GEO Prepared to Strike!

This is garbage. You expect free tuition, free insurance, and you want to work half time but still get a full time salary on top of all the other free stuff you already get?!? A 20% raise in stipends? Who the heck do you think you are? NOBODY at UIUC got raises this year not professors with multiple degrees and way more experience than you, or janitors, or ANYBODY - why are YOU so special? The problem is that these are grad students who have never had to live in the REAL world, and they think they are sooooo indispensable and can whine and cry and demand whatever they want. I hope the UI fires ALL of you and takes away your FREE tuition so you have to go home and live in your parent's basements.

I fully support the GEO and its decision to strike. I have worked for several university professors and at a university owned start-up company and have seen first hand how the university prioritizes business over academia. The real value of a university is in the quality of it's students, graduate students, and professors. Not in the ability to produce graduates quickly and at a low cost(this only creates the appearance of financial improvement in the short term, but as long as you leave and get your bonus package before anyone cares, that's ok).  The GEO is actually trying to act in the best long term interests of the university whether the university can realize it or not. So since I love UIUC and love living in a highly educated society, I guess I have to say, THANKS GEO for showing some serious courage for such an important cause.

I don't get this "you don't live in the real world" train of thought. Many people in school have spent a significant portion of their lives working "in the real world" (I guess that to mean "outside of academe") - where they were paid quite a bit more for their labor, for the most part. At least in "the real world" I'd stand more of a chance of having health insurance.  The claim that graduate students are getting free tuition is also specious; graduate students, in addition to their teaching load, spend a vast majority of their time contributing to original knowledge through research, discovery, writing and so on.  They are a fundamental - fundamental - part of the academic apparatus.  They are not an afterthought, they are not simply contracted labor, and they are very, very different from undergraduates in terms of their roles and responsibilities, as well as their very particular vulnerabilities, and they need to be compensated as such.  For starters, meeting the extremely low living wage for the C-U area would be appropriate. 

At a school so embroiled in scandal, so weak in its position vis-a-vis the public, its alumni and others, it is a crying shame that the university would not do the right thing by its own mission and treat its graduate laborers with the compensation commensurate to their work.  If nothing else, this is an abject lesson in labor politics for the undergrads - most of whom, it should come as no surprise, support their TAs in their bid to strike.  The undergraduates, after all, are acutely aware of who is there to respond to their learning needs, instruct their courses, grade their papers, answer their emails, and so on.

Would it be more accurate to report this as ~23% of represented students, since roughly only a quarter of them participated in the GEO vote?  I find it difficult to support a strike (a symbol of solidarity and dedication to a cause) when there's not even close to a majority of the represented students even participating.  Granted, a lot of us are too busy to go to every meeting due to our responsibilities as outlined by our assistantships, but as a fourth year grad, I just can't whole-heartedly support a strike given the level of GEO participation and current state of affairs for (what I see as) an average student with an assistantship.

The University of Wisconsin treats TAs as state employees.  As such, the TAA bargains directly with the state, and is accorded the benefits package commensurate with state employ - including full health insurance benefits (source: http://www.taa-madison.org/).  As a friend recently said, "The student health clinic is great if there's something wrong with my vagina."  Beyond that, grown adults of the kind who tend to be employed as TAs often have health care needs.  Also, do not be confused by the appointment levels; a so-called 50% appointment often reflects work well beyond 50% FTE hours.  Finally, while tuition remission is certainly marvelous, it does not pay rent, heating bills, medical bills (incurred from lack of appropriate health coverage) and so on.  It also does not tend to meet a reasonable threshhold of living wage.  The student laborers involved in this strike action authorization do not take the issue of going out on strike and all its attendant remifications lightly, nor has this action been entered into in haste.  This information is available on many easily-accessible websites, as well as in third-party reporting.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ALL THE FOLKS THAT ARE ANTI-LABOR? DON'T THE FACTS TALK FOR THEMSELVES? 20 HOUR PER WEEK DO NOT NECESSARILY MEAN WORKING IN THE OFFICE AND LEAVING? IT IS BEYOND THAT... AND GEO ALWAYS STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH ALL LABORERS ON CAMPUS? WHERE DO YOU GET THE IMPRESSION THAT GAs THINK THEY ARE SPECIAL? BUT YES, THEY ARE SPECIAL IN THE SENSE THAT THEY ARE NOT INVOLED IN ANY ADMISSION SCANDALS OR WHATSOEVER.

