University of Illinois leadership and graduate employees at the Urbana-Champaign campus have reached a tentative contract agreement to end a nearly two-week-long strike, university and union leaders said Thursday.
Members of the Graduate Employees’ Organization announced their bargaining team had inked an agreement with the university’s administration for a new contract, halting pickets in place around buildings on the Main Quad. Urbana-Champaign Provost Andreas Cangellaris and university Spokeswoman Robin Kaler confirmed the conditional deal.
Union members reviewed the terms Thursday afternoon before beginning a two-day process of voting on the contract. If they ratify the agreement, which requires a simple majority vote, the strike will be over. This walkout is the longest strike in the union’s 20-year history.
Full details on the contract terms will not be available until after the vote, according to Cangellaris, but union representative Ashli Anda said the agreement would be for five years, includes pay raises and involves a compromise on tuition waivers.
Should union members sign off on the contract, Kaler said it also would need to be approved by the university’s board of trustees, who are next scheduled to meet March 15.
Anda said most of the members would be present to cast their votes Thursday evening but there would be another meeting Friday afternoon to allow remaining workers an opportunity to vote, as well.
In a statement, Cangellaris said the two sides negotiated all night and worked toward the shared goal of ensuring “continued excellence here at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.”
“This tentative agreement finds common ground built on those goals to ensure graduate employees at Illinois will have the financial and personal security to focus fully on the academic pursuits and aspirations that brought them here,” Cangellaris said. “And this agreement also guarantees our faculty the flexibility to ensure the future quality and competitiveness of our academic programs in the rapidly shifting landscape of global higher education.”
The union, representing about 2,700 graduate and teaching assistants, walked off the job Feb. 26 after nearly a year of unsuccessful negotiations involving dozens of bargaining and mediation sessions. Union members have been working without a contract since August. Hundreds of classes have been canceled or moved to other locations to avoid picket lines.
The two sides had been gridlocked most intently on the issue of tuition waivers. The union demanded guaranteed waivers for themselves and for future classes, saying they are crucial for the affordability of graduate work and research. The university sought contract language allowing leaders to modify the waivers program in later years to meet budgeting and programming needs, but said currently enrolled students would keep the waivers in effect at the time they began their studies.
Anda said the proposal is that a student’s tuition waiver policy remains the same throughout their assistantships as long as they remain in good academic standing and make adequate progress toward their degrees. Even if the university opts to change waiver conditions for a program, they would not apply to an already enrolled student, Anda said.
Anda said the contract also would offer a 4.5 percent raise in the first year, and 2 percent hikes in the second and third years. The university would also cover 87 percent of health insurance fees instead of 80 percent, and 25 percent of coverage for one dependent, which would be a new benefit.
The majority of members in the bargaining unit have graduate and teaching assistant programs requiring them to work 20 hours a week for up to nine months a year as a condition of their tuition waivers, according to a university website. Only those who work 10 to 27 hours a week for their assistantships are part of the bargaining unit, according to the union leaders.
drhodes@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @rhodes_dawn
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