Sorry GEO, it’s not about fair; it’s supply, demand

Interesting comment on 11/1 from English TA regarding furloughs. Yes, furloughs would be a pay cut. I find it infuriating that grad students are now not subject to furlough days. All faculty and staff are subject to furlough days. If they want to be treated fairly, then they should also be subject to furlough days like the rest of us. Again, the sense of entitlement of the grad students is truly staggering.

I did my five year stint working mostly 50 % appointments at the U of I. During that time, my wife and I delivered our first child. We lived in crappy but adequate Orchard Downs, we went on WIC for our child's food; I took on an extra job my last year or so selling shoes, but like others have said,

I FELT HONORED AND BLESSED

to be able to teach in a top-five ranked department (in the country) and to work along the side of literally world-class faculty.

During my time as a grad students, a GEO member from U of Michigan who was helping the U of I organize spoke with me at an appointment we made.

I told him that I believed that there were definitely times when genuine TA and RA abuse needs to be addressed and perhaps addressed collectively, but I also told him I was extremely bothered that GEO consistently displayed a pissy, thankless attitude.

I was glad to think of my time as a TA as a mutual exchange: I gave my best to the U of I, and they certainly gave back to me, and I eventually made it to a tenure track position--something I never could have done without the U or I, or my excellent, supportive department.

I am very, very thankful. How about having a "we're thankful day" GEO.

Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

Go ahead, call me names in response like I know you are going to.

GEO's own web page says this:

(http://www.uigeo.org/faq/#Dues)

Q. If I join the Union will I be forced to go on strike?

A. No. A work action can only be authorized by a vote of the union's
membership. A strike can only work if people support it of their own accord.
The GEO's Constitution ensures a member's right to dissent through
protections of the freedom of speech, protections against discrimination on
the basis of political beliefs, and guarantees against limitations on an
employee's right to choose the time and manner of his or her work. Nowhere
in the Constitution is the union's leadership authorized to fine or
discipline members for non-participation in a strike or for any other
reason.

So when you are treated like crap, you are just supposed to take it.
We fight because were are human beings. We deserve a living wage.
Your father should have stood up. Have some cajones and say "I deserve better than this."

Don't worry: When your job is outsourced to some country and you are living pay check to pay check, you will understand our plight.

Last time I checked, the demand for mediocre engineers was not so high.
Write back in 3 years when you are making some money in the engineering field.
Ha. You will be in grad school and you will be a lab slave like most North Campus grad students.

At this point, stop giving input to things you have no idea about.

Luke, it seems like you need to take more classes in the humanities and social sciences. Better yet, take a class in political economy. Then get back to us about "supply and demand."

I am a retired Champaign resident that read Luke's letter at Za's. It inspired me to post to a progressive blog based in Germany with an international readership. The thread on the blog started off talking about the relationship between the U.S. defense budget and poverty, but it had progressed to talking about Americans' attitudes in general. Here is my post:

[start of post]

I know I have posted a lot on this thread, so I promise that this will be the last.

This is a letter to the opinion page of “The Daily Illini”, the student run newspaper of the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. It illustrates well how many Americans think, which is probably very different from world view of Europe and most other cultures. It is from Luke, a senior in the Engineering School of the University. Luke is probably a very nice, reasonable young man. It is about an on-going labor negotiation within the University. I have copied the entire letter, only omitting details about the negotiations, which would not be very meaningful or interesting.

“When I was very young, my father worked 45-50 hours a week as a janitor/handyman in addition to taking classes to become a paramedic. He only got paid for 40 of those hours, and minimum wage at that. Why? Because the place he worked at refused to pay overtime, and if he failed to get everything done on time, they would have fired him for incompetence. Eventually, after 7 years, he screwed up and they did.

“Why am I telling this little story? Because in the years since, and at the time, my father never complained about the way he was treated by his employer. Not because he was some type of saint (he complains all the time), but because they were doing him a favor. The economy in the late 80’s early 90’s was bad and my hometown was worse. Getting a full-time job was virtually impossible; it was a small town, the factory had closed, etc.

“[The union at the university] complains about not getting a living wage. I, and millions of other US citizens, sympathize; it really is not fair. [rest of paragraph about the union negotiations omitted]

“Welcome to the real world, where it has everything to do with supply and demand, and nothing to do with fair. Multiple people apply for every opening… [If the union] went on permanent strike, there would be new [workers] by the time Christmas rolled around.”

Now Luke is obviously a smart, articulate student that came from an impoverished background. He must have worked hard to get into the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, because it is the premiere public university in Illinois and only admits the best high school students.

Notice, however, that both he and his father are oblivious to that fact that they are victims of illegal worker exploitation. It was illegal in the United States back in the 80’s and 90’s, and it still is, to require that hourly employees work overtime without pay. At time-and-a-half, those 5 to 10 hours of overtime would have been about a 20% to 35% raise in pay for his father. That money was due his father. His father earned it. It would have made a tremendous difference to his family’s standard of living. Instead of that money going to his family, where it would have been spent locally on necessities, thereby creating more jobs within that economically depressed community, it probably went to the owners or the stockholders of whatever business his father worked for so they could buy a Mercedes 500 series instead of a Mercedes 300 series (this was before Lexus became the luxury car of choice). No offense to the German economy, and assuming the Mercedes were not made in the U.S. back then, but that money was needed more in that American community.

