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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Rally Toward a Real Union Continues at GEO |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul Kotheimer
Email: herringb (nospam) prairienet.org (unverified!)
Phone: 217-344-8820
Address: http://urbana.indymedia.org |
30 Jan 2001
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An account from a meeting and rally of the Graduate Employees Organization [GEO] at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [UIUC]. |
[Jan. 30, 2001, Urbana, IL] This Monday evening, I attended a meeting and rally of the Graduate Employees Organization [GEO] at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [UIUC]. Originally scheduled to be held at least partly outdoors, foul January weather kept rallying members and supporters inside the meeting hall.
I myself was there in solidarity with the movement for the formation of new labor unions, as a currently unemployed AFL-CIO/AFSCME 3700 rank-and-filer, as a UIUC grad. school dropout, as a longtime resident of Urbana, as a folksinger, and as an Independent Media Center observer. Here's what I gathered:
The GEO is celebrating a recent Illinois Supreme Court ruling, which affirms the right of graduate employees on the UIUC campus to hold a legally binding election. After a seven-year struggle here in Urbana-Champaign, coinciding with numerous similar organizing efforts at universities around the United States, there now appear to be fewer and fewer hurdles between graduate employees and a real union.
By all accounts at this rally, legal recognition, collective bargaining rights, third party grievance arbitration, and full official acknowledgement by the UIUC trustees and administration are all just one more card-signing drive, and one legally binding election, away.
State AFL-CIO president Margaret Blackshere was in attendance, along with Champaign County AFL-CIO representatives, faculty supporters and UIUC undergrads, to congratulate the graduate employees on their long-fought victory and to urge them on in their final push toward legal recognition.
"We are gonna organize the hell out of this campus!" said Blackshere in her speech.
The AFL-CIO, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and the American Federation of Teachers already fully recognize the GEO as part of their organizations.
The current challenge for the GEO, said rally participants, is toward the collection of 2500 signatures from current graduate employees in support of the GEO becoming their official bargaining unit. Meanwhile, according to the Illinois Labor Relations Board, a date for a legally binding union election at the UIUC is still "pending."
The University of Illinois has officially opposed every organizing effort of the graduate employees, on the grounds that graduate employees are students, not workers, and that Illinois state law bars students from the right to unionize.
Graduate employees at a number of campuses around the United States, including the Universities of Wisconsin, Michigan, Massachusetts, California, and NYU, already have full union representation. |
