Amid “good progress” in negotiations with striking teaching assistants and graduate assistants at the University of Illinois Chicago, the union representing the school’s full-time faculty plans a strike authorization vote for next week.
“We do not go into this lightly,” Janet Smith, president of UIC United Faculty said in a letter posted on the union’s website. “We have been negotiating since June 2018 and our contract expired in August. Our bargaining team has won many important concessions, but on issues of pay and equity, we have yet to see a serious offer.”
The strike authorization vote will be held Monday through Wednesday. It does not guarantee a strike will occur; it merely authorizes the negotiating team to call a strike based on how negotiations are going.
Meanwhile, the union representing about 1,500 striking teaching assistants and graduate assistants at the University of Illinois Chicago says the results of a negotiating session Wednesday — the seventh since the walkout began March 19 — offer “potential for finally resolving this strike soon.”
And with UIC Provost Susan Poser making an appearance — the highest-ranking official to attend a bargaining session — the strike appears to be working, a union official said.
“They are finally starting to move a little bit. Our take is that the strike is having an effect. Classes are shut down in a lot of cases,” said Jeff Schuhrke, co-president of UIC Graduate Employees Organization.
Another bargaining session is set for 1 p.m. Thursday.
“We have made progress to reach an agreement that is fair and equitable to both sides and we remain optimistic that we will reach an agreement with the GEO soon,” Poser said in an email to the Sun-Times. “After a nine-hour session yesterday, we look forward to another bargaining session today.”
Wages are at the heart of the strike, with most graduate students earning about $18,000 annually, according to the union. But teaching assistants and graduate assistants also must pay back about 10 percent of their income to UIC in the form of “fees,” Schuhrke said.
On Wednesday, the administration offered some relief for the next two academic years to lessen the burden of those fees, according to the union.
“This is good progress, and absolutely none of it would have happened if we hadn’t been on strike for all this time,” according to a union statement posted on its Facebook page.
Last month’s work stoppage came after 12 months of contract negotiations. The group’s contract expired Sept. 30.
This is the second consecutive year that grad workers at a U of I campus have gone on strike. In February 2018, workers at the Urbana-Champaign campus went on strike for almost two weeks before reaching an agreement.
