Statement in Solidarity with UIUC Encampment

The graduate student workers’ union, GEO Local 6300 IFT/AFT AFL-CIO at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, supports the demands of the broad coalition of UIUC students, some of whom are GEO members, who are occupying Alma Mater with an encampment to protest UIUC’s financial investment and academic ties to the apartheid state of Israel.

We stand in solidarity with the international mass movement of students and academic workers for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a Free Palestine.

If you are a Teaching Assistant (TA) or administrative Graduate Assistant (GA), you have contract protections as a graduate employee. As a public sector employee, you have additional constitutional rights that workers in the private sector don’t, such as first amendment, fourth amendment, fifth amendment and fourteenth amendment rights. Under the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act (IELRA), workers can come together to organize or “engage in lawful concerted activity” if it is to address a work issue.

GEO Local 6300 members can report contract violations connected to the protests, including retaliation against graduate workers for engaging in political speech by emailing grievance@uigeo.org. Together as union members, we can protect our academic freedom and protest for a Free Palestine.