GEO rally on the quad, Thurs. Nov. 12 at noon.

A rather ignorant comment, among several, was made to a Daily Illini article yesterday. ""The only question that needs to be asked is what TAs/GAs get at the other Big Ten universities. If the GEO's demands are higher than the norm, THEY CAN GO TO HELL"

For those who are willing to listen to facts and learn from them, here is information responsive to such questions that will clarify why GEO members are mad as hell and won't take it any more, thus why a strike is now imminent.

GEO PRESS PACKET - In this press packet, we go over the number of course hours taught by TAs and GAs, provide our position on the University’s budget situation in relationship to the GEO’s contract proposal, compare minimum TA salaries at UIUC with other Big Ten institutions, provide salary comparison statistics between graduate employees and the highest paid employees on campus, and offer a personal testimonial from a GEO member.  

I.  GEO members and the University’s stated commitment to excellence in instruction -

GEO members are vital to UIUC’s ability to maintain excellence in undergraduate education, including the University’s U.S. News and World Report ranking of 39 (9th among public universities).  Members of the GEO – Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants – currently teach 23.1% of all undergraduate course hours at UIUC, over 40% of 100 level courses, and approximately 1/3 of undergraduate course hours in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  Many of these course hours represent Graduate Assistants who teach their own sections (not as part of a large lecture) of 22-25 students; for many undergraduates at UIUC, their only significant opportunity for weekly interaction with an instructor is with their TA or GA.  For example, three of the largest core courses in the Liberal Arts and Sciences college – Rhetoric 105, Communication 101, and Communication 111, which represent approximately 2,400 undergraduates – are taught in individual sections of 22-25 students by GAs who are independently responsible for the instruction and grading of their students.

Teaching and Graduate Assistants also contribute significantly to teaching excellence.  From the Division of Management Information: http://www.dmi.illinois.edu/cp/, the standard profile for “campus total” provides the following numbers:

Line 3800 will tell you the total number of grad and "professional" students. and line 3840 the number that actually study on campus. The following lines break that down into a number of categories.

Section 6200 will tell you who is teaching the "instructional units" (IUs) on campus. As you see in line 6230, grad assistants are teaching 23.1% of all IUs on campus.

Section 9500 shows the average ICES (teaching evaluation) scores, and they are broken down into faculty and TA sections. Here you can see that just as many TA as faculty sections (13%) were ranked in the top 10% of all instructors. Section 9770 breaks this down according to "top rated" instructors.

II.  The GEO’s position on the U of I budget in relationship to the GEO contract proposal:

The University administration claims that they cannot afford GEO proposals; however, the total cost of the GEO's proposals (around $8 million) represents ONLY .2% of the University's overall budget of over $4 billion, and only 1.2% of the U of I's revenue funds from the state.  We believe that the administration can afford our proposals - the problem is that fairly compensating the workers who teach 23.1% of their undergraduate course hours is not a priority for them.

The total cost of our Living Wage Proposal (about 2.6 million) = .07% of the U of I’s overall budget.

President White said that "overall, the University is in a reasonable position financially to weather a difficult economic period," and that "higher education funding remains an important state priority and an investment in the future."  The numbers directly contradict the administration's claim of a University financial crisis: the U of I received $697.9 million in general revenue funds from the state for 2010 this summer - a 1.1% increase in their overall operating budget.  The 2.5% rescission that the state asked the University to hold back was restored this summer, and the U of I received $58.3 million in federal stimulus money and had a record-breaking year in private donations.

