Bargaining: 1st Session Summary
GEO members,
The first wage negotiation session wrapped up Monday with our bargaining team presenting our proposal, featuring a 44% raise to the minimum wage to meet living wage standards for the Champaign-Urbana area as well as a 6% raise for TAs and GAs making above the minimum wage.
Key takeaways from today’s session:
The GEO Bargaining Team reiterated our stance on bargaining wages for all TAs and GAs, not just those who make the campus minimum
Our bargaining team rejected the administration’s suggestion to consider the Illinois Fire Services Institute as the location for the next bargaining session, given its lack of accessibility through public transport and distance from the campus.
Administration was unprepared to bargain on our agreed-upon date, and thus will only respond to our proposal in our next bargaining session, which will be sometime in March.
As the GEO Bargaining Team lead negotiators, Sam Froiland and Lila Ann Dodge, read out our proposed changes to the contract and our rationale. The lead negotiator for the university administration, Robb Craddock, followed up with no initial objections to the raise itself, stating that our rationale had taken care of his concerns. Our rationale, with specific numbers removed, is summarized below.
Rationale:
In consultation with membership, the Bargaining Team has opted to eliminate the distinction between Appointment and Reappointment, simplifying matters for all parties and resulting in more accurate and straightforward pay to membership.
Graduate workers, like all workers, require a living wage. The current minimum for a member of the bargaining unit with a 50% appointment is less than 70% of an annual living wage in Champaign County, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. Our proposal would make the minimum wage a living wage, which we see as a necessity for labor no matter where and how it is performed.
The wage increase of 6% for members making above the minimum is designed to prevent grad employees from receiving depreciated wages due to inflation and increasing costs of living. This will ensure that every member of the Bargaining Unit will see an increase to their wages as a result of this agreement.
Fees are part of a graduate worker’s cost of living. We propose that an increase to fees necessitates an increase in wages to prevent the depreciation of a graduate worker’s wages.
Our demand for Year 5 (Academic Year 2021-2022) of the contract is in keeping with the realities of inflation and cost-of-living increases that we have seen in this county and nationwide over the past several years.
Craddock opened with asking the GEO why we were proposing language that proposed raises above the minimum wage and if we believed that that the wage negotiation was not limited to discussing the minimum wage for graduate employees. Following a brief caucus for consultation with several dozen GEO members who turned up in support, the bargaining team returned to the negotiations room with a firm response: we are here to bargain wages for all TAs and GAs, not just those who make the campus minimum. The GEO maintains that, as this bargaining cycle is a wage reopener and article XIV pertains to “Wages”, we are able to negotiate the entire article.
Our proposal was not an unreasonable ask. The bargaining team’s proposed wage increase would cost the university administration just above 1% of its budget set aside for wages this year. To put our demands in further perspective, our lead negotiators referred to recent announcements by the university administration, including a $230,000 raise for president Tim Killeen and the funding of new initiatives like the Discovery Partners Institute. These initiatives reflect the great financial health of the university system at the moment. If lucrative raises to those on top of the administrative hierarchy and exploratory projects are within the university’s means, then the university administration can offer a basic living wage to graduate workers - who make all academic operations possible in the first place.
The rest of the session covered the location of the subsequent meetings. Our bargaining team rejected the administration’s suggestion to consider the Illinois Fire Services Institute given its lack of accessibility through public transport and distance from the campus. If Levis Faculty Center was not an option, we insisted that the subsequent meetings should be held on central campus to ensure ease of access for our members.
The session concluded with the administration team agreeing to get back to us with a date for the next session and an accessible location in a week’s time, and their response to our proposal within two week’s time.
Within that time, we need your help organizing so that we can continue to present a united front to administration as graduate workers. Here are some things you can do to help the effort to win living wages for all workers:
If you have any information about how salaries for graduate workers are determined in your department, please contact Bargaining Team Member Christopher Marry at christopherjmarry@gmail.com. This information will be helpful in assessing how departments which pay some workers above the minimum or have complex pay structures will implement our proposal.
We want to be fully transparent about the bargaining process with our membership, and this means clear and consistent communication. Our Communications Committee is doing its best to accomplish this, but can use some help to lighten the load on its current membership. If you are able and willing to sign up for discrete tasks, such as individual social media posts, without committing to the committee, email commcomm@uigeo.org for the information and access you will need.
We want to hear from you! If you have and are willing to share your own reasons for needing a living wage as a graduate worker, send them to us! They can be written or recorded, Tweet-length or full paragraphs; we want to be able to present as many stories as possible to show the varied needs of our bargaining unit and make it clear that our fight is for all graduate workers.
In Solidarity,
Graduate Employees’ Organization
809 S. 5th St., Geneva Room
Champaign, IL 61820
Email: geo@uigeo.org