response from the administration to the package proposal that GEO presented back on October 7th, which included the items Recognition, Non-discrimination, Appointment Terms, Leaves and Holidays, and No Strike/No Lockout. We responded to their questions about our proposal, received a counter proposal from the administration and later moved to caucus to discuss it with membership.

Despite GEO making a good faith effort presenting our proposal, and despite the administration’s insistence in their “take it or leave it” proposals, we only received cosmetic changes from the administration regarding non-discrimination and appointment terms. We ended the session asking clarifying questions about their package proposal and about our information requests regarding the English proficiency requirements. Keep reading to learn more about the session and how you can get involved to win the contract we deserve!

WHAT DO WE (GEO) WANT?

The GEO wants and deserves a wage increase that is commensurate with rising costs of living and year-round healthcare. But as a democratic union, we understand that our membership, which is very diverse and has multiple needs, needs additional resources and protections that align with the pillars our members voted on: health and safety, wages and waivers, and access and justice. These pillars will make it possible for grad workers to work for a living instead of living for their jobs. We also demand that the administration respect us during negotiations instead of infantilizing our team by implying that our members don’t care about allegedly “non-economic” items such as leaves and holidays, non-discrimination, appointment terms, English proficiency or child care. Our Union can only run with the work and participation of members. In order to win our demands, it is necessary for all of us to show up to bargaining sessions, participate in events and support our organization in whatever way we’re capable of. One of our members, Marina Moscoso, explains her experience about the importance of doing what we can for us to win!

“I’m a PhD student taking 12 credits, with a 50% appointment and additional community work in my home country, Puerto Rico. Even though I may not understand the entirety of the bargaining process, I show up because I’m a member of the graduate community fighting for a better quality of life. That’s why I do my best to be here because we’re a community, and this is an important way for us to support each other and build solidarity. Our power is our numbers” - Marina

WHAT DO THEY (THE ADMINISTRATION) WANT?

The administration claims that the Union is slowing down negotiations because they want us to accept their meager wages and health care proposal from the 26th/9/2022. Such a proposal barely provides a 4% increase to wages, with no guaranteed free year-round healthcare for the duration of the 5 year contract. The GEO provided a comprehensive rationale for our over 30% increase to the minimum based on:

1. the proposed living wage in Champaign Urbana as shown by the MIT living wage calculator,

2. our members input, and

3. the average salary of our peer institutions in the Big Ten

However, the administration arbitrarily chose $20,000 on 25th/8/2022 and then $20,072 in yesterday’s proposal as well as their previous proposal because, in the words of Robb Craddock, the administration’s lead negotiator, “Well, we thought that $20,000 was a good initial offer.” Well, why isn’t $25,000 or $24,000 a better starting number, Robb? Moreover, the administration fails to understand that the Union is a democratic and member-run organization. It is the Union’s position to fight for the lives and working conditions of all graduate workers, and in order to do that, all of us must be involved in the decision-making process. Far from the Union delaying negotiations, the University made us wait 5 months for their proposal response. As one of the GEO’s lead negotiators, Sam Froiland, said yesterday, unlike the Admin, “we do not need to call the Provost or the Chancellor.” We consult our membership which has repeatedly said that 20,072 for year one is completely disrespectful to our labor that makes this University run. This is what democracy looks like.

How can I and my co-workers/friends participate and support?

Our current material conditions are more and more precarious as graduate workers. The only way we can improve our quality of life and make public education accessible for all graduate workers is by fighting back with our power. The University is controlled by bankers, and wealthy donors that can raise over 2.6 billion dollars but cannot give us a living wage. We have to demand, participate and agitate other grad workers to join our Union. Here’s how you and your co-workers can participate and support our efforts:

Sign up for a specific role at our next bargaining session on Friday, October 28th from 1:45pm-4:30pm here https://tinyurl.com/GEOBARGROLES ! All tasks make a difference and you will be guided by a GEO member on how to do your role.

-Post the organizing TO-DO list in your office and share with friends so you can commit to at least one event.

-Consider sharing a testimonial during the sessions (can be done anonymously). Email barg@uigeo.org

-Joining the bargaining team! You can nominate yourself or a friend at https://tinyurl.com/jointheBT. Questions about what that entails? Email Sam at officer1@uigeo.org!

During Friday’s bargaining session our lead negotiators, ben Wallis (History) and Karla Sanabria Veaz (Social Work), came to the session with GEO’s own package proposal in the interest of advancing negotiations with the administration.

Upon handing the University administration the package proposal, the Union spent time providing rationales for the changes in our package proposal and came prepared to answer any questions the University administration might have. Following that, the University caucused and returned with more questions which our lead negotiators answered. The package proposal included language pertaining to the following articles: Recognition, Non-Discrimination, Appointment Terms, Leaves and Holidays, and No Strike/No Lockout. The session ended relatively early with the University administration recognizing that the GEO has made movement to advance the bargaining process.

WHAT DO MEMBERS THINK OF THE PACKAGE PROPOSAL & THE SESSION?
After the session ended, GEO members discussed the package proposal and had time to look closely at the language GEO’s Bargaining Team had proposed. The members also discussed the session in its entirety.

