For more information on the GEO's "Show Us Some Love, UIC" campaign and contract negotiations visit www.facebook.com and uic-geo.net Frustra...
For more information on the GEO's "Show Us Some Love, UIC" campaign and contract negotiations visit www.facebook.com and uic-geo.net Frustrated UIC Graduate Employees Bombard Chancellor with Valentines Posted by geoweb Chicago—The Graduate Employees' Organization, a labor union representing graduate student employees at UIC, has been without a contract for the past six months. This has resulted in a wage freeze for their approximately 1500 members. The primary points of contention include high healthcare premiums, low wages, and increasing fees. Graduate employees have demanded that their compensation match UIC's own figure of the annual cost of living, $17958, and the administration's proposals have thus far fallen more than three thousand dollars below this figure. At noon on Valentine's Day, graduate employees will be urging the administration to not break their hearts, as they deliver hundreds of Valentine's Day messages to the chancellor in the effort to get the Administration to be more reasonable at the bargaining table. "UIC calls itself a world class university. But when it comes to employee compensation, benefits, and working conditions, UIC is anything but world class," says Kevin Carey, a PhD candidate in the department of English. Grad employees find it particularly egregious that UIC has dramatically increased the salaries of many administrators already receiving very high salaries. UIC's chancellor, for example, received a 10% raise this year, bringing her ... Less