For Immediate Release: UIC Grad Workers to Strike on April 18th for a Fair Contract

UIC Grad Workers to Strike on April 18 for a Fair Contract

• It would be the second contract cycle in a row that graduate employees at a UIC went on strike

• Over 75% of union membership voted to authorize a strike, with 97% of voters approving

• Over 1500 Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants have been working without a contract since August 15; negotiations have dragged on for 12 months

• Grad workers are paid as little as $20,615 for teaching courses of up to 60 undergraduate students, while paying up to $2,000 in annual university fees

• UIC is thriving, with enrollments at record highs, top administrators getting large bonuses, and a U of I system budget increase for the third year in a row

Over 1500 Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants at the University of Illinois at Chicago will withhold their labor indefinitely beginning April 18 unless a fair contract agreement can be reached between the UIC Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) and the university administration. Over three quarters of GEO members voted in late March to authorize a strike, with 97% of voters approving.

Contract negotiations began one year ago, on April 12, 2021. TAs and GAs have been working without a contract since August 15. GEO is seeking living wages, fee waivers, fair appointment policies, expanded protections against harrassment and discrimination, and other workplace rights. The university administration has consistently rejected all of these proposals.

Despite being highly educated professionals providing skilled labor for a multibillion-dollar institution, UIC grad workers live on the edge of poverty. They make as little as $20,615, even when serving as the primary instructor for courses with as many as 60 undergraduates, and are simultaneously required to pay up to $2,000 in annual university fees.

Grad workers’ low pay and high fees negatively impact their academic progress, professional development, and overall health, which only undermines UIC’s educational and research mission. 

“The financial anxiety of being a graduate student is crushing,” says Massie Jones, a graduate student in the Biological Sciences department. “I worry about being able to pay rent and basic bills every month and am afraid of having any sort of car trouble or medical issue that requires a “safety net” of cash because I have no safety net. Healthy groceries are frequently not an option as they are typically more expensive. As graduate students, we work long hours (an eleven or twelve hour day is common) in teaching, research, and learning capacities and feel strongly that being compensated fairly for our work is essential to our health.”

UIC is offering grad workers minuscule raises, which would not even come close to keeping up with inflation, and is rejecting proposals for new fee waivers and better re-appointment policies. At the same time, UIC is flourishing. Enrollments are at record highs, admin salaries and bonuses soar, and the university’s endowment is posting huge returns. 

“I can’t go to therapy cause I don’t have money. I can’t get my crown done because I don’t have money. I can’t visit my sister and her kids who were just born cause I don’t have money. So I’m very anxious cause if one bad things happens I don’t have money,” says Caroline Bailey, a graduate student in Psychology. “I spent my entire paycheck on insulin pump supplies last month because our insurance is not designed for people who use hard medical equipment,” adds Margo Arruda, a grad student in English.

Nearly half of the employees represented by GEO are international graduate student workers, whose visa statuses prevent them from accessing many of the financial resources available to domestic students. Despite their extra financial hardships, in recent years UIC has begun charging international grad workers additional fees that domestic grads don’t have to pay.

“As international students we can’t work over 20 hours or outside campus to supplement our income and don’t have access to loans,” explains Natalia Ruiz Vargas, a TA and PhD student in the Biological Sciences department. “When you apply for a Student Visa to come to the US you need proof that you can support yourself. The main thing you use is your offer letter, in my case, with the TAship offered. I say main because the Office of International Students will tell you themselves that what UIC pays you will not be enough to support yourself in Chicago and you need to show that you have enough funds in a bank account to cover the rest.”

One of the most important topics to GEO in these negotiations has been how the university handles cases of discrimination, harassment, workplace bullying, and sexual assault. GEO has sought changes to UIC’s responsible employee policies to give survivors autonomy over how and when investigations are launched or reports filed. GEO has also been fighting for contract language that would codify the process by which survivors obtain supportive measures such as changes to their work schedule or office location when they’ve been assaulted, harassed, or bullied in the workplace.

“The University has fought us tooth and nail over this proposal for over a year, refusing to respect the experiences and autonomy of survivors of harassment and discrimination,” says Veronica Shepp, GEO bargaining committee member and PhD candidate in Criminology, Law, and Justice. “After 12 hours of negotiating on Thursday night, I am cautiously optimistic about securing supportive measures for graduate workers and providing GEO with enough power to grieve the decisions if supportive measures are unreasonably denied. Although I am cautiously optimistic, this proposal remains critically unsettled as we prepare for a strike on Monday.”

Unions across the U of I system have shown support for UIC GEO and their non-discrimination and anti-harassment proposals. Faculty, staff, and grad unions at all three U of I campuses were joined by the unions representing nurses and residents at the UIC hospital in sending letters to administrators expressing support for GEO’s proposals and calling for such policy changes to be adopted more widely in the U of I system. UIC United Faculty will begin bargaining their next contract with the university on Wednesday, April 20th, and will be prioritizing many of the same survivor-oriented policies as GEO.

“UIC United Faculty stands in robust solidarity with the GEO as it proceeds with its planned strike,” states Robert Johnston, UIC United Faculty’s chief steward and professor History. “The UIC administration apparently has not learned any lessons from the strong strike that the GEO conducted only three years ago.  Our union continues to insist that the administration settle a just and fair contract with some of our community’s most vulnerable—and valuable—members, graduate student workers.  In particular, we join powerfully with other unions at UIC in supporting the GEO’s insistence that the university’s anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies be truly just and effective.  And as always, we call for the administration, and Board of Trustees, to change the university’s toxic anti-union culture and move toward a relationship of collaboration instead of conflict with labor.”

This would be the second contract cycle in a row that grad workers at UIC were forced to go on strike for a fair contract. In March 2019, grad workers at UIC were on strike for three weeks before an agreement was reached. In the same month, UIC United Faculty came within hours of a strike. UIUC grad workers went on strike in 2018, and the staff and nurses unions at UIC went on strike in 2020. 

“I was very involved in the last strike,” says GEO organizing chair Matt DeVillbiss, a TA and PhD Candidate in the Math department, “and it was clear then–and it’s clear now–that the university has little respect for workers in the system and grad workers in particular. But, it’s exciting to me that when workers stand up for ourselves, we get things done.”

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The UIC Graduate Employees Organization, Local 6297 of the Illinois Federation of Teachers-American Federation of Teachers, is the member-run union that represents more than 1500 Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants at UIC. GEO was legally recognized in 2004 and won its first three-year contract in 2006. GEO ratified its fifth three-year agreement in 2019 that expired in August 2021. 

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