One member stated that the GEO is fighting for graduate workers’ rights while making movement without losing the integrity of our pillars (Access & Justice, Wages & Waivers, Health & Safety). Another member appreciated that the GEO is giving space to members to share their testimonials during the session so that the administration can see how issues, both grand and minute, impact graduate workers. The member stated that they really appreciate how the GEO is democratically run.

During the session, the GEO and the University administration heard a testimonial from a graduate worker whose religious practices are not taken into consideration, especially when they conflict with their work. Concerning the testimonial, a GEO member said:

“I had a Muslim friend who had to arrange their holidays and family visits during Christian holidays because it was the only extended paid time the university allowed them to have. When they requested time off in July for a religious holiday to spend the holiday with family members in another country, they were denied the request even when offering to switch their paid time off around Christmas for this holiday, and it resulted in them working remotely during their vacation and using personal days. By not allowing graduate assistants of non-Eurocentric faiths to holiday on their respective religious holidays, University administration is not only undermining their religious practices, but affecting their interfamilial and personal relationships.” – A GEO member

WHAT DO WE WANT?
The GEO wants a fair contract. The GEO wants a comprehensive response that addresses the needs of all graduate workers including parents, graduate workers who practice non-Christian faiths and international students. The GEO wants every graduate student from any walk of life to thrive, and not just survive. We hope the administration responds to our movement and takes our demands seriously.

How can I and my co-workers/friends participate and support?
This is the moment where graduate workers show up and be more visible. It is time to show the university our numbers and affirm that the University works because graduate workers work.

Join us for our next bargaining session on Thursday 20th/10/2022 from 1:45pm-5:30pm at the Illini Union Ballroom, and consider supporting the bargaining team by volunteering for a role here: https://tinyurl.com/GEOBARGROLES. No task is too big nor too small for YOU or your co-workers to get involved in the Union. Below are some good places to start!

-Post the organizing TO-DO list in your office and share with friends so you can commit to at least one event.
-Consider sharing a testimonial during the sessions (can be done anonymously). Email barg@uigeo.org
-Joining the bargaining team! You can nominate yourself or a friend at https://tinyurl.com/jointheBT. Questions about what that entails? Email Sam at officer1@uigeo.org!
-Share our“After Bargaining” podcast with your friends so they can stay tuned in to what’s happening in bargaining. Our new episode can be found in our bargaining website here: https://www.uiucgeo.org/full-contract-bargaining-2022

During yesterday’s bargaining session our lead negotiators, Lesley Owens (English) and Sam Froiland (History), came prepared to answer the University administration’s questions regarding our last proposal of September 19th. The session began with a sidebar–where the bargaining team leads on both sides meet privately with notetakers outside of the bargaining room to talk privately and get a temperature check on how bargaining is going–after which the administration presented a new proposal. We were hoping that after a successful protest at the Board of Trustees meeting, with media coverage by the News Gazette and Daily Illini, that the administration would consider dropping their package proposal. Instead, the administration's new proposal of wages is an increase of less than a lunch on Green St per month. Keep reading to see what happened!

What Do They (The Administration) Want?
The administration, with Robb Craddock as lead negotiator, proposed another package proposal with an increase of $72 per year from their $20,000/year proposal. This translates to a mere increase of $8 a month, which represents only 6.45% of the semester fees domestic students pay and 5.68% of the semester fees international students pay.

After submitting this package proposal with only a 0.36% wage increase from their last proposal, admin stated, “if you want additional things” they may reduce even further the amount of wages and healthcare offered to us. Admin explicitly asked GEO to “withdraw a certain number of proposals,” including issues like mental healthcare and bereavement leave, “in order to focus [admin’s] resources to impact the greatest number of people in the greatest possible way.” Robb, does a proposal offering a wage increase significantly below inflation and limiting year-round healthcare “impact the greatest number of people in the greatest possible way”?

The administration also suggested that they were only willing to discuss either bereavement leave or higher wages, and is generally pushing towards a direction where all they are willing to offer is a compromise on only one of the many demands we have been fighting for. Robb always likes to portray us as “unreasonable” for fighting for better conditions. Does choosing between the bereavement of your best friend and a living wage sound reasonable to you? Don’t forget to check our memes and share them with your friends!

What Do We Want?
The GEO wants the administration to offer a non-package proposal that gives us a living wage, year-round healthcare (including mental healthcare), an expansion of leaves and holidays including paid bereavement leave, amongst other issues regarding access and justice that are of significant concern to us GEO members. The administration’s second package counter proposal offers none of the above and the administration continues to ignore our demands of eliminating student semester fees, including child-care subsidies and additional protections against overwork and discrimination. We want them to respect our demands! Two of our members expressed how they felt after the session.

“Robb constantly interrupted our female-presenting negotiator, Lesley Owens, and seemed as if he was not paying attention as she was speaking. This was not something that he seemed to do with he male-presenting negotiators. I felt very uncomfortable with the constant misogyny.” - Preethi

“Hearing Robb simply state that he cares about giving us a fair contract while trying everything to minimize and ignore our concerns made me experience actual physical pain.” - Abhi

How can I and my co-workers/friends participate and support?
The stronger our Union is, the stronger the contract we will win! Hence, we need to transform our anger and frustrations into organizing power. Join us for our next bargaining session on Friday October 7th starting from 2:15pm-5:00pm at the University YMCA Latzer Hall, room 114 and consider supporting the bargaining team by volunteering for a role here: https://tinyurl.com/GEOBARGROLES. No task is too big nor too small for YOU or your co-workers to get involved in the Union. Below are some good places to start!

