Joint Statement from Graduate Employees' Organization & University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

[For the complete text of the agreement, click here.]

Culminating weeks of negotiations, the Graduate Employees' Organization IFT/AFT (GEO) and the University of Illinois announced today that they have reached an agreement about the composition of an electorate to vote on a potential union of graduate assistants at the Urbana-Champaign campus.

The two parties held off-the-record settlement discussions for nearly seven weeks to come to agreement on a petition for an election that the GEO filed with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB) in 1996. The agreement identifies Teaching Assistants (excluding certain Teaching Assistants in specified departments for one semester) and Graduate Assistants as categories of assistants included in a potential bargaining unit and excludes those assistants in the categories of Research Assistant and pre-Professional Graduate Assistant.

The GEO and University have requested that the IELRB approve an agreement for consent election which contains the agreed upon bargaining unit and seeks the direction of an election. This agreement and joint submission to the IELRB is not intended, nor to be construed, as voluntary recognition of the GEO by the University as the bargaining representative of its graduate assistants.

"We are pleased that negotiations with the university have produced an agreement that will allow the IELRB to conduct an election so we can better represent over 2000 graduate employees on this campus," said GEO Co-President Uma Pimplaskar. "We appreciate the administration's efforts to bargain with us in good faith and we look forward to this spirit of cooperation continuing throughout the election and into the collective bargaining process. When we work together, graduate employees, the university, and the students benefit."

"It is encouraging that we have been able to have such a constructive dialogue," said Chancellor Nancy Cantor. "The agreement that we have submitted to the IELRB will allow this process to move along to an election in which assistants will decide whether or not they wish to have union representation. The University remains committed to a rewarding graduate experience that enables our students to do their best work."

The University and GEO will be conferring with the Administrative Law Judge concerning the plan for submitting the stipulated bargaining unit to the Labor Board, and other actions that will be taken prior to conducting an election.