Day One of GEO Strike!

Submitted by Brian Dolinar on November 16, 2009 - 6:53pm

Despite the rain and cold, hundreds showed up on Monday, November 16, 2009 to join picket lines thrown up around several buildings on the quad at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After negotiations broke down over the weekend, the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) called for a strike. They have been without a contract for more than three months.

In the morning, picket lines were set up at all entrances of Gregory Hall, Foellinger Auditorium, Davenport Hall, the Foreign Languages Building, and the English Building. Hundreds of classes were cancelled across campus and all of the classes in the English Building were called off. GEO members marched in circles and joined in chants that could be heard from inside the buildings. The GEO drum corps travelled to each building to keep the picket lines inspired with live drumming. A trombone player joined them playing to the tune of the 1980s pop song, “I Want Candy,” which GEO members adapted to, “I Want Contract!”

During the afternoon, two massive picket lines were formed outside Davenport and the English Building. At 3 p.m., the two lines combined and between 400 and 500 people marched to the Swanlund Administration Building where the offices of Public Affairs Director Robin Kaler and Interim Chancellor Robert Easter are located. There GEO activist Rich Potter gave a rousing speech calling on the administration to guarantee tuition waivers.

The key sticking point in contract negotiations over the weekend was the issue of tuition waivers. The University administration wanted to leave open the option of eliminating tuition waivers specifically for out of state students. The administration said in a mass email sent out to the entire campus on the day of the strike, “the university has no plans to change current policy on tuitions wavers,” yet they were unwilling to put this in writing during contract negotiations. Instead, they said in an earlier message that this was an “eleventh hour” issue brought up by the GEO. In fact, this was a move already made by the administration in late 2008 when they tried to cut tuition waivers for graduate students working at 33% time, but due to protests on the quad the proposal was dropped. They tried to do something similar for out of state students in the most recent negotiations.

Picket lines will resume on Tuesday at 8 a.m. It is important that everyone shows up for a second day of picketing to put pressure on the administration to sign a contract.

Another round of bargaining is set to take place at 9 a.m. on Tuesday. A General Membership Meeting will be held Tuesday from 5-8 p.m. at the Wesley United Methodist Church located in which GEO members will vote to accept a possible proposal and whether to continue the strike.

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GEO Press Release After First Day of Strike

Submitted by Brian Dolinar on November 16, 2009 - 7:13pm.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: FIRST DAY OF UIUC GEO STRIKE A MAJOR SUCCESS

UIUC GEO REFUTES MISINFORMATION FROM UIUC ADMINISTRATION PRESS RELEASES AND MASS EMAILS

STRIKE TO CONTINUE TOMORROW, STARTING AT 8 AM

GEO AND UIUC ADMINISTRATION TO CONTINUE NEGOTIATIONS TOMORROW AT 9 AM IN UIUC LEVIS FACULTY CENTER

URBANA-CHAMPAIGN (November 16): Starting at 8 am on November 16, members of the Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO), AFT/IFT Local 6300, AFL-CIO, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) began the first strike by a recognized union local at UIUC in over 10 years. Over 500 graduate employees in addition to numerous allies were present throughout the morning and afternoon on picket lines surrounding the UIUC Liberal Arts and Sciences Quad. The English Building, Davenport Hall, the Foreign Languages Building, and Gregory Hall are all designated as "struck" buildings for the duration of the strike. In total, approximately 1,000 graduate employees were committed to picket shifts throughout the day.

Contrary to the assertions of the UIUC administration, hundreds of undergraduate course sections taught by teaching assistants (TAs) were shut down. The UIUC administration claims that there was little disruption to the campus. However, the number of teaching assistants walking picket lines, as well as a near total lack of classes in the English Building, which hosts some of the largest undergraduate classes in the University, makes this claim untenable. Additionally, reports from undergraduate students and TAs indicate that many classes that were "held" in fact consisted only of attendance being taken in largely empty rooms. This is consistent with the fact that many faculty, even if they chose to cross picket lines and act as replacement labor for striking workers, would be responsible for ten or more sections that would normally be taught by TAs.

GEO members were joined on the picket lines by faculty, undergraduate students, members of other union locals, and other allies from the campus and the community. Members of union locals from Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and all over the state of Illinois were also present in solidarity with the GEO.

By authorizing and calling a strike, GEO members have taken a vital step in holding the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign administration accountable to its stated commitment to excellence in research and undergraduate education.