-Post the organizing TO-DO list in your office and share with friends so you can commit to at least one event.
-Consider sharing a testimonial during the sessions (can be done anonymously). Email barg@uigeo.org
-Joining the bargaining team! You can nominate yourself or a friend at https://tinyurl.com/jointheBT. Questions about what that entails? Email Sam at officer1@uigeo.org!
-Share our “After Bargaining” podcast with your friends so they can stay tuned in to what’s happening in bargaining. Our new episode can be found on our bargaining page.

During yesterday’s session, the GEO leads and co-presidents Karla Sanabria-Véaz (Social Work) Nachiketa Adhikari (Math) asked additional questions about the administration’s package proposal, provided admin with GEO’s definition of equity and presented a new proposal to the administration. While the administration made it very clear that it is the GEO’s responsibility to make a move, we saw admin’s package proposal as insufficient because it does not address the bare minimum of our pillar demands of Waiver & Wages, Access & Justice, and Health & Safety.

What do WE WANT?
The GEO wants the administration to answer all of our questions pertaining to the English Language Proficiency article in the counter proposal. In addition, the GEO wants to learn about the cost of the University’s contract with United Health Care. And most importantly, we want to receive a complete counter proposal from the administration that is not in a package form.

We also demand the administration uphold its Reaffirmation of Our Commitment to Institutional Equity statement they sent over massmail on the (14th/9/2022) that contradicts their farcical counter package proposal they have provided us on the 25th/8/2022. Is it equitable that international students from English-speaking countries who are not white have to take a costly English proficiency exam? Is it equitable that graduate workers who are parents do not have access to changing tables in their workspaces, let alone paid child care? Is it equitable that the university dictates the modality of the instruction without providing explicit language in writing about the accommodations that they claim they are providing?

Here is what equity means to the GEO, according to the statement we read to admin:

“The GEO recognizes that many groups of people have historically been and continue to be exploited and discriminated against based on race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, class or nationality. For us, equity is the implementation of systemic measures to provide people access to the resources they need to overcome this exploitation and live fulfilling lives.”

What graduate workers want is a fair contract that meets our current economic and material needs.

We are grateful to one of our members who read a testimonial to members and the admin during the bargaining session. Here is their testimonial, which gives a glimpse into the life of a graduate worker who is a parent:

--------------------

“Poop for the Fourth of July

This 4th of July holiday my infant daughter's daycare closed the Friday before for the long weekend. Unfortunately, my funding appointment still required that I complete duties that day. I desperately searched for hourly day care or babysitters I could hire for the day, but the cost for a full day of care meant that we wouldn't have enough left for groceries next week. With the cost of regular day care, most months we are just barely scraping by.

My husband, also a graduate student, works in a wet lab and couldn't take the baby with him for obvious reasons. It seemed clear my only option would be to take her with me. I work in a large, shared office space in Beckman and I could lay a blanket on the floor for her to play on. Not ideal, but it was just one day, right?

The day had dragged along relatively uneventfully until around the lunch hour when the smell of a dirty diaper wafted through the air. "Oh no," I thought to myself. Her poop had been so runny the past few days, I knew it was only a matter of time before we reached full on diaper blow out. There was a bathroom just around the corner to my office, but I knew there was no changing table in there. I briefly considered changing her on the sink, but dismissed it as I was pretty sure the space was too small to fit her. I could try to check the other bathrooms, but then I'd be risking leakage in the middle of the hallway. I cringed at the thought of the director or one of the visitors who frequent the building seeing us with poop oozing out of her pants.

So I did the next best thing. I cleared out one of the shared desks and laid her down to change her diaper. The stench quickly filled the office and the student sitting across from me gave me a polite but curt smile and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The poop had already reached the edges of her diaper and began to spill onto the desk. I know it was unsanitary, but what could I do? There were no changing tables in the bathroom to clean her up. I wiped up the poop with a baby wipe and quickly stuffed it into the diaper. Another student left the office. Was it because of the smell? Why does it travel so well?

With mess contained and the baby happy and playful again, I wrapped the diaper up and quickly headed out to throw it away in the space where the changing table should have been.”

--------------------

What do THEY (the administration) want?
The administration wants us to reduce our proposal because, in their view, it is too expensive to fairly compensate graduate workers for their labor.

However, the University has raised 2.25 billion dollars in the past year alone, which remains untouched, and largely goes to admin salaries, who in turn unilaterally determine how those funds get distributed. They are not interested in redistributing the wealth to graduate workers, who are the most hard-hit by current inflation. Lest we forget, a couple of sessions ago, when Robb was asked if he thought the current wages we have can accommodate an international graduate worker, with a spouse (who cannot work on F-2), and one child, his response was, “that question is not germane.”

What’s next?
We have provided the administration with a counter-proposal that tweaks some of our demands. We will await for the admin’s response on the next bargaining session on Tuesday, 27th/9/2022, from 4-7pm at the Illini Union in Room 210.

Want to learn more about these changes and share your thoughts about them? Listen to our podcast and come to our General Membership Meeting (see below for info).