Finally, the University administration claims that it has made the best financial proposal it can with respect to the budget.  The GEO does not believe that this is the case. Publicly available budget documents indicate that the University is in fact receiving a budget increase from the state, and that it has had a record breaking year in private donations.  Much of this budget information has been made available by the GEO in a previous press packet, which I am re-attaching to this email.  We have also received new budget information that we are in the process of compiling.  In brief, Illinois State Representative Chapin Rose, who sits on the higher education appropriations committee, has told representatives of UIUC labor unions in two separate meetings that in his opinion, the FY '10 budget is more than capable of providing campus unions with fair contracts.  Specifically, his calculation is that the UIUC budget increased by 7% last year, and will continue to increase for FY '10.  According to Rose, the problem is not that there is not enough money in the budget, but that far too much of the funding is allocated for the President's Office, the Chancellor's Office, the Provost's Office, and other administrative units instead of academic units on campus.  University Spokesperson Robin Kaler's claim in the Daily Illini last week that there is not enough money in the budget to provide graduate employees with a living wage (to set the minimum salary at $16,086 for a 50% appointment), the total cost of which would represent less than one tenth of a percent of the University of Illinois operating budget, is not consistent with the reality of the budget situation. 

III.  Minimum salaries for TAs in 08-09 – UIUC is FAR behind peer institutions in its compensation to graduate employees:

Michigan: $16,141

Wisconsin: $13,810

Iowa: $16,574

Illinois: $13,430

Cost of living:

Michigan: $16,554

Wisconsin: $14,780

Iowa: $15,520

Illinois: $16,086

Difference:

Michigan: $(410)

Wisconsin: $(970)

Iowa: $1,054

Illinois: $(2,656)

IV.  Salary comparisons –

Further illustrating the administration's flawed priorities is the amount that the highest paid employees at the University are paid.  While the University administration tells campus labor (including the lowest paid employees on campus – service workers and graduate employees) that fair pay raises aren't affordable, administrators earning 6 figures received 8-9% pay increases.  In AY 2008-2009:

- The U of I's President earned $555,000 and had a house and car provided by the state

- UIUC's Chancellor got an 8% raise, earned $427,500, and had a car provided by the state

- the CEO of the failed Global Campus initiative got a 9% raise and earned $344,850.

- A TA earning the minimum salary got a 3.3% raise and earned $13,430.

The University's estimated cost of living for a graduate student over 9 months (available on the financial aid website) for 2008-2009 was $15,474 - a difference of $2,044 dollars.  For 2009-2010 figures is $16,086.  Also, according to the "grey book" of U of I salaries, available at the main library and online, non tenure-track faculty instructors - who do similar work as GAs and TAs- earned an average of $42,986 in AY 07/08.  Adjusted to 50%, this still represents a salary of several thousand dollars more than the minimum salary ($16,086) being proposed by the GEO.  

V.  Profiles - we can also provide profiles of GAs and TAs who find themselves significantly disadvantaged in their personal and professional lives by the GEO’s current contract (let alone the administration’s new and regressive proposal).  The following is just one example.  We even have members of our bargaining unit who have been forced to go on public food assistance – while none of them have agreed to go on record, data may be available from the local public aid office.

Profile: Christina M. Ceisel

Age: 30

Education: Bachelors of Science: University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Media Studies 2000

MA, Social Science, University of Chicago 2004

Entered PhD Program at the Institute of Communications Research 2006

Works in the Advertising Department

Labor issue: Same job, less money. $4,566 pay cut (was at 67%, now 50%) Also more work: same size class, but no longer have a TA) 

Previously the Executive Director of the Streeterville Chamber of Commerce, located in downtown Chicago, as well as Member Services director of The Plaza Club, Ms. Ceisel returned to school in the fall of 2006 with her sights on a PhD. “I knew income would diminish drastically, and that my lifestyle would change as a result. But, having already gotten my masters I knew I was committed to the PhD, the research and the teaching. I was willing to do that." She immediately began as a teaching assistant, and first taught her own class in the Spring of 2009. “It was a great challenge, choosing the readings and writing the course content for 60 students.” Her teaching assistant, a student in the masters program, helped manage the attendance, grading, and student questions. The department provided a 67% stipend, and the teaching assistant received a tuition waiver and 25% stipend. 