After months of stalling from the UIUC administration, GEO members on November 6 voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike against the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. In a final bargaining session before the strike was slated to begin on November 16, the GEO and UIUC bargaining teams negotiated for over six hours in front of a crowd of over 300 GEO members. The GEO and the University administration agreed in principle to every aspect of the contract but tuition waiver security. To be clear, the GEO is striking only over the issue of tuition waiver security.

Tuition waivers are a vital component of public graduate education. Tuition waivers are ubiquitous throughout large public universities in the United States. Without tuition waivers, universities would have no access to a vital pool of highly qualified and cheap instructional labor - graduate employees. For example, GEO bargaining unit members teach 23.1% of all undergraduate course hours at UIUC, and perform comparably to faculty in official student evaluations of instructor performance as measured by the University of Illinois’ Center for Teaching Excellence. Yet salaries for assistants draws only 6.5% of state funding, including salaries for GAs and Research Assistants, who don’t teach. By contrast, faculty salaries draw over 55% of the University budget.

Graduate employee labor is vital to the fiscally efficient provision of the University’s core service, academic instruction. Tuition waivers allow the University of Illinois to enjoy this cheap labor, as it would not have access to a pool of workers able to teach so much for so little without granting tuition waivers. Without protection for tuition waivers, graduate education and graduate employment will only be accessible to the wealthy.

The UIUC administration claims that their offer represented reasonable protection for existing tuition waivers at UIUC, but this is not the case. Instead, the administration offered a side letter that stated the GEO would be given the option of bargaining any change to the Board of Trustees Governing Policy on Tuition waivers. This policy, however, is limited to in-state tuition waivers, while most members of the GEO bargaining unit receive out of state tuition waivers. Consequently, the administration side letter provides almost no protection for the existing tuition waivers at UIUC. The full text of both side letters, as well as a more detailed explanation of both positions, can be found in two previous GEO press releases, at http://www.uigeo.org/2009/11/15/specific-explanation-of-geo-and-admin-tuition-waiver-proposals/ and http://www.uigeo.org/2009/11/15/geo-responds-to-provost-easter-massmail/. The GEO side letter seeks to allow the GEO to bargain the impact of any change to existing campus-wide tuition waiver policy, which currently provides waivers covering out of state tuition to most members of the bargaining unit.

While this proposal would represent zero increased cost to the University, the administration rejected the GEO side letter, even though it was apparent that such a rejection would result in a strike.

The GEO has been in bargaining with the UIUC administration since April 21st. For the entire bargaining process, the GEO has consistently articulated that a key concern of GEO members is increased protection for tuition waivers. This concern stems from recent attempts by the UIUC administration to radically change and undermine tuition waiver policy. As Cary Nelson, the President of the American Association of University Professors, stated on the AAUP website on November 16, "given that the administration had already eliminated them for research assistants in the sciences, there was good reason to fear administration interest in cherry picking humanities or social science sub-disciplines for similar treatment." (http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/pres/let/gradstrike.htm)

In a "massmail" sent to the entire UIUC campus on November 16, UIUC Interim Provost Robert Easter states that "let me be as clear as possible in response to this issue. The excellence of our graduate programs depends on our capacity to provide fair and

reasonable expectations for graduate assistants regarding their tuition waivers. Graduate students with assistantships will not have their tuition waivers reduced while they hold qualifying assistantships, are in good academic standing, and are making proper progress toward graduation in the program in which they began."

Easter's statement is very misleading. First, a key reason that the GEO seeks increased protection for tuition waivers is precisely because the administration has in the past sought to change the definition of "qualifying appointments." This term is incredibly vague, and would allow the administration to potentially invalidate tuition waivers for hundreds of graduate students from one semester to the next. In fact, the administration attempted to do this in late 2008. All that the GEO is seeking is the ability to bargain any such future attempts at change to overall existing policy in the future. Second, if the administration is so committed to protecting tuition waivers, the GEO does not understand why the administration bargaining team refused to any language that was not limited to the Board of Trustees policy, which gives the administration leeway to convert out of state to in-state tuition waivers. This difference represents as much as $13,000 per year.

If the administration is committed to providing tuition waivers as they currently stand, and has no intention to radically change what appointments qualify for tuition waivers, then there should be no reason that the administration would be unwilling to agree to the GEO's proposal. At the bargaining session on Saturday 11/14, administration bargaining team member Deborah Richie stated categorically that the administration would only offer language that is limited to the Board of Trustees policy. Given that language protecting status quo tuition waiver practice (as opposed to the policy, which only protects in-state tuition waivers), would not represent an increased cost to the University administration, the GEO believes that the only reason to continue to reject the GEO's proposal is because the administration intends to initiate radical changes in tuition waiver policy. This is certainly the opinion of American Association of University Professors President Cary Nelson, who is quoted above.

