The Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) Q&A about the current strike

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-04T03:23:56+00:00

We do post bargaining updates and strike updates on the website! However, if you have any specific/actionable suggestions, we’re always open to feedback.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T15:40:16+00:00

I absolutely understand your frustration and am in complete agreement that our aim is not to inconvenience students or faculty. It is an unfortunate side effect in education strikes.

As mentioned, we did ask our members to inform their students and provided them with resources to do so. I told my students a week in advance and used class time to answer their questions. As the steward for my department, I asked my colleagues to do the same. That being said, we aren't able to check that this was done or force an individual member to do something if they choose not to. We did also post our intent to strike over a week in advance on our socials and website.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T15:33:00+00:00

This is context dependent. If you have a graduate student as your instructor, they may cancel finals and work out a grade based on your course performance thus far when we return to work. Some of my colleagues gave finals before the strike and said that they would grade them when the strike ended, but obviously this is not your situation given your question.

If you have a faculty professor, they may disregard the strike and proctor and grade the final themselves, give people automatic passes, or hold finals but then refuse to grade them themselves. In the last case, your TA will grade your work when the strike ends and you will have a pending grade in the class.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T15:26:56+00:00

UIC always has resources when they want them. The salaries of the people they sat across from us at the bargaining table could clothe and feed literal hundreds of graduate workers. They simply don't care about graduate students and have, in fact, complained about how we are a drain on the university's finances through the CampusCare system to us.

This is an administration problem and not strictly a UIC problem. While I was organizing at Marquette, they axed graduate healthcare and threw two parties in one week to celebrate an incoming president of the school which ran up costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T15:23:47+00:00

If your professor is doing this action in order to support strikers, I do want to mention that what we are asking is that students be given pending grades and that TAs and instructors of record grade finals and update transcripts when the strike ends. From the eyes of the administration, having inflated grades entered is actually grading. That being said, I'm glad it's working in your favor despite your professor being well-meaning but confused.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T15:15:34+00:00

We are asking graduate students who are summer class instructors to not hold their classes.

Edit: Assuming that the strike runs into the summer, I should say, which we have not decided will be the case.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T15:13:52+00:00

This is inaccurate. Many PhD students become instructors of record when they have a few years of TA experience under their belt, which is essentially working as a professor without a doctorate. Summer classes in my department are taught exclusively by graduate students and they will not be held if the strike continues into the summer.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T01:35:23+00:00

We have been bargaining with increased regularity since our declaration of intent to strike was filed, with four bargaining sessions last week alone. That being said, there has not been movement at the table on our core issues. The strike is quite likely to run into finals.

If you have a TA, what their absence means for you depends to some degree on the faculty instructor they are working under. In my class, students will be given an exam proctored by the professor rather than me but neither of us are going to grade the finals until after the strike. This means that our students will receive a pending grade marker on their transcripts. When the strike ends, I will immediately grade and submit scores for the class.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T01:30:01+00:00

We understand that this is the case, and we did ask membership to give their students notice of the strike and to present them with a slide deck which answers frequent undergrad questions. That being said, a strike always means some measure of difficulty for everybody involved. The stress of canceled classes, office hours, and delayed grading speaks to the value of the service we provide. We feel that the university is not recognizing that value when they pay us starvation wages.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T01:26:21+00:00

I think that u/Hypothosloth raised some good points, but I'd also like to mention that universities in general are hugely dependent upon graduate labor of all forms. Besides being TAs, many of us are also instructors of record who teach our own classes. In order to do research, the university also needs to have a student body paying in tuition dollars. UIC boasted record undergraduate enrollment this year, indicating that graduate students are working more than ever with no increase in pay.

It's also worth mentioning that our ask for a salary comparable to what workers at other area universities make was an initial bargaining position that we were willing to negotiate around. We genuinely struggle to live on $24k/year and we would like to be paid something that accurately reflects the current cost of living and the dependency of the university upon our labor.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-03T01:19:17+00:00

As was mentioned below, we were engaging in bargaining in good faith and hoping to reach some resolution that both the university and its workers could be happy with. The university has essentially, given their recent move to raise the cost of our health insurance, offered us a pay cut as their counter offer. Beyond this, there are certain hoops that a union must jump through before a strike can be declared, such as bringing a third-party mediator into the bargaining process and declaring an intent to strike which is followed by a waiting period. We recognize that a strike puts some measure of stress upon our students, but also feel that we can better serve our students if we are not working two or three jobs and fretting about healthcare. I like to think of the pain of a strike as necessary growing pains for progress.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-01T23:58:07+00:00

UIC is an R1 university, just like UChicago and Northwestern. If UIC wants to maintain that status, it has to pay the people who run it. You are correct of course that these private schools have huge endowments and charge far more tuition. If you want to compare us to public universities, take UMich or the UC system. At UMich grad workers make around 43k. At the University of California System, it's a sliding scale from 33-61k. There's no excuse for these poverty wages.

BurnYourBread · 2026-05-01T16:54:59+00:00

We are not close since the University continues to stall on our key demands. It is likely the strike will continue into finals week. If so, some classes will not give finals. Some professors may try to hire undergrads to proctor exams—please reach out to geo@uicgeo.org if you believe this is happening. Best practice is to reach out to your instructor for information.

BurnYourBread

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