A recent strike by graduate assistants at the University of Illinois has brought more attention to MSU’s Graduate Employees Union, which is in the process of bargaining for its first contract.
The Graduate Employees Organization at the Urbana-Champaign campus of Illinois voted early last week to have a two-day strike as a protest against union constraints.
Todd Mireles, organizer of MSU’s union, said a similar strike at the university is unlikely but not out of the question. The union was formed last spring.
“We’re hoping that things won’t come to that around here,” he said. “If they do, we would be ready, but it’s not what we want.”
The GEO of Illinois has been in existence for about eight years. Uma Pimplaskar, its co-president, said the administration has been denying members the right to unionize ever since.
“The work stoppage was held because after eight years of trying to work things out through legal means and rallies and protests, we’ve not been able to bring the administration to change their position,” Pimplaskar said. “It really was a situation where we had come up against the wall, our only next possible choice was to go on strike.”
Pimplaskar said Sunday Illinois administrators had not tried to contact the GEO and did not seem to be changing their position.
“It seems like we will have to move to an even more drastic operation, which would be an open-ended strike,” she said.
At MSU, union officials say bargaining with administrators is going slowly but surely.
Duncan Woodhead is a member of the bargaining team, a group of GEU members who meet with university administrators weekly. He said the group has reached tentative agreements with the administration about two articles on the proposed contract.
“We’ve agreed on the cost of printing and distribution of the collective bargaining agreement and on special conferences,” the history graduate student said.
The special conferences article specifies a process by which the two parties can mutually agree to meet during the period of the contract, Woodhead said.
“We are confident that we can reach an agreement,” GEU President Jessica Goodkind said. “It’s moving slower than we’d like but it is moving forward.”
Goodkind said she knows strikes by graduate employees are rare, but she supports the GEO of Illinois.
“The most common time it happens is when they aren’t recognized,” the psychology graduate student said. “They are doing the right thing, they should have the right to form a union - everyone should have that right.”
Mireles said he advocates the GEO of Illinois, but is disappointed by the contract’s delay.
“We are professionals and deserve to be treated with respect,” he said. “It’s not about some 21- or 22-year-old kid who wants money to go party on the weekend. These people have jobs, houses and families and have to make sacrifices.”
