Following last semester’s eight-month contract negotiation period with the University, more than 100 members of the Graduate Employees’ Organization stood in solidarity with the Service Employees International Union during its three-day strike in March.

Stephanie Seawell, GEO spokeswoman, said GEO members walked the picket lines with service workers, bringing out coffee and cookies as well as working with groups of undergraduate students to get the word out.

“For a lot of GEO members, the fact that we didn’t feel like (the service workers) were being treated fairly by the University was doubly appalling because of how little these workers make,” Seawell said, mentioning that many workers are laid off in the summer and need to then pay for their own benefits.

Seawell said the SEIU has always stood with the GEO, adding that when graduate employees went on strike four years ago, service workers “were with us every time we (had) rallies. … They’re always really supportive.”

“(Service workers) keep the University running, they clean the bathrooms, they pick up the trash,” Seawell said. “If we’re going to be a world-class university, we need a strong workforce and food team. It’s really important to us as graduate students.”

In December last year, the GEO secured tuition waivers — a principle issue for graduate employees — until 2017, when their contract ends. Before coming to the agreement, GEO came close to a strike, voting to form a strike committee to make work action plans in late November.

To many GEO members, tuition waivers are essential for the continuance of their work and education at the University.

“We feel that tuition waivers are necessary for access to higher education for people of all incomes and diversity. We think it’s really important that tuition waivers are maintained,” said Erin Heath, a member of the GEO, in an interview on Nov. 9. “For example, I couldn’t afford to go here if I didn’t have a tuition waiver.”

Seawell said over the past semester, the GEO’s Grievance Committee worked until early April to “track down” graduate employees who had been affected by a violation of tuition waivers in the College of Fine and Applied Arts in their 2009 contract.

More than 250 individuals received reimbursements for tuition they had to pay as a result of contract violation. Individual reimbursements varied based on how much was wrongfully charged. The University paid affected graduate employees a grand total of $440,433, including interest.

“Tracking down all the people on our campus who were adversely affected … and people who have graduated or dropped out … was a massive effort that our grievance council undertook,” Seawell said.  

Seawell also said the GEO’s Stewards’ Council has been working toward resolving paycheck tax issues. Because graduate assistants mainly do clerical work, the value of their tuition waiver is taxed in their earnings, sometimes resulting in $0 paychecks.

According to the University’s tuition waiver policy in this year’s graduate college handbook, current tax law exempts research and teaching assistants from having their tuition waivers taxed due to their teaching and research status.

The University has since reclassified many graduate assistants as teaching or research assistants in order to combat this, resulting in fewer affected graduate assistants than in past years, said Natalie Uhl, member of the GEO’s bargaining unit and graduate student.

“That’s one of the focuses that the GEO’s been working on and will continue to work on going forward,” Seawell said. 

Tyler can be reached at [email protected].