GEO and the university returned to the table on Thursday, January 29 for our 19th session. The university passed back:
Dues Deduction, rejecting language that would hold the university responsible for improper dues deductions on their end. It's our stance that this language is crucial to our next contract, as we have an open Unfair Labor Practice filed against the university for unlawful dues collection.
Employee Rights, where admin again rejected our attempts to protect international workers, all workers from federal overreach, and better protect graduate workers data and privacy. While they claim this is due to legal concerns regarding prioritizing international workers and transparency requirements due to our status as a public university, their refusal to even provide a counter proposal demonstrates their lack of concern for our safety.
No Strike, No Lockout, where they rejected a change attempting to better codify our ability to strike over unfair labor practices. Though we believe this is protected by law, the university is unlikely to expand our ability to strike.
Training, where the university continued to reject changes intended to better protect our community from federal overreach without a counterproposal.
And Recognition, where we reached a tentative agreement.
Though we were unable to get hourly graduate workers and fellows added to the bargaining unit at the table, this does not by any means mean we don’t intend to fight to get them added. If you're a fellow or hourly grad worker interested in organizing your coworkers, we'd love to get in touch! Send us an email at geo@uicgeo.org.
We thoroughly workshopped and then passed back the following articles:
Grievances, which appears close to TA after agreement that the university should provide reasoning and a small back and forth over slightly expanding the time available to file a grievance.
Management Rights, where we continue to propose language that protects international workers and other grad workers from federal overreach.
And — the big one — Wages, where, after the university’s insulting proposal and a thorough discussion with members in caucus, we returned an offer of $55,000 with guaranteed raises each year. We proposed a partial tying of this raise to inflation rates, because recent inflation has meant that even with yearly increases, workers ended up with less buying power. This proposal also included language changing our stipends to bimonthly payments instead of the more precarious and hard to budget monthly payment schedule.
Although we did not immediately receive responses on these proposals in the session, we expect counter proposals at our next session later this week. Our 20th session will be Friday, February 13 (spooky) from 2-4 PM though we will be opening the zoom room at 1:30 PM so we are able to have more time to discuss proposals, such as Hours of Work, Additional Employment, Appointment Terms (including fee waivers), Expenses, and Entire Agreement.