COVID Safety Work Action!
Table of Contents:
Announcements:
ANNOUNCEMENTS
COVID-19 Safety Action Announcement
GEO Members,
After Provost Cangellaris and Chancellor Jones refused to meet with GEO to collaborate on creating a plan of safety and protection for grad workers, our students, our faculty colleagues, and staff, the university administration has chosen to subject us to a rampaging virus that shows no signs of slowing down with another variant already spreading across Champaign. With a 7-day COVID-19 positivity rate of 4.76% and over 5,000 cases in the last month on campus, more and more of our valued workers and students continue to catch the virus (regardless of vaccination status) and hospitalizations are at emergency levels with ICU beds reaching capacity.
We cannot allow this administration to leave us at the mercy of the virus and jeopardize our health, financial stability, and ability to deliver the best education possible to our amazing students. Therefore, we are left with no other options than to protect ourselves as a campus community. Beginning Wednesday morning, we, the teaching assistants and graduate assistants of UIUC, will move our classes and work entirely online for the benefit of ourselves, our students, and our dedication to delivering quality instruction.
Although this protest is set for three days, we are more than prepared to extend our online teaching if the university administration continues to willingly neglect the safety of the campus community. Our demands offer collaboration and guidance in building a safer and stronger collective body. First, we want to meet with UIUC Provost Cangellaris and Chancellor Jones to create resources for worker choice of modality; this would mean the distribution of resources for teaching assistants to deliver hybrid, online, or in-person learning. Second, we need enough N95/KN95 masks to last the length of the semester. Therefore, the university must secure at least 16 masks for workers and students. GEO is more than willing to assist in distributing the masks across campus. Third, a COVID-19 exposure notification system offers a proactive, multilayered protection for all individuals at UIUC. This demand is not only helpful for instructors, staff, and students to work collectively at diminishing the COVID-19 presence on campus, but it already exists at multiple school campuses, including the University of Illinois-Chicago! We want to help the UIUC administration transfer this useful service to our campus immediately. The last safety measure for our campus community is regular testing. Again, these measures allow us to collaborate as a campus community of grad workers, faculty, students, staff, and administrators in setting the model example on how to eradicate the COVID-19 threat through worker leadership, innovation, and strategic safety.
GEO is not demanding that all classes move online for the semester—instead we are asking that the UIUC administration respect the right of TAs and students to decide how we teach and learn best, whether that’s online, hybrid, or in person. It’s OUR LEARNING and OUR LABOR—it should be OUR CHOICE!
Our protest comes at the heels of alarming reports from our membership. Vaccinated TAs have reported serious health effects while sick with the virus as well as after the virus is no longer contagious, including, difficulty breathing, short term memory loss/brain fog, chronic fatigue, chest pains, and mental health distress. Long-term COVID effects are dangerously disturbing our capacity to teach and care for our students in the most efficient way possible. Additionally, students are missing TA classes by the dozens. Students’ education is already suffering because of this. If the most basic of safety measures, like exposure notifications, testing, and masks, would help keep our campus community safe and improve students’ quality of education, what motivation do Provost Cangellaris and Chancellor Jones have in allowing the virus to run rampant and refusing our offer to collaborate on a strategy for safety?
UIUC has the infrastructure to offer widespread testing for in-person workers and students from last year. As mentioned earlier, UIC offers exposure notifications that can easily be adapted for UIUC’s purposes. And UIUC can certainly afford 16 masks for workers and students, with $871 million in reserves last year and President Tim Killeen’s latest proposed raise to $851,700.
From the graduate TA being forced to choose between their health and their job, to the student missing weeks of class because they contracted long COVID, the staff being exposed daily while serving food and cleaning buildings, and the immunocompromised community member, everyone on campus is in danger because of the administration’s negligence.
GEO has researched our demands and is willing to offer the administration blueprints for how to implement them. After almost 2 years of COVID-19 Impact Bargaining, thousands of signatures on our petition for implementing safety protocols, and multiple protests and rallies, UIUC administration has forced us to protect our campus community better than they are willing to at the moment and move our classes online. We welcome the opportunity to meet with them and are eager for their response to our demands.
We can only guarantee safer working and learning conditions if we come together to take action! University COVID-19 policy protects your right to temporarily move your course online without prior authorization. Sign up here to support the action, move your class or work online, and tell the administration loud and clear: our learning, our labor, our choice. https://bit.ly/COVIDACTIONS
GEO COVID-19 Safety Action FAQ
Does participating in GEO’s online action violate university policy?
No, as long as you continue working, but remotely. The Provost has stated that “temporary shifts online, for a week or less, are at the discretion of the instructor and do not need prior permission.” Similarly, the COVID-19 website states that “If an instructor is unable to teach a class session or two in person for a personal COVID-related reason, the instructor may make alternative arrangements for the class, which could include going remote or providing alternative assignments…”
Can I safely participate in this action without retaliation?
As addressed in the previous question, participating in this action does not violate university policy. Your right to engage in lawful union activity as a TA or GA is protected from retaliation by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act (IELRA). Our best protection, however, is power in numbers. With a significant portion of TAs and GAs committed to take this action, we already have a safety net. The more of us who join in, the larger this safety net will be and the more we can protect each other so no one is singled out.
What will my students think?
While undergrad reactions widely vary, students have many overlapping concerns with graduate workers. Undergrads also stand behind GEO’s demands, as evidenced by their overwhelming support for our COVID-19 safety petition. This is an opportunity to build solidarity with undergrads for our shared working and learning conditions. GEO members have developed a set of slides you can use or adapt to discuss COVID-19 safety and the online action with your students: https://bit.ly/GEOCOVIDRESOURCES
My department is doing its best to keep us safe.
This action is targeted at university administration, not at your department leadership or faculty. Many faculty are in support of GEO’s demands for safety but are constrained by university policy. That’s why it’s necessary to target university-level policies.
In Solidarity,
Graduate Employees’ Organization
809 S. 5th St., Geneva Room
Champaign, IL 61820
Email: geo@uigeo.org