FYI: Graduate Employees Negotiating Wages, Benefits

University, graduate employees continue talks--Two parties still in negotiations for wages, benefits
Drake Baer, Daily Illini, 10/27/06

After months of deliberation, the University and the Graduate Employee Organization are continuing negotiations over wages and benefits. On Oct. 16 they came to an agreement over professional evaluation for teaching assistants.

However, there has been little progress on the major issues of pay and other contentious matters, according to Christopher Simeone, lead negotiator of the GEO. He said that the GEO is awaiting the University's agreement to additional bargaining dates.

Frank T. Higbie, assistant professor of history at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, said that he has been involved with the GEO since his days as a doctoral student in the mid-1990s. [...]

He said the issue comes down to whether or not workers have a right to organize [...].

"What are they afraid of?" asked Higbie. "That the grad assistants are going to tear down the University?"

Higbie said graduate employee unions are at nearly all of the University's peer institutions. [...]

Cary Nelson, English professor and president of the American Association of University Professors, said that the union has provided a few areas of concern to the University, such as asking it to inform international graduate students of the American 911 system.

Nelson said that when the union asked the University to inform the international graduate students of the 911 system, the University declined on the grounds that "they would not have the union micromanage their affairs."

"Like many corporate entities, the University is not bargaining in good faith," said Nelson. "Their primary aims are to pay grad students as little as possible, to exhaust union leadership and to decrease students' faith in the union...I call that bargaining in bad faith." [...]

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