GEO Gears Up for a Spring Election
By Ben Scott

This fall, the Graduate Employees' Organization, IFT/AFT (GEO) at the University of Illinois is doing something it has never done before: preparing for a union election. As early as the spring semester, graduate employees will be able to democratically elect union representation. In so doing, they will fulfill the goal of nearly a decade of organization and agitation, to establish a firm voice in the administration of their working lives. For the first time, the conditions of graduate student labor-most importantly health care, workloads, grievance procedures, wages, and work environments-will be made to answer, at least in part, to those who live within them. "The logic behind our cause is plain and simple, fair and reasonable," says GEO officer Jeff Scott of the Department of Social Work. "That's why so many folks are coming out to help with this election campaign."

The upcoming election represents a huge victory for organized labor in this community and the culmination of many years of struggle, setbacks, and perseverance. A generation of GEO activists has come and gone since some 3,226 graduate employees singed on to a petition calling for just such a union election back in 1996. In the intervening years, the conflict between graduate employees and university administrators played out on many fronts: on campus, in the courtroom, and in the state house. In 1998, GEO held a "Work-In" at the Henry Administration Building, garnering over 1,000 letters of support. In 1999, the Illinois State House of Representatives passed a bill confirming the employee status of graduate assistants. The bill, however, never made it to a floor vote in the State Senate after failing to emerge from the Rules Committee. Numerous legal battles involving the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, the Illinois Appellate and Supreme Courts resulted in an unacceptably small potential bargaining unit of merely 300 graduate employees. With no progress and no compromise in sight, the GEO reluctantly called a 2-day work-stoppage in November 2001 to
encourage the university to open negotiations. Finally, on the morning of March 13, 2002, GEO activists occupied the Swanlund Administration Building. That afternoon, in a now legendary moment, representatives of the university reversed years of entrenched anti-union policy and came to negotiate with the GEO-in their own boardroom, bedecked with a union banner.

On the strength of a handwritten agreement penned that evening on a yellow legal pad, a GEO bargaining team went behind closed doors for almost six weeks of intensive meetings with university administrators and lawyers. On May 1st, the membership ratified the bargaining unit that had been painstakingly won in the talks and celebrated the upcoming election that the university had agreed to accept. Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants will be included in the unit-the group of graduate employees whose job descriptions permit them to vote in a union election according to the negotiated regulations. The size and composition of what will become the graduate union (should the election be successful) compares favorably to those of the more than 30 other campus unions around the country-including Big Ten neighbors Wisconsin and Michigan. The GEO is confident that those graduate employees not included in the unit, most notably Research Assistants, will still benefit from union representation and agitation as victories won on behalf of members will benefit the entire graduate student body. As Rosemary Braun, GEO Co-President and Research Assistant in Physics said, "All graduate employees, regardless of their job category, will benefit from a unionized campus where grads have an official seat at the table where decisions are made about their pay, health care, workloads, and other issues relating to their vital roles as academic employees."

The importance of the opportunity to officially elect union representation is not lost on the GEO or the graduate students it represents. Record numbers have come forward to volunteer their time and energy, to serve on coordinating committees, to organizing within their departments, and to spread the word to students generally about the purpose of the union and the significance of the vote. (Though the GEO must still negotiate with the university to determine the exact dates of the election, it will likely happen in the middle of the spring semester, administered by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.) Among the new activists are long-time graduate students who have come forward to assist in the final push after years of quiet support for GEO efforts. But there are also many new students joining the union cause, glad to have the chance to enrich their future at the university. It is a high water mark for the GEO, in membership, activism, and campus-wide support.

The momentum generated by the victories of last spring has swelled campus-wide support for the GEO to a critical mass. Concerted agitation has finally yielded the avenue toward an established institution. Organized labor in the graduate student body is no longer compelled to defend its position, for it is now well understood and accepted, even within the university administration. Graduate employees need only offer up the simple
precepts that lie at the base of the campaigns for recognition and election: human decency and common sense. It is just and reasonable that graduate labor-the notoriously low-wage backbone of undergraduate education, faculty research, and the academic community-should be permitted a democratic voice in the conditions of their working lives. That graduate students now have the chance to make this ideal a reality at the ballot box is a long awaited confirmation of an unimpeachable principle: Solidarity.

Ben Scott is a graduate employee in the Institute of Communications Research. Ben grew up in West Texas, though he is by lineage a third generation resident of Champaign-Urbana. In recent years he has lived in England and Germany, where he was fortunate to stumple upon a masters degreee as well as a caring and careful wife. Ben is currently a doctoral student who practices an active form of citizenship as often as possible.