This semester however, is a different story. In July the department sent her a letter via email informing her that her appointment level had dropped to 50% , and a TA would not be provided, but a grader would be made available. The class size remained the same however, which means that Ceisel must now manage the assignments, essay grading, and questions of all 60 students on her own, for a lower salary. “I’m still giving the students my all, but it is disheartening to know that rather than being rewarded for my work, the administration seems to be making it harder. I may have to get another job to make up for the cut in pay, which takes time away from my graduate studies.”

Sources:

Source for legal bills:

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2009/08/29/ui_admissions_review_has_cost_439000_in_legal_bills

Faculty and administrator salary data – from the “Grey Book” of UIUC budget and salary information:

http://www.archive.org/details/UniversityOfIllinoisSalaryList2008-2009

Teaching percentages: from the U of I Division of Management Information Campus Profile - http://www.dmi.illinois.edu/cp/.

Minimum salaries and costs of living:

http://cgeu.org/wiki/index.php/United_States_Graduate_Employee_Salary_tables_2008-2009

and the costs are from the respective financial aid websites of the universities:

http://www.finaid.umich.edu/Financial_Aid_Basics/cost.asp

http://www.finaid.wisc.edu/index.php?module=articles&func=display&ptid=9&catid=92&aid=583

http://www.uiowa.edu/financial-aid/cost/graduate/2009-2010.shtml

http://www.osfa.uiuc.edu/cost/grad/res_0910.html

Chapin Rose sources:

http://www.obfs.uillinois.edu/budgeting/documents/BudRevExpSource09U.xls

http://www.obfs.uillinois.edu/budgeting/documents/BudExpSource09U.xls

http://www.obfs.uillinois.edu/budgeting/documents/BudExpFunction09U.xls

More budget information:

http://www.uillinois.edu/our/news/budget/budget.cfm

http://www.uillinois.edu/administration/budget.tuition.cfm

University of Illinois Foundation:

http://www.uif.uillinois.edu/

Course data: UIUC Department of English Rhetoric Office and Fall 2009 UIUC campus course catalog and schedule, as well as the Division of Management Information. 

By Damien Matthew

http://peoplesworld.org/illinois-graduate-employees-move-towards-strike/

CHAMPAIGN - The Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been engaged in a hard fought struggle to establish adequate compensation for its members. GEO, local 6300 of the Illinois Federation of Teachers/AFT, represents nearly 2,700 teaching and graduate Assistants at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Members of GEO teach nearly a quarter of the total course load at the University and nearly half of the lower-level undergraduate courses are solely directed by graduate TAs. Yet, many graduate employees are compensated below a level that even the University considers a "living wage." The union has been in contract negotiations with the administration since April, and its members have been working without a contract since August 15th.

Demands for adequate compensation by the union have been thwarted by an administration clearly unwilling to acknowledge and compensate employees who are vital to the University's mission. In light of these frustrations, the GEO membership has voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike. The vote began on the evening of November 4th following a standing-room-only general membership meeting that overflowed the hall. The results of the vote were announced on the 9th, with 92% of membership voting in favor of the strike authorization. Numerous letters of support and statements of solidarity have been issued from various academic units within the University as well as from campus organizations. GEO public relations officer Peter Campbell called the results "a clear mandate to call a strike at any time." Indicating the GEO's desire to come to a reasonable settlement in contract negotiations, Campbell noted, "We've sent a letter asking the administration to meet this week. We are interested in resolving this through negotiation."

At the general membership meeting, GEO members resoundingly rejected the administration's recent proposal of a $600/ year raise for the lowest paid employees that would be realized over three years. The administration's proposal also included language that would allow the furlough of graduate employees. An earlier version of the administration's proposal had even called for "pay in kind", where housing and meal vouchers would be used as compensation rather than salaries. Such pay in kind harkens to the practice of employers issuing "company scrip" to workers, which could only be used to purchase products from the company-owned stores. GEO has proposed language that would protect the past practice of tuition waivers for graduate employees, however the administration did not include any such language in their proposal. Tuition waivers are more than simply a benefit to graduate employees. They make advanced education accessible to students who would otherwise lack the means to afford such opportunities.