Yet to this day, Luke simply attributes the exploitation to inevitable capitalist forces. He is anti-Union, the very thing that would have helped his father and his family. If Luke gets his Engineering degree and is reasonably successful, he will probably have a decent middle class American lifestyle. He probably is a Republican, and will continue to vote for the Republican Party. He will view his situation, and his impoverished past, as “I worked my way out of poverty; Why can’t they?” The “they” being, of course, other poor people. He will not acknowledge that he was able to work his way out of poverty because of at least 16 years of tax supported public education. (Including my tax dollars, by the way, as an Illinois resident — but that’s O.K. because it really is better for everyone that Luke be an Engineer, even if he is a Republican, than for him to be stuck in his father’s circumstances).

I present this posting because it is so typical of the world view of many Americans. I wish Luke well, but I do hope he broadens his viewpoint and gains a deeper understanding of the society in which he lives.

If anyone is still reading me, I hope my posts have been helpful.

[end of post]

The whole "My Dad Suffered So You Should Too" argument doesn't really hold up.

What does hold up is that if you are only making 900 bucks a month, you are an idiot for accepting it. Go somewhere else. You knew what you were getting into coming to this school, You don't deserve "living wage" you are a student getting a free degree. That is how the system works, and i don't know how you are only making 900 a month, a lot of the students I serve (engineering and science mostly) make 20 to 25 k a year. but they also work about 60 hours a week and a lot of them get removed from the phD programs before finishing.

I hope that made sense? I guess good luck trying to get paid more.

Does anyone else find it hilarious that a senior in Engineering is tell us TAs/GAs/RAs/professionals (unionized under the GEO) what the "real world" is like? Please, re-write your article in 2 years when you actually grow up a little and see what the "real world" is like.

I also chuckled at the first poster who mentioned the number 1 "letter of rec" asker--Engineers. 3 years of grad school done here, 11 letters of Recommendation written, 8 for Engineers who, when I told them it isn't a good idea to get one from a TA since we have no real prestige as professors do, claimed that they could never approach Engineering professors because a.) they have no social skills b.) aren't at a personal level and c.) don't know how to write.

So yes, tell me what is fair and get rid of me. It's only your future (and that of your other classmates). I will be sure to remember this when I write your letter of Rec.

Right this is how a capitalist economy works...upper management skims money off the top with no oversight to degrade the working conditions and the quality of the product (read: education) and we all should just sit back and say oh well? Give me a break. Protesting and saying no is exactly what we should be doing. That's why being part of a union is legally protected in our democracy (at least in some states). Exploitation at work is just one small step away from political exploitation.

I love the irony of you being an engineer and making these comments. As a TA in the social sciences I'm always surprised at who it is that asks me for letters of recommendations. Wait for it...engineers. Apparently interaction with social science TAs are the best this university can do in terms of faculty-student relationships which is really sad.

The pot of money for assistantships is not finite, at least not in comparison to the overall budget which is overwhelmingly skewed towards admin costs, not education. The amount of money being asked for is small in comparison to what gets flushed down the toilet in unnecessary perks and golden parachutes. The GEO can't turn this around alone but standing up to this corrupt, nepotistic administration and saying enough is enough has to happen. If the lowest paid academic workers on this campus are subject to increasingly exploitative working conditions it is only a matter of time before faculty and class time are targeted. Majors that don't have a direct monetary product (history, political science, english, philosophy, etc.) will be undermined and before you know it U of I will be a glorified version of the University of Phoenix. If you are ok with that, so be it. But if you think that is wrong then maybe you should pay attention to what is actually going on in higher education and not hide behind sad old stories about being grateful to have a job.

BTW, props to your dad for doing what he had to do to support his family. It's too bad he was in such a weak position that he couldn't stand up for his legal rights, but that's what capitalism is all about and exactly why the GEO is drawing a line. Many of us grad students also have families and are doing the same thing.

So just because your father didn't have a "fair" experience means that we can't? There is absolutely nothing wrong with sticking up for yourself and negotiating with your employer, which is exactly what the GEO is doing.

The relationship of graduate students and the university is a mutually beneficial one. We teach 25% of your undergraduate courses that professors are too busy to teach, and you give us a fair wage for that work. The university is not just "doing us a favor," as you put it, by "letting" us teach their classes. We're doing them a favor by saving their professors time, and earning the university prestige through excellent research.

And if the university estimates that it takes $16,086 (NOT including tuition or fees!!) to live for nine months in Urbana-Champaign, then it needs to compensate graduate students with that - or close to that - amount. And in cash - not in housing, food, or other means of payment. Plain and simple.

Negotiating with the university is not wrong. What is wrong is projecting one figure about how much it costs to live here and then paying us considerably below that amount of money. What is wrong is that we have been working twelve weeks without a contract because the administration has been dragging its feet on responding to our proposals (especially in the summer) and suggesting regressive revisions to the contract, like being able to furlough us (which basically means we would have to do the same amount of work while receiving less pay).

Lastly, to correct you in your final paragraph, no one is talking about going on a permanent strike. We'll teach again - as soon as we get a fair contract from the university, and with the power of 2700 TAs and GAs on this campus, we can certainly get their attention.

Welcome to the real world, where it has everything to do with supply and demand, and nothing to do with fair.

Agreed. That's why I'll expect you, as an undergraduate student, not to complain when you get a lower quality education due to having the kind of TA's who will put up with such wages. As you yourself pointed out, there are a whole slew of graduate students (the majority poorly qualified), willing to take up this position.

But I trust you won't whine. It's not your place to be fussy.

I understand where you are coming from as my family has never been in good financial standings as well. However, don't you think if there are ways to make if fair, that people have the right to try and make it fair? I think it too cynical to just say this is how it is. That it's just about supply and demand. I agree that most of the time, that's just how it's going to be and there's nothing you can do about it. But I still would give the GEO credit for trying and for working for "fairness" so to speak. Yes it's not about being fair all the time but should that stop everyone from working towards it? That'd be one heck of a world don't you think if everyone said what you said and never worked towards fairness?