UIC GEO signed our first contract more than twenty years ago. To celebrate, we are looking back on the wins graduate workers have pulled off through unity and solidarity! So let’s start at the very beginning…
Early Days & First Contract
The Graduate Employees Organization originated not as a union but as an interest group meant to improve the conditions of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign graduate students. Formed in 1988, the early victories of GEO, in the capacity of an activist group, included a fee deferment policy that required UIUC to wait until after the first paycheck of the semester had been received to require fee payment. This proto-union also secured a dental plan through a public pressure campaign.
In 1994, UIUC GEO began laying the groundwork necessary to represent graduate workers’ labor as a union. In the same year, University of Illinois, Chicago formed its own GEO branch when English department teaching assistants held a meeting on the front lawn of the Behavioral Sciences Building to discuss workload grievances. These workers invited representatives from various graduate unions, including UIUC GEO, to speak at UIC in a conference that informed the organizing strategy at our campus.
In 1997, the UIUC GEO collected more than 3,200 signed authorization cards, forcing the university to hold a union election. The election, overseen by the Labor Board and the Religious Workers Association, was won by UIUC GEO by an unquestionable majority of 64%. Despite this, university administrators refused to recognize the union, challenging the right of graduate workers in general to bargaining and representation. The fight to force the university to recognize the results of a fair election lasted for years. In the Spring semester of 2002, UIUC graduate workers occupied administrators’ offices. As the occupation entered its twelfth hour, the university offered a compromise that included recognizing collective bargaining rights for GA and TA workers.
Following the victory at Urbana-Champaign, UIC GEO gained recognition as a union through the card-check process, demonstrating strong graduate support across the university. Because of UIUC GEO’s fight, the path had been paved for IELRB recognition of graduate students as workers. The administration did not officially recognize the union until 2004. Negotiations with the university over our first contract began in January 2005. Through a public pressure campaign which garnered mass support, the union won its inaugural contract on July 7th, 2006. The major wins included minimum salary standards, formal grievance procedures, and health insurance subsidies.
Securing Landmark Protections
With a contract on the books, the union worked to enforce it in departments which did not acknowledge the new rights of their workers. While GEO was not in negotiations during the 2006-2008 period, a number of pressure campaigns were launched to halt violations of our newly minted rights as workers. Notably, GEO filed a grievance which required that no portion of graduate pay be paid in the university’s Dragon Dollars currency as it was for students working for UIC Campus Housing. This campaign for the right to be paid in actual currency rather than UIC’s company scrip gained widespread public attention and support. A public pressure campaign during this period also dramatically reduced the cost of contraceptives under CampusCare.
What followed was an era of expanded contractual rights for graduate workers. Contract wins continued to roll in, such as guaranteed tuition waivers and improved stipends. These same tuition waivers came under threat during negotiation of the 2015-2018 contract, but the union successfully preserved this gain. GEO also fought off a proposed five -ear salary freeze with a number of direct actions which included a silent occupation of a Board of Trustees meeting.
Growth, Major Wins & Our Future
The 2018-2021 contract won a 14% salary increase over three years for graduate workers. This resounding victory was followed by the 2022-2025 contract which secured a 16.5% pay increase, six weeks of paid parental leave, and landmark protections for survivors of discrimination and sexual harassment. To win the 2022 contract, the union had to go on its second consecutive strike. In November of 2023, the union filed for RA unionization. Post-baccalaureate students were inducted into the bargaining unit in 2024.
As of April 2026, we have been in contract negotiations for over a year. A national rent crisis and rising inflation present new difficulties to graduate workers. These growing pressures preserve the ivory tower as a place where the children of the wealthy thrive and the rest of us are starved out. To combat the paywalling of graduate education, GEO pulled off a three week strike—the longest in our history and longer than any strike by the Chicago Teachers Union. Some of our significant actions included a “die-in” to protest increases in the cost of CampusCare, an occupation of the 27th floor of University Hall, and the unprecedented tactic of blocking loading docks to disrupt everyday operations of the university. Although bargaining has been especially arduous, we are happy to report some important wins:
- A summer sick day (opening the way for more in future)
- A reduction in the International Student Fee
- The right to be assigned a new evaluator if you think your current one cannot be fair
- More guaranteed work equipment coverage
- Protected our right to present at orientations
- Protected other status quo language the university sought to remove in favor of the more lenient federal language
The struggle for a better world for graduate workers continues! This current contract fight is not yet over! Help us write the next chapter in UIC GEO’s history by organizing with your fellow grad workers to fight for the contract we deserve. As our own history shows us, when we fight we win!