The U of I administration has a history of corruption, the revelation of which has led to the recent resignations of both its president as well as the chancellor of the university system. Mysterious "discretionary funds" have been tapped for scholarships to well-connected yet mediocre students as well as for salaries for well-connected newly hired employees. Yet, at the bargaining table the administration claims that no money is available to raise the salaries of the lowest paid graduate employees to a living wage. The minimum salary for a TA or GA is $13,430, yet the U of I Office of Student Financial Aid lists a figure just over $16,000 as the minimum annual cost of living for a graduate student. "The administration is taking advantage of the economic crisis to argue that they don't have the money to provide grad employees with a living wage, and they'd be happy to use that argument for all of their lower-paid workers, but it really doesn't hold water," said Campbell. Campbell cited the latest projections for the U of I budget which is slated to increase by 1.1% from the previous year. In fact, for the 2009 fiscal year, revenues from tuition increased by 14.5%. Even in light of the recession, private donations to the university increased 2.6% and income from the university's endowment increased by 5% from the previous fiscal year. The GEO's demands for a living wage would constitute only a fraction of one percent of the total budget.

The GEO understands that the state of Illinois is in dire economic straits, but as University administrators pointed out in their FY 2010 budget request, this is the result of long standing deficiencies in state level budget prioritization and not a sudden result of the recent national recession.  Instead of championing the university’s historic land grant mission, UIUC administrators have embraced the national tendency toward the corporatization of the public higher education system. Their consequent failure to secure adequate state funding leaves the social science, humanities, and fine arts especially vulnerable. Worse, it jeopardizes access to higher education for many who have the capacity and desire, but not the financial resources to attend the University.  If increased state funding is also necessary to providing at least a living wage for all campus employees, then the GEO expects the UIUC administration to forcefully make that case to the Higher Education Appropriations Committee, other state legislators, and the Governor.

Instead of advocating on the behalf of students and workers, administrators were granting costly favors to state politicians.  The former Chancellor diverted $450,000 of discretionary funds to provide jobs and scholarships for politically well-connected but undeserving applicants.  Another $400,000 went to the attorneys who represented the University before the Governor’s investigative committee, and another $550,000 to new faculty appointments for the former President and Chancellor.  In this context, the GEO finds it hard to trust the UIUC administration when it argues that there is not enough money to provide a living wage.  From the GEO’s perspective, it appears that budget priorities are simply out of place.  When campus revenues rose by 7% in FY 2009, only 0.8% ($2.7 million) went to undergraduate instruction.  Meanwhile, the Chief Information Officer’s budget rose by 10.9 percent ($1.6 million), and the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics budget increased 6.2 percent ($4.1 million).

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 our salaries draw 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. Should graduate employee salaries be set to a living wage, the University would still have a large pool of inexpensive and high quality instructional and administrative labor.

GEO members have been working hard to avoid a strike.  Hundreds of GEO members have participated in six major demonstrations, and GEO members have also lobbied the Illinois House of Representatives Higher Education Appropriations Committee, spoken with state legislators from Champaign, actively informed campus community members about the issues, and maintained a constant presence in Urbana-Champaign print, radio and television media.  The Illinois Student Senate has passed two resolutions in support of the GEO and the decision to authorize a strike, and GEO supporters in the faculty senate are working to pass a similar resolution. GEO members and allies will hold a rally at the University of Illinois Board of Trustees Meeting in Springfield, IL on November 12.

