Summary of Bargaining Session 16: GEO's Package Proposal and Admin's Response
Bargaining Session 16 Summary
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!
Join Bargaining Session 17!
Bargaining Session 17 will be on Thursday, November 3 from 8:45am - 12:30pm in the Illini Union, Room 314 (A & B)! We’ll have a pre-session caucus to talk amongst members from 8:45-9:00am before the session begins at 9:00am, and we’ll caucus after the session to check in on what happened from 12:00-12:30pm.
Join for as long as you can, we need everyone there who can make it to remind the administration that we are a democratic Union run by members who will show up to win a fair contract now!
[Image description: A flyer with a light green background and an image of a megaphone with waves of sound in the upper right. Black and white text with green highlights reads, FULL CONTRACT BARGAINING SESSION #17 11/3/22. In a paragraph below, smaller black text reads, On Thursday, November 3, GEO’s Bargaining Team will be negotiating with university administration on topics of access and justice, wages and waivers, and health and safety in our contract. The bargaining session will be from 9am-12pm, and the bargaining team will caucus with members before and after the session from 8:45-9am & 12-12:30pm. To the right is a white logo with the letters “GEO” inside. At the bottom, black text reads Illini Union Ballroom. Please wear a mask! Childcare, food & coffee provided.]
New Episode of After Bargaining
Chelsea and Karla join the After Bargaining host, Essam, to give updates on the bargaining session that took place on the 28th/10/2022. They discuss the content of the package handed to admin by the Union, how did the admin respond, and all the other happenings of the bargaining session.
This episode and future ones will be slightly longer reflecting: 1- our sessions are becoming longer, 2- we will include testimonials from members in our episodes. In this episode, Patrick, who is a graduate worker, reads to us his testimonial that speaks about the pay cut many graduate workers received this year.
Listen to the episode here: anchor.fm/after-bargaining/.
[Image description: A black and white photograph with Chelsea on the right and Karla on the left sitting side by side on a couch and smiling.]
In Solidarity,
Graduate Employees’ Organization
809 S. 5th St., Geneva Room
Champaign, IL 61820
Email: geo@uigeo.org