The GEO and UIUC administration bargaining teams will resume negotiations at 9 am tomorrow in the Levis Faculty Center on the UIUC campus. If the UIUC administration is serious about its stated commitment to protect tuition waivers, the GEO expects the administration to present a different proposal than what was offered on Saturday. The GEO strike against the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois will continue tomorrow, starting at 8 am. The GEO strike committee calls upon all GEO members and members of the GEO bargaining unit to participate in the strike by withholding all labor pertaining to their teaching or graduate assistantships, and by walking on picket lines.

The GEO is a labor union representing all teaching and graduate assistants (TAs and GAs) on the UIUC campus. With over 2600 GEO members, and over 2600 graduate employees represented in the bargaining unit, the GEO is one of the largest higher education union locals in the United States.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Peter Campbell, GEO Communications Officer, odell.campbell@gmail.com, 253-222-5861, or the GEO office at geo@uigeo.org, 217-344-8283, 1001 S. Wright Street, Champaign, IL, 61820. Information about the GEO can also be found on our website at www.uigeo.org.

GEO on Huffington Post

Submitted by Brian Dolinar on November 16, 2009 - 7:15pm.

The Fighting Illini don't have much fight on the gridiron this year. But the disgraced administrators who perpetrated the "Clout List" scandal had enough fight to win golden parachutes even after they lose their top administrative positions. And now the University administration has allowed a strike of its teaching assistants -- the lifeblood of undergraduate education -- to begin today, November 16th, at 8am. What are this University's priorities? Following the pay-to-play legacy of disgraced former governor Rod Blagojevich? Or cleansing itself and resuming its mission as a bastion of higher education offered to the sons and daughters of hard-working taxpaying Illinois residents. The U of I is at a crossroads, and to my mind, it has only one option left.

"The Lifeblood of Undergraduate Education is on Strike"

By Emily F. Shaw

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emily-f-shaw/the-lifeblood-of-undergra_b_3...

The Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO), the labor union that represents all TAs and Graduate Assistants (GAs) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have called a strike that will disrupt undergraduate instruction and other critical functions on the University campus. Many of us are teachers, and it goes without saying that we do not wish for our jobs and the education of our students to be disrupted with a work strike so close to the end of the semester. We have been forced into this position because the administration has refused to seriously negotiate on the issue that's most important to GEO members: a guarantee in our contracts that protects our tuition waivers, not just as a matter of practice, but as a contractual obligation. This demand is clearly not about grabbing for cash in the middle of a recession: it's about ensuring that the University does not try to reduce the compensation of graduate students in order to address its budgetary problems. If the University cannot meet this demand, it is willingly ensuring that the future of graduate education at this state's largest and most prestigious public university is less accessible and a less attractive option for people from all socioeconomic backgrounds. By refusing to seriously negotiate on this issue, the administration demonstrates that it is not committed to recruiting and retaining top graduate students to come study at this university and provide education to its undergraduates. In essence, we're demanding that the university hold itself accountable to its own purported standards of excellence in public education.

The GEO came to the table with a full contract proposal on the first day of negotiations, while the administration failed to present a counterproposal for more than three months. Even then, the counterproposal offered by the administration was actually regressive in a number of respects from the GEO's previous contract. Although the GEO has made many concessions over the course of 18 bargaining sessions, the first movement we saw from the administration came only after a unanimous membership vote to file an Intent to Strike last month. Tuition waiver guarantees have been of a pillar of our platform since day one; this is no "11th hour" demand. The GEO believes that the administration's unwillingness to concede on the issue that matters most to its graduate employees demonstrates that the university is seriously considering graduate tuition as a promising source of revenue during difficult economic times. A work strike is clearly a last resort in our effort to secure a fair contract.

This university is still reeling from an admissions scandal that forced most of the Board of Trustees, the chancellor, and the university president to resign. We have a (mostly) new Board of Trustees and are looking for new administrative leadership. The members of the GEO and so many of our supporters in this struggle stand firm in our belief that now is the time for the university to reassess its priorities.