Gender and Women’s Studies Program Statement of Support for the GEO

The Gender and Women’s Studies Program of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign strongly supports the Graduate Employees’ Organization, American Federation of Teachers Local 6300, AFL-CIO’s legal right to strike. We recognize that graduate students are vital to the health and culture of our program: we employ graduate students as teaching and research assistants, we house a university-wide graduate minor, and we supervise cutting-edge graduate student research. Everyday we see evidence that the labor that graduate employees perform as both students and workers for the University at large enhances undergraduate education, facilitates faculty research, and improves the overall quality of intellectual production on campus.  While we understand that the University is engaged in the difficult task of maintaining a working budget in tough economic times, reducing support for graduate labor, scholarships, and other funding sources will be detrimental to the University and the state of Illinois in the long term.  Because graduate students perform a significant percentage of the teaching labor on campus, decreasing their wages, their access to healthcare, or increasing their workloads will have an immediate negative effect on the quality of education at the University.  Additionally, our ability to attract the best graduate students to our campus has only increased the prestige of the University, earning us a reputation for excellence that should be nurtured rather than abandoned for economic expediency.

The Gender and Women’s Studies program does not support the deleterious restructuring of educational labor as fluid and disposable, and we strongly encourage the University of Illinois to recognize our graduate student employees as critical to the University’s public mission of providing affordable, quality higher education.  We urge the University to support the fair employment of graduate student workers on campus and to bargain in good faith with the representatives of the GEO.

Look, despite the back and forth over the details such as how many people took part in the vote and how far illinois is behind what other peer institutions pay their grads, the bottom line is that a) these people knew this and CHOSE to go to Illinois and b) YOU ARE IN GRAD SCHOOL. YOU ARE A STUDENT! This is not intended to be a permanant career to support you indefinitely! People who choose to leave full time work and pursue a Masters or a PhD have to weigh in advance the pros and cons of the lost income while they take time out from work to further their education. Grad school is not intended to be a long-term line of work, it is intended to be a temporary sacrifice that you INTENTIONALLY make in order to improve yourself over the long term. If it were a great job with fantastic benefits then everyone would just quit work and go be a grad student, especially in this economy where the options for "real" jobs are extremely limited. When you applied to school here, you had to have weighed the pros and cons and looked at the financial situation realistically to see if it was even a feasable option before you attended school here. Obviously you KNEW the deal with the insurance and the pay and STILL decided to come to school here. Yes, it would be nice if the UI could afford to pay the GEO more. It would be nice if it could afford to pay ALL its employees more. But nobody there got raises this year, the economy is in the toilet and UI is hurting. So now just ain't the time for these kinds of demands.

There are so many contradictions in the above post that I don't know where to begin. If you are representative of the thinking of the GEO, it is no wonder they are acting so irrationally.

Hundreds of GEO members and supporters shut down buildings around the Quad this morning, generally with few problems. Those picketing made special efforts to leave space not to obstruct people trying to get by, while letting them know about the strike and GEO's legitimate demands.

I did see and hear of a few incidents caused by those with a chip on their shoulder, like the fellow above who accused union members of being "insane" for defending what they've won under past contracts. For instance, some middle-aged guy uttered "bastards!" under his breath as he passed by our picket. Another member noted she had been accussed of being a "communist" and was told she would "burn in hell" for what she was doing.

Then there was the undergrad who went bulling his way right through a group of us as we were listening to our picket captain speak, even though there was plenty of room to walk around us, nearly knocking over a stroller with one picketer's child in it. "I've got to get to class!" was his argument, something that was not at all sustained by the circumstances.

Yeah, I'm sure it's us union members who are "mentally ill" for assuming we can peacefully work together for a better contract. Get real, take your boss-ass-kissing arguments elsewhere. If the university has money to payoff Joe White and Dick Herman after what's happened in the last year, they have money to pay their graduate employees right and provide the tuition waivers that we depend on.

BTW, one GEO member spoke with a UPS driver who came along making deliveries. Turns out the local drivers are part of his old local. After a quick phone call, it was confirmed that these UPS drivers will NOT be making deliveries to any of the campus buildings with GEO picket lines around them.

Word is also out that the University asked that the Tuesday bargaining session be moved up to a 9am start. Perhaps they now would like to get this settled so that no more than one class session is lost for students. University classes operate on either a MWF or T-Th schedule, so if they don't get this settled in time for classes to resume Wednesday, it just gets messier. GEO has shown it can and will act to press our case for a decent contract.