PRESS RELEASE: GEO Presents Economic Proposal, Membership Outraged When Administration Delays

[Thursday, 16th/2/2023]
Graduate Employees Organization Local 6300

GEO Presents Economic Proposal, Membership Outraged When Administration Delays

(Champaign-Urbana). On Thursday, February 16, the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) presented a comprehensive package proposal including wages, health care, hours of work and other important worker issues to improve the quality of life of all Teaching Assistants (TAs) and Graduate Assistants (GAs) on Campus. 

During today’s bargaining session, the administration decided not to respond to our specific economic proposal around wages and health care despite asking multiple times since August 2022 and knowing in advance that this was our intention for today. Instead, they said on the record that they would present a counter at our next session on March 2nd which is nearly one year into negotiations with the University administration. 

“This session felt like a slap in face, it feels like their words are as empty as my bank account” – Karla Sanabria Véaz GEO Co-President 

The university administration came to the session today unprepared to negotiate wages and healthcare, after 10 months of bargaining in bad faith. In these past 10 months of bargaining, the administration has used bad faith tactics such as presenting unserious take it or leave it proposals and undermining bargaining efforts by revoking wages of over 200 TAs after they have already signed offer letters in Fall 2022. The University administration does not respect labor and the workers that make this University run; and does not care about access to quality public education. 

The GEO is doing everything in our power to negotiate a fair and progressive contract for our membership but the administration is bargaining in bad faith, bullying us at the table, putting our members’ lives and jobs to make the campus run effectively in jeopardy, and forcing us towards the possibility of a strike, if necessary.

GEO’s proposal includes a fair wage that will allow graduate workers to live a better quality of life under historic US inflation which has averaged 10% since 2022 as confirmed by the Consumer Prince Index. It will also allow graduate workers like us to have access to free year round health care for themselves and their dependents in a country where 29 million people under the age of 65 remain uninsured in 2021 as recorded by the CDC. In 2022, 43% of working-age adults were inadequately insured and 29% were underinsured while seeking coverage through the employer as recorded by the Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey. Both a fair wage and access to quality health care are human rights that the University is mandated to negotiate in good faith. 

The GEO believes that the University administration has the financial resources to provide graduate workers with fair wages which will increase access to quality public education. At the Board of Trustees meeting on September 22, 2022 the administration announced that they budgeted $7.65 billion for the U of I system in the 2023 fiscal year, an increase of $470.7 million or 6.6%. Meanwhile they increased room and board costs by 2%, student fees by 0.8%, and tuition by 1.8% in the 22-23 academic year. As the University budget balloons and health care costs increase by 33% in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, education becomes less and less accessible for undergraduates and graduate students. Graduate workers play an indispensable role at UIUC by teaching and grading a significant portion of all first year courses taught and developing high quality research that make possible for the University to maintain its reputation as a R1 institution.

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The Graduate Employees’ Organization, AFT/IFT Local 6300, AFL-CIO, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, represents approximately 3,000 Teaching and Graduate Assistants on the UIUC Campus. In November 2009 and in February 2018, over 1,000 GEO members and allies participated in a strike to secure a fair contract and more accessible UIUC campus. With an active presence in the community, the GEO continues to work for high-quality and accessible public education in Illinois.

For more information, please contact geo@uigeo.org. More information can also be found on GEO’s website at www.uiucgeo.org.

Twitter: @geo_uiuc
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