How can I and my co-workers/friends participate and support?
The stronger our Union is, the stronger the contract we will win! Hence, we need to transform our anger and frustrations into organizing power. No task is too big nor too small for YOU or your co-workers to get involved. Here are some places to start:

-Post the organizing TO-DO list in your office and share with friends so you can commit to at least one event.
-Consider sharing a testimonial during the sessions (can be done anonymously)
-Joining the bargaining team! You can nominate yourself or a friend at https://tinyurl.com/jointheBT. Questions about what that entails? Email Chelsea and Sam at officer1@uigeo.org!
-Share our “After Bargaining” podcast with your friends so they can stay tuned in to what’s happening in bargaining.

During yesterday’s session, the GEO bargaining team clarified the intent behind the UIUC administration’s package proposal. When asked whether this was a package proposal, meaning the administration could choose to take back the entire proposal and offer even less, the administration’s lead negotiator, Robb Craddock, replied “it all depends on what you propose.” In the rest of the session, GEO’s lead negotiators, Sam Froiland (History) and Essam Elkorghli (Education), asked clarifying questions about the language proficiency requirement, issues with reappointment raises, and the administration’s understanding of equity. Sam and Essam ended the session by reading a statement prepared by caucus (the group of GEO members present in the bargaining room) and the bargaining team, which outlined how disappointed we are with admin’s proposal. The admin proposed wages that fail to account for the increase in inflation, and failed to address most of the issues in our proposal surrounding childcare, the elimination of fees, and more.

What do WE want?
The GEO wants a complete response from the administration to our over 40-page proposal that reflects our central pillars: access and justice, health and safety and wages and tuition waivers! This includes addressing all of the articles they do not want to change (status quo) so we can bargain effectively. This is essential given how certain departments like Communications are eliminating their reappointment raises after grad workers signed their appointments this Fall. Why does the University expect us to accept the status quo when they could be violating our contract while bargaining?

We specifically demand access and justice for our multilingual speakers of English and international students. We proposed several alternatives that multilingual speakers could point to as evidence of their language proficiency, including employment, conference and teaching experience, as alternatives to the English Proficiency Test, which 50% of expected TAs fail to pass (CITL, p.4). Not only did Robb say we “wouldn’t have a say in that,” but he suggested that the admin could have removed their one sentence proposal entirely, which only promises to “review” current requirements, if they wanted to. We reject the University’s racist and outdated standards that applies different language requirement standards for non-White speakers of English from colonized nations.

What do THEY (the administration) want?
The GEO lead negotiators stated that admin’s proposal, which constitutes a wage cut after inflation and fails to address many of the important issues brought up by members, was disrespectful to our lives and labor. Robb’s only response was “You have our full response. Any statement to the contrary is false. If you all consider that disrespectful, then I don’t know what would be respectful.”

Not only did admin spend 6 months asking reading comprehension questions about our proposal, but then under the guise of “efficiency,” they expected us to accept their package proposal which they can withdraw at any time, while we cannot do the same. While the GEO cannot ask for higher wages or better benefits than what we proposed back on March 7, 2022, they can offer lower wages or simply remove their proposal and start from our current wage. What is respectful for us, Robb? A living wage, year round health care and $0 fees! Either Robb does his job or we will keep pushing until he does.

One of our members who attended the session, Marissa (she/her), expressed:

“It feels that all of Robb’s inconsistencies, backtracking, and rudeness is him trying to trick us, confuse us, wear us down, or tire us out so that we just give up (sign a contract that doesn’t improve our quality of life). And that’s not gonna happen — We’re not going to give up! Robb’s lack of clarity, feigned collaboration, and blatant disrespect for and infantilizing of 3,000 graduate workers will only radicalize and empower us more to stand up and fight back.”

How can I and my co-workers/friends participate and support?
The stronger our Union is, the stronger the contract we will win! Hence, we need to transform our anger and frustrations into organizing power. No task is too big nor too small for YOU or your co-workers to get involved. Here are some places to start:

-Post the organizing TO-DO list in your office and share with friends so you can commit to at least one event.
-Consider sharing a testimonial during the sessions (can be done anonymously)
-Join the bargaining team! You can nominate yourself or a friend at https://tinyurl.com/jointheBT. Questions about what that entails? Email Chelsea and Sam at officer1@uigeo.org!
-Share our “After Bargaining” podcast with your friends so they can stay tuned in to what’s happening in bargaining.

The first week of classes saw the Graduate Employees’ Organization’s (GEO) first in-person bargaining session with UIUC administration. The session saw our highest turnout of members, an outstanding rally prior to the session, an agreement between the GEO and the administration on ground rules, and the GEO finally receiving the administration’s counter-proposal.

The GEO met in front of the Illini Union and chanted, demanding the university deliver a contract that guarantees a living wage, health care benefits and job protections for graduate workers. Undergrads, as well as allies from the community and other unions stood in solidarity with GEO.

After the rally, the GEO went inside the Illini Union to meet with administration. GEO and the administration came to an agreement on ground rules, or how these sessions are to be conducted. The GEO has been very adamant about removing any limits to attendees, which the university wants to cap to limit our powerful presence during the bargaining session. The two sides agreed on the ground rules, including a hybrid option that allows GEO members to join sessions online.

