Elections are today from 10-2

Elections are today from 10-2 at the south end of the student center.

GAU Officer elections

The elections will be this Wednesday in the Student Center main level by the craft store. Your nominees are :

President Kyle Cheesewright- Candidate Statement: After being involved with GAU informally for the past four years, I would like to move into a more formal role. If elected to the position of President, I would like to focus on increasing membership, and building our collective power in preparation for the next round of Bargaining. Have a beautiful day, and Vote for Cheese .

VP of membership Mickey Johnson- Candidate Statement My name is Mickey Johnson, and I would like to have your support as I run for the office of the Vice President of Membership for the Graduate Students United here at Southern Illinois University. I am a second year PhD student of Historical Studies. I received my MA in History in the summer of 2008, specializing in Modern European and American History. My fields of interest included feminism in the women’s labor movement under the direction of Dr. Jo Ann Argersinger.

During the fall of 2011, I became active in the GAU during the run up to the strike and was appointed to Vice President of Membership. With help from fellow officers, I assisted in increasing membership by 200%, and continued to keep activists informed of planning events. It is my belief that we must keep the GAU visible on campus, because we are a source of power against an Administration that would rather see graduate student voices silent. Additionally, this summer I will serve on the Health Insurance Committee to address concerns with the current state of healthcare coverage for graduate students here at SIUC.

Next year, I would like to continue as Vice President of Membership with the ultimate goal of increasing membership by at least another 200% to ensure that the GAU is a powerful voice here on campus. This is a lofty but obtainable objective, now that the Administration guaranteed the GAU a spot in the graduate student orientation in August. The definitive goal that would offer all graduate students considerable power on campus would be hitting the fair share agreement contained in the 2010 contract. GAU is in a precarious position because we typically lose 1/3 of our membership each year, so it will be critical to maintain a visible presence on campus all year long with continual membership drives.

Additionally, I want to assist with grooming new GAU members for potential leadership roles to disperse the responsibilities throughout the coming year and beyond. Equally important to remember is that 2013 is just around the corner and the GAU will need active members ready to develop the next contract. I want to assist our union members with the highest quality membership/leadership so that we can make our next contract stronger and the lives of all of our graduate students better. I would appreciate your vote for me, Mickey Johnson, to serve as Vice President of Membership with the GAU.

Treasurer Dennis McDonald-Candidate statement I have served as the treasurer for GAU over the past year and would like to continue to do so for the next year. I look forward to helping GAU grow and working with the new leadership!

Non-retaliation

Language from the Faculty Association’s back-to-work agreement section of the Tentative Agreement:

“The Board also agrees to take no legal or disciplinary action against any student, graduate assistant, civil service employee, administrative professional employee or non-tenure track faculty member for his/her actions in support of the Faculty Association during the strike.”

If you feel like as if you’ve been retaliated against for your support of the Faculty Association during the strike, let me know ASAP.

Strike Warning #15

Strike Warning #15
November 2, 2011

Number of days without a contract: 490
Last bargaining session with the SIUC administration: November 1, 2011
Next bargaining session with the SIUC administration November 2, 2011

Fellow graduate assistants,

Please join us if you can TONIGHT at our strike headquarters (map: http://wp.me/p1vXJd-en) at 6:30pm for an emergency meeting. We will give you the most up-to-date information on bargaining and this will be one of your last chances to make your voices heard about the current offer from the administration on the table.

There will also be a mass meeting tonight at the strike headquarters at 8pm for members of all four unions. While we all hope the news there will be “tentative agreements reached for all for unions!” this will be a last chance to get informed about strike plans and organization, in case the news isn’t so good.

If you are unable to attend either meeting, keep watch on our website for updates and information tonight. This will be the best place to get informed of what is going on. We have had people email us with problems with our listserv since Monday, including being removed from the listserv without requesting removal.

We continue to meet with the administration daily to find a fair solutions for high fees that degrade the value of our stipends and expand our options on health care. Those are the those are the issues most important to GAs on campus and those are the issues most important to your bargaining team.

We also want to explain the “fair share” clause you may have heard about in the Daily Egyptian yesterday. We understand this is a contentious issue for many GAs. Our union dues, should people choose to join, are only a low $20/month — and much lower than other GA unions in the state (the University of Illinois system has fair share and their members pay $40/month in dues).

We use our dues to do a lot of things. Money that stays with us locally pays for things like room rental on campus, copying, supplies, food and drinks for meetings, and a lot of smaller things like that. The majority of the dues goes to the IEA and the NEA, our Illinois and national affiliates, and returns to us in the form of services like legal fees/lawyers, leadership training on things like bargaining, handling grievances, organizing, and other union activities, the work of our UniServ director Jim Clark who provides advice, help, connections to resources with the larger organization we need, and even through discounts and member benefits (http://bit.ly/tJZ8b6).

Fair share is NOT forcing people to join the union. A fair share clause in the contract is asking everyone represented by GAU, who receives the benefits of GAU, to contribute. There are provisions for conscientious objectors and we do have a process through the IEA to handle that. We aren’t forcing anyone to join through this. We were open about having this clause on the table from the beginning because we believe fair share will help ensure the long-term health and stability of GAU on campus.

GAU leadership would NOT ask you to go on strike for fair share. This is still about fees and health care for us but tactically the smartest move is to keep as much as we can on the table — including fair share — as we negotiate the economics. Doing this may help us achieve a fair agreement we can live with.

Communications will be more frequent as we countdown the days until the strike deadline. You can stay informed by reading our webpage (http://gaunited.org), joining our Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6789631853&ref=ts), following our brand new Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/#!/SIUCGAUnited), or subscribing to the blog for all four IEA-NEA unions on campus (http://siucunions.wordpress.com).

In solidarity,
Kristi Brownfield
Vice-President for Communications