As the start of the Fall semester neared, many Computer Science graduate workers received devastating news. It is, according to our contract, a violation of our rights to not be informed by our departments what our appointments for a coming semester are with at least forty-five days’ notice.
Despite this, the CS department rolled out the information that many of its employees would receive .25% rather than .5% FTE appointments or, in some cases, no appointment at all with only two weeks’ notice. This left grad workers with salaries slashed in half or reduced to zero and practically no time to find outside work before the start of the academic year. International students, restricted as they are from seeking employment outside of the University, were put in an even more difficult position by this callous act of bureaucratic mismanagement.
Furthermore, the loss of an appointment left some workers with no tuition waivers for the current semester, meaning that they will have to pay out of pocket for their education if able or drop out of programs they have devoted years of their labor and time to. When CS grad workers challenged this cruelty, citing offer letters which guaranteed a certain number of years of funding, they were told by their department that this guarantee is dependent on the availability of funds. To this we say that if a university has no money to pay teachers and researchers, it certainly has no money to pay bloated administrator salaries, pay for AI surveillance systems, or create new facilities that advertise a supposed economic fortitude. We intend to investigate the finances of this department and give the lie to their claims.
Most graduate school applicants apply to many schools and receive several offers. We believe that there is no reason for future graduate school applicants to choose to attend UIC if the University is going to reserve the right to renege on their side of funding agreements. If one department is allowed to get away with this backstabbing of their employees by stripping funding, it sets a precedent for all departments at UIC. It means that we are all at-will employees working under the illusion of a signed agreement.
This is a moment where a belief in solidarity and workers’ rights needs to manifest in action. The proverbial rubber needs to meet the road. We, as a union, need to confront the CS department administrators in a series of escalating direct actions until they are forced to realize the error of their ways. As a first step, please reserve time to attend our CS Organizing Social to be held from 12:00-2:00pm on Tuesday, September 22nd. The event location and further details will be circulated closer to the day of.
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