Graduate employees at University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) overwhelmingly ratified their first contract earlier this month, ending a lengthy struggle for a collective bargaining agreement for 2,500 teaching and graduate assistants at the university.

"This is a tremendous victory for graduate employees, who are going to see improvements to their wages, medical costs and working conditions," said Bryan Nicholson, communications officer of the AFT-affiliated Graduate Employees Organization (GEO). Nicholson credited the victory to "the thousands of grad workers at UIUC who for 10 years built up this prairie fire movement into a fully fledged union with a contract," along with their allies at the AFT and the Illinois state federation.

The union battled through the courts and two elections just for certification, "but what it really boiled down to was the strength of our members" who believed in the bargaining process, noted Nicholson.

The three-year contract is retroactive to Aug. 16, 2003. It provides an annual 3 percent raise and annual reductions in medical premiums. The pact also contains a grievance procedure with third-party binding arbitration and a nondiscrimination clause, which is particularly important since a majority of the unit comes from outside the United States.

The union also won fair share, or agency fee, provisions allowing it to collect dues from nonmembers covered by the contract, enabling the union to enforce the contract and grow, a major victory "beyond the economic benefits," says Nicholson. [Brian Dolber, GEO press release]

August 11, 2004