The former chancellor diverted $450,000 of discretionary funds to provide jobs and scholarships for politically well-connected but dubiously deserving applicants. At the same time that the administration was failing to bargain a fair contract for its graduate employees, $400,000 went to the attorneys who represented the university before the governor's investigative committee, and another went to $550,000 to the generous new faculty appointments of the former president and chancellor under the terms of their respective resignations. While these misguided former leaders of the university quickly negotiated cushy faculty appointments, the GEO is still being told that there is no money at all to meet our fair and reasonable demands. Last year's remarkable failure, the University of Illinois Global Campus, cost the university more than it would cost to meet all of the GEO's contract demands. We find it hard to trust an interim administration that has not yet given us cause to trust it, nor an outgoing administration which has proven itself untrustworthy and unethical. From the GEO's perspective, it appears that the University's budget crisis is, at least in part, a crisis of priorities.

No one can deny that the university and the State of Illinois are facing economic woes the likes of which we haven't seen in decades. So the administration is holding fast to the position that they have no money and cannot make any concessions to the TAs and GAs who largely determine the quality of undergraduate education at the University of Illinois. If they have "no intention" of changing the current policy on tuition waivers, why do they refuse to guarantee them in our contract? TAs on this campus teach nearly a quarter of all undergraduate classes, and many of us are the sole instructors of record for our courses. I, for one, am currently doing the work of a faculty member, teaching an undergraduate course of 135 students. I am assistant to no one, as I deliver all lectures, plan and deliver weekly discussion sections, write exams and grade all work with the collaboration of another excellent grad student. Yet we're both considered "assistants." I'm not complaining; it's been a phenomenal experience. But I wish to provide some perspective on what it means for many of us to be "teaching assistants" at this university.

I regret that I have been forced into the position of having to cancel my class and picket the buildings into which my students go to get an education. I resent the fact that the University of Illinois administration is so determined to convince the people of Illinois that our demands are unreasonable and untenable. By refusing to bargain in good faith on the issue that matters most to the GEO, the administration demonstrates that in hard economic times, it is prepared to compromise its core missions of providing accessible public education and quality instruction for the sons and daughters of Illinois by making sure the people who provide that education feel like respected workers.

This is one of those defining moments for a major institution like the U of I. Tuition waiver security is not the only thing still on the bargaining table, but it is the issue that has united our membership and rallied support from across the state and the country. As we walk out on this cold, rainy morning, 13 million Illinois residents are now wondering if the university can stop talking about how much they value us, and step up to show some real respect to the TAs who play such a key role in the education of our sons and daughters.

YouTube of Strike

Submitted by Brian Dolinar on November 16, 2009 - 7:16pm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZHEZVYSVuY

Great idea!

Submitted by anonymous on November 16, 2009 - 10:10pm.

Let's all the civil service employees go on strike and demand raises and no furlough days and better furniture for their offices and pet insurance! We won't work until the state manufactures money out of thin air to accomodate our ridiculous demands! Then the grad students striking won't get any pay at all because there won't be anyone to cut their checks, or fix their toilets, or keep the lights on! That will really stick it to the man and bring down the whole UI!

$1.4 Million Closer to the Edge

Submitted by anonymous on November 16, 2009 - 10:45pm.

Well, after being pushed $1,400,000 closer to the edge of the financial abyss by handing the golden parachutes to White and Herman, you're right, we can't really afford to give grad students enough to actually eat now, can we?

I do think you're going overboard with your demand for pet insurance. My sarcasm meter is calling BS on that one.

video 2 from 11-16-09 GEO Strike

Submitted by anonymous on November 17, 2009 - 12:46am.

video 3 from 11-16-09 GEO Strike

Submitted by anonymous on November 17, 2009 - 12:47am.

Breaking News: GEO WINS CONTRACT!!!

Submitted by Brian Dolinar on November 17, 2009 - 2:16pm.

GEO WINS CONTRACT!!! More lata. BD

GEO General Membership Meeting, Today at 5pm!

Submitted by anonymous on November 17, 2009 - 3:49pm.

GEO will be holding a General Membership Meeting to consider suspending the strike pending a vote on a ratification of the contract, based on an explanation of the results of further negotiations between the bargaining committee and the University's negotiators. The GMM will be in Wesley United Methodist Church, 1203 W. Green St, Urbana, starting at 5pm.

Negotiations began at 9am today, after the University made a request yesterday to move up the starting time from the original afternoon start time that was set last week. GEO had requested additional bargaining sessions on Sunday and Monday after the marathon Saturday session failed to result in an agreement, but the University had refused to do so. Apparently, the University had a change of heart over how vigorously it wished to pursue negotiations after GEO's strong show of force in kicking off the strike Monday, in spite of the atrocious weather.

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