For context, the GEO provided the admin a full contract proposal roughly 6 months ago. Our language asks for year-round health care, tuition and fee waivers, child care, accessible healthcare, and much more. Our contract proposal, which amounts to roughly 40 pages, has now been countered with an inadequate counter-proposal of barely 16 pages. The admin passed some copies to the attendees and here is one GEO member’s response:

“This was the first bargaining session I've attended. I was very impressed with the bargaining team's passion and attention to detail. The University's proposal was vastly disappointing to me, especially for a document that took them 5 months to write. The fact that they said their wage proposals were rough estimates was astonishing to me. Furthermore, their proposal for healthcare, specifically the part where they proposed summer healthcare waivers being offered only two out of the five summers, was very lackluster and not satisfactory.”

The administration’s proposal disregarded many of the issues that the members had voted for at the beginning of the year when the Bargaining Team conducted a membership survey on graduate workers' living conditions and demands for the new contract.

In terms of the administration’s wage proposal, they presented an increase commensurate with increases provided to non-Bargaining Unit members (Research Assistants and Professional Graduate Assistants). That increase is less than 80 dollars a month when inflation is nearly 10%. Because of inflation, this “raise” actually amounts to a pay cut, and is far from a fair wage.

The administration, however, did offer summer health care for those who are enrolled in summer classes. The university’s proposal guarantees coverage for the two upcoming summers, but not for the five summers of the contract term, as the testimonial points out. The university did not provide rationale for this proposition.

After caucusing, the process in which the respective bargaining teams pause negotiations and have discussions with their bargaining unit, the administration returned, and the lead negotiators, ben wallis (History) and Chelsea Birchmier (Psychology), brought questions that the membership raised during caucus. GEO brought up that though administration stated that wage increases were commensurate with increases for other campus graduate workers (RAs and PGAs), the counter-proposal was actually inconsistent with those numbers. The administration’s lead negotiator, Robb Craddock, only responded, “we said roughly.” After ben and Chelsea presented GEO’s questions, the session ended with scheduling the next bargaining sessions.

Going forward, the most effective way for us to pressure the administration is by attending these bargaining sessions and showing the administration that our demands represent a massive number of graduate students. Be there for the next bargaining session, on September 6 from 4-6pm!

The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) met with UIUC administration for a three-hour bargaining session this Thursday (August 11). Lead negotiators Lesley Owens (English) and Sam Froiland (History) covered a substantial part of the contract and expeditiously answered all of the administration’s questions. The session focused on questions surrounding GEO’s proposals for child care, more comprehensive health care for graduate workers and their dependents and partners, and ground rules (i.e., how the GEO and the administration are to conduct these sessions, especially as school starts and we transition to in-person bargaining sessions). The session also covered the GEO’s proposed changes to contract articles such as Fee Waivers, Tuition Waivers, Leaves & Holidays, Grievance Procedure, and Health & Safety.

During the session, Lesley and Sam explained the importance of childcare for graduate workers who are parents and caregivers. Lesley stressed that the university should be transparent in outlining childcare options for graduate workers, as it would be mutually beneficial, bringing in prospective graduate workers who are parents, and ensuring that existing grad student parents have the resources they need for their families and work.

A key part of the discussion during the session was centered on fee waivers. As GEO members know, graduate students pay fees for the use of libraries, public transportation, and other services. This always reduces the amount of disposable income graduate students have. The GEO has proposed language intended to ensure that graduate workers are not charged such fees. It is the GEO’s position that graduate workers should not pay to work, but rather get paid for our work.

GEO also covered our proposal for adjusted time for sick leaves, paid leave, bereavement leave and immigration leave. The GEO has proposed that graduate workers who have recently lost a relative (family and extended family), partner or friend should get several days of leave. The administration argued that the definition of friend is vague and overly encompassing. During the session, Robb Craddock (admin’s lead negotiator), said “your bereavement policy, it is ripe for abuse, and we can’t agree to things that are ripe for abuse, and that’s not in the best interest of the University.” The lead negotiators pointed out that, especially with the ongoing pandemic, the tremendous losses many graduate workers have experienced in the last two years were not confined to just family; they included friends. The GEO takes this issue seriously and the proposed language pushes for graduate workers to have time off to grieve for the loss of a loved one, no matter how the relationship is defined.

Last but not least, the lead negotiators brought up issues related to the health and safety of graduate workers. They discussed graduate workers’ right to a non-police response to certain emergencies, especially as police interventions often result in escalation as opposed to de-escalation. The university and the country have an ongoing tragic history of police brutality that impacts communities of color, especially Black communities.

The lead negotiators, Lesley and Sam, did a tremendous job in answering the administration’s questions. This largely had to do with the Bargaining Team and Bargaining Support Team’s collective effort to meet and draft possible responses to the admin’s potential questions.

The session ended with the admin exhausting their questions concerning GEO’s contract proposal. Lest we forget, the proposal was handed to the admin, in its fullest form, five months ago. The GEO has not received a full counter proposal from the administration. According to Robb, the administration intends to present their full contract counter proposal in the next bargaining session on August 25. Now is the time for us to come together and organize our efforts to mobilize and conscientize fellow graduate workers to show the administration that the university works because we do. Be there at the next bargaining session at 11am in the Illini Union!

On Friday, July 29, we met with UIUC administration for 3 hours. We pushed for fair wages, year-round healthcare coverage, and childcare resources. GEO lead negotiators Essam Elkorghli (Education) and Karla Sanabria-Véaz (Linguistics) calmly and decisively outlined the importance of more equitable wages for graduate workers. Meanwhile, the administration’s lead negotiator, Robb Craddock, interrupted and raised his voice over Karla and Essam, making condescending comments about GEO’s proposal.

