Support for JACSW Workers

April 10th, 2023

To complete their degrees, graduate students in the Jane Addams College of Social Work are required to complete 1,080 hours of unpaid labor in field placements. In these placements, they perform all of the duties of (and work alongside) paid social workers. Not only are they not paid, without assistantships they also lack tuition and fee waivers and therefore pay the university for the labor they perform. JACSW students have had enough. They’ve been organizing around this issue, and on Monday, April 10th, they’ll be walking out from 8:00am to 4:00pm, protesting all day between UH and BSB, with a rally there at noon.

GEO stands in solidarity with these workers–because that is what they are: workers. We believe that graduate workers should be paid a fair wage for the work they do for this university, and JACSW students are nowhere near that. We also believe you shouldn’t have to be independently wealthy to get your degree; UIC should not embrace systems that only allow students to graduate if they can afford not only tuition and fees, but to volunteer hundreds of hours.

We call on UIC to give these workers assistantships, and we encourage everyone to stop by their demonstrations from 8:00-4:00 today and join their rally at noon between UH and BSB.