GEO member Maria José Palacios Figueroa, a TA in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, said after listening to the session, “Often times I wanted to mute the meeting because the treatment from Robb was so enraging, but I didn't because I know that being in the loop is so important.”

With just over two weeks before our contract expires, the administration once again failed to show up with a full proposal. Karla and Essam pointed out that the process of answering the administration’s questions about GEO’s proposal could be sped up if the questions were provided in advance, but Robb did not explain why the questions could not be sent ahead of time.

The session focused first on wages. Karla and Essam argued for a wage increase that would bring graduate workers closer to a living wage and bring UIUC in line with other universities in the Big 10 conference. The administration continued to push back against this wage increase, but refused to make a counterproposal.

Next, GEO pushed for summer healthcare. The University of Illinois is one of the few schools in the Big 10 that does not provide full summer health coverage for graduate workers. As a result, many grads, disproportionately people of color, parents, disabled, and international graduate workers, suffer from a three-month long gap in coverage. With a $3.82 billion endowment, the U of I system has the resources to provide summer healthcare, but instead the Board of Trustees voted to raise healthcare premiums for UIUC students at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. GEO calls for summer healthcare NOW for the health and safety of all graduate workers.

We then moved on to our proposals surrounding childcare. Essam and Karla explained the importance of childcare subsidies and an increase in campus childcare facilities. Despite the fact that the university has never provided childcare, Robb questioned how many grad workers would use childcare services. Following a familiar pattern, the administration weaponized their ignorance of existing issues to justify their failure to meet the needs of current and future grad worker caregivers.

The session ended with a discussion of ground rules around moving to a hybrid format in future sessions. The administration once again pushed to limit GEO participation by capping bargaining to 30 members. They know how powerful it is when we all come together to stand up for each other. Take a minute to register for our next session now so we can drive that message home!

At Friday’s bargaining session, GEO’s Bargaining Team (BT) lead negotiators Lesley Owens and ben wallis talked about our proposed changes to Wages, Expenses, and Distribution of Information.

GEO’s BT proposed a fair wage for graduate workers. All graduate workers deserve a living wage, now more than ever, with inflation over 9% according to the Consumer Price Index. As the lead negotiators emphasized, GEO members continuously report difficulty making ends meet throughout the year, and this summer, have had to choose between paying for healthcare, making rent, and buying food.

When GEO lead negotiators cited the MIT Living Wage Calculator’s estimate of a $35,672 living wage for Champaign County, UIUC admin’s lead negotiator Robb Craddock suggested that a living wage for graduate workers would be half of the MIT’s estimate, approximately $17,000, for graduate workers on a 50% appointment. Robb refused to answer whether his family could survive at these wages because he is “not a graduate student.”

GEO opposes the administration’s interpretation of a living wage. Being on a 50% appointment does not mean we pay 50% of our rent and utilities, food, or childcare! Grad workers are often discouraged or prohibited from seeking work outside of assistantships, and international students who are not allowed to work over 20 hours per week during the academic year still need to be able to survive on this wage. Most grad workers are not given year-round appointments and do not get paid for 3 or more months of the year, making a living wage even more essential.

Admin also asked if we considered tuition waivers a form of compensation, suggesting that graduate workers are paid a living wage if tuition waivers are included as part of our income. While tuition waivers are considered a form of compensation, we cannot eat tuition waivers to survive!

GEO’s BT also proposed changes to increase transparency and efficiency in how admin provides information to GEO, especially on member dues. We hope these changes will help prevent a repeat of the current situation we are facing, in which admin owes GEO over $20,000 in dues deduction mistakes, robbing members of funds that can be used to improve our working conditions. We also proposed language that would allow members to be reimbursed more quickly after paying for work-related travel and for materials used to complete our jobs.

Going forward, although we appreciate admin’s willingness to meet regularly, we are disappointed that admin has again come to a session without a full contract proposal. When asked about the proposal, given that we are just a month away from contract expiration on August 15th, Robb replied, “Well, at the current pace it may be difficult…If there were less of them [GEO’s proposals] maybe we would be through this process [of admin questioning GEO’s proposal line by line before presenting a proposal of their own].”

According to Robb, his office of several full time public employees averaging total salaries of over 1 million dollars find it too “difficult” to come with a full proposal before our contract expires. Robb’s comment shows a blatant lack of respect for improving our member’s lives and suggests that admin believes it is acceptable for graduate workers to go without a wage increase this August, effectively taking a 9% pay cut due to inflation.

“I had always heard about all the things that go on in bargaining sessions — the things the admin says about what we deserve as workers, and so on — but being there in the moment really hits different. When he suggested that if we’d had fewer proposals we might be done by now, I was hands-over-my-mouth shocked.” — Dakota, GEO member, Math Department

If we come together, we can insist that UIUC admin show us the respect we deserve by coming to the bargaining table prepared with a full contract proposal that includes a fair wage. Your presence in the room as a GEO member at bargaining sessions is necessary to win a strong contract that includes wages and waivers, health and safety, and access and justice! Mark your calendars for the next bargaining session, on July 29, 2-5pm, online, where we will continue to discuss wages, and likely tuition and fee waivers as well.

The bargaining session began with a discussion of ground rules. The administration continued to push for a cap on GEO members allowed in the bargaining room, this time arguing that more involvement of GEO members would make bargaining less "conducive."

GEO lead negotiators, Sam Froiland (History) and Chelsea Birchmier (Psychology) highlighted that GEO is a democratic, member-run organization and brought a counter proposal with no room capacity limitations. Sam and Chelsea also highlighted that GEO is happy to work with the administration on space arrangements.

For the rest of the session, Sam and Chelsea answered the administration’s questions about GEO’s proposal on employee rights, including access to sanitized nursing spaces and reliable internet connection, as well as freedom of speech in workplaces. The administration questioned the necessity of GEO’s proposal for grad worker access to regularly sanitized private spaces for nursing. Sam stated that these nursing spaces are a moral necessity especially due to the vulnerability of nursing people and their children to COVID-19

Robb Craddock, the university administration’s lead negotiator, also asked, “why is the employer obligated to provide changing tables in the workplace?” Chelsea noted that the university offers no childcare resources, and asked what grad employees who are parents or guardians should be expected to do when bringing their children in the workspace. The administration had no answer to this question. It is becoming increasingly clear that, as graduate workers we will continually need to fight for childcare resources.

Likewise, due to the increasing prevalence of hybrid teaching, GEO proposed that the employer should have an obligation to supply computers and Internet access for better education. However, the administration claimed that access should be on case-by-case basis, so that only employees who are required to work remotely have access.

In the last part of the session, GEO reiterated that graduate workers should be entitled to freedom of speech in their workplaces, arguing that expression of political beliefs should not result in retaliation or termination. Robb kept shifting the focus away from workers’ rights and to the limits of academic freedom, but when asked, he could not come up with an example of the issues with academic freedom he was raising. Sam and Chelsea reiterated that we are seeking stronger workplace protections for grad workers to express political beliefs and affiliations.

Unfortunately, the administration still does not have a full contract proposal for us and did not give a date for sharing their proposal. We will continue to pressure them into giving us their proposal in future actions and bargaining sessions.

Member Takes on the Bargaining Session

"The pacing and clarification of wording everything seemed meticulous and tedious at first, but it made sense eventually to the goal we are trying to get to. Still a LOT of work to be done, but that’s the good fight." - Maurice (They/Them)

Our union has been bargaining our full contract with the administration for over three months now. In that time, gas prices in Illinois jumped from an average of $4.60/ gallon to $5.56/gallon. By the end of 2022, the USDA predicts all food prices will increase by an average of 8%. In spite of rising inflation, the university’s bargaining team (paid over $1 million) once again failed to show up ready to bargain.”

On Tuesday, June 14, GEO’s bargaining team and membership met with UIUC administration for the fifth time. The bargaining session lasted two hours.

The session began with a discussion of ground rules. The administration proposed limiting the number of GEO members allowed in the bargaining room to 30 people, claiming that “it is my preference to have a smaller group in the room.”

The GEO lead negotiators, Karla Sanabria-Véaz (Linguistics) and Chelsea Birchmier (Psychology) emphasized repeatedly that GEO is a democratic, member-run organization and pushed for transparency in bargaining over arbitrary attendance caps.

Administration claimed the attendance cap is a space issue, despite saying that the ballroom and Illini Rooms at the Illini Union, which can comfortably accommodate far more than 30 people, are acceptable places to bargain as they’ve been used before, contradicting the administration’s ground rules proposal.

For the remainder of the session, Karla and Chelsea answered the administration’s extremely detailed questions about points of the contract, including our language proficiency proposal, hours of work, a proposal to eliminate overwork, and a proposal that would allow graduate workers to take compensated time off for GEO work. Only 3 pages of our 36-page proposal were discussed.

While GEO came to the table ready with clear responses and researched rationales for proposals that would make language proficiency requirements more equitable and prevent overwork, the administration once again failed to present any counterproposals. UIUC negotiators refused to account for issues experienced by graduate workers, once again wasting the time of graduate workers.

Member Takes on the Bargaining Session:

"I was shocked to see how antagonizing university administration was to bargaining committee members—especially in his [lead negotiator Robb Craddock’s] attitude, nearly boasting that the university had not prepared a proposal or even fully responded to the one GEO had shared months prior. I did not feel like union members were respected, for their time or for their input, and it really emphasized the critical role GEO has in making sure graduate workers are being fairly and equitably treated." -Sreelakshmi Suresh (they/them), an MS Entomology student entering their second year and president of FUSE

“I recently just joined the union so of course I'm still learning along the way, but I was quite confused on why the admin did not have a counter proposal ready for us? Overall, I believe the leads did a great job even through the difficulty of when admin kept pushing about the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) question. In terms of admin, they just seemed unprepared. It felt like some of the questions they were asking were answered clearly but they just kept pushing the question. It was quite irritating to observe because I felt like we could have easily moved on to the next section.” -Jerny (she/they), GEO member in Educational Psychology

On Monday 5/23, GEO’s Bargaining Team and membership met with the UIUC administration for the fourth time. The bargaining session lasted three hours. The session began with the administration giving us a new ground rules proposal, which the Bargaining Team will consider carefully and respond to at an upcoming session.

Afterward, lead negotiators ben wallis (History) and Michael Klajbor-Smith (Communication Studies) spent more than 2.5 hours answering the administration’s questions about our proposal. Despite this lengthy session, the administration only made it through 8 pages of our total 39-page contract proposal, asking questions about nearly every change that we had proposed to the contract.

Once again, the administration wasted our time by showing up without a full contract proposal. We reemphasized the need for a comprehensive counter-proposal from the administration to move bargaining along. After presenting our original proposal on March 7th, the administration has now had over two months to respond. We came prepared to move forward on the four pillars voted on by our membership.

While the Bargaining Team and membership are eager to come to a new contract agreement before our contract expires on August 15, 2022, the administration continues to show up unprepared, despite their massive collective paycheck (more than $1 million per year across the administration’s representatives) and ample time.

GEO successfully negotiated Illini Union as a member-friendly central location for bargaining sessions in the fall. For the summer, bargaining sessions will remain on Zoom.

GEO, with lead negotiators Lesley Owens and ben wallis, began the session by offering a new ground rules proposal that maintained our commitment to an open bargaining process. In particular, our proposal pushed for the ability to hold hybrid sessions if necessary and for any in-person bargaining sessions to be held in a central campus location that all our members could easily access. The university administration’s bargaining team refused to accept our proposal and settle on ground rules for bargaining, continually neglecting disabled and immunocompromised grad workers. Refusing to get bogged down, GEO BT decided to move on to discussing the wider contract during the rest of the session.

The majority of yesterday’s session was spent answering questions posed by the university’s lead negotiator, Robb Craddock, about the GEO’s full comprehensive contract proposal that we had prepared for the first bargaining session. Robb insists that he needs to understand our full proposal before the administration can offer one in return. This is despite the fact that GEO’s bargaining team presented a thorough rationale for our proposal during our first bargaining session. Due to the volume of questions from administration, we were only able to get through 5 pages of GEO’s contract before the allotted time was over. GEO’s bargaining team is staffed entirely by volunteers, yet we are still more prepared than the administration, whose bargaining team is paid over a million dollars per year. Robb Craddock additionally refused to provide any questions in written format to expedite the questioning, despite the GEO’s openness to providing answers to written requests at following sessions.

We answered the administration’s questions, and affirmed our commitment to making sure the administration understands our proposal fully. We also continued to push the administration to present their full contract proposal. Unfortunately, the administration informed us they still did not have one prepared, and did not plan to have one at the next session. This is unacceptable, and we made that clear as the session ended.
The date and time of our next session is not yet finalized, though it will be held via Zoom. Be on the lookout for an announcement on GEO social media and email for how to register and attend the next bargaining session.

The session began with a discussion of ground rules (which determine the bargaining practices between the two parties). The administration’s ground rule proposals were exclusionary and ableist, and meant to prevent membership from attending bargaining sessions, including forbidding hybrid participation and limiting members’ ability to attend the session.

After consulting with the caucus, the lead negotiators (Karla Sanabria-Véaz and Michael Klajbor-Smith) stated that we are firmly committed to the safety and accessibility of these sessions for our membership; we rejected the administration’s refusal to participate in hybrid sessions, agreeing to meet online for the next bargaining session while we continue to negotiate for a hybrid modality in the future. We also agreed to not using closed caption transcription for future arbitration purposes, as long closed captions were available for members during our online bargaining sessions.

After ground rules, we asked the administration to present their full contract proposal, as they promised at our first bargaining session on March 7. They provided a proposal that incorporated very minor changes, like updating office names and restating previously agreed upon side letters. The university’s lead negotiator, Robb Craddock, described this proposal as “non-economic,” which meant that it did not include any proposals related to wages, healthcare, or other mandatory subjects of bargaining. The administration’s response was insulting, given the many hours of research and thought that went into the union’s proposals.

The GEO Bargaining Team’s lead negotiators reiterated that this was NOT the full proposal we expected, and that the administration had come unprepared to bargain which is highly unprofessional. The administration said they would not offer a full proposal until we answered questions about our initial full contract proposal (questions they had not provided to us in advance of the session).

Ultimately, the contentious session ended with scheduling the next bargaining session for Thursday, April 28 from 3:30-5:30 pm CT via Zoom. At this next session, we expect the admin to present us with their questions and also respond to several information requests GEO submitted to them today. Register for the next session below in the events section!

The Bargaining Team’s (BT) lead negotiators started the session by proposing ground rules for contract negotiation. The administration proposed their own ground rules. The two sides did not come to an agreement on all of these ground rules, but they were tabled in favor of continuing on to our full-contract proposal.

GEO’s lead negotiators shared the full, written contract proposal with the administration and verbally shared the proposed contract language, reading the language out loud and presenting the highlights of the proposed changes and the rationale for these changes. Our proposals included increased wages, year-round healthcare coverage, the elimination of fees, improvements in grad workers’ health and safety protections, overwork protections, and strengthened anti-discrimination and anti-harrassment language.

UIUC’s administration came to the session unprepared and did not offer their own full contract proposal, even though we asked for that proposal to be provided at the first bargaining session. The University administration had months to prepare a proposal and still came unprepared. We reiterated our demand for the administration’s proposal and scheduled a second bargaining session on Friday, April 1 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm via Zoom.

The full contract proposal and proposal presentation will be made available to all members for review in hard copy form for review in the GEO office. If you have questions about today’s session or the proposal, contact barg@uigeo.org.