Announcement: IGWC-UE Writes to IU Admin Expressing Concerns About COVID-19

January 19, 2022

The Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition - United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (IGWC-UE) has written President Whitten, Provost Applegate, Dr. Carroll, and select Vice Provosts and Vice Presidents, to share a letter expressing our concerns about Indiana University’s Spring 2022 policies.

Given the current surge of the Omicron variant of the SARS-COV-2 virus, we urge the IU Administration to take immediate action to protect the workers, students, and broader Bloomington community from further spread. More than 1,200 students, staff, and faculty have already tested positive for COVID. This number continues to grow.

We specifically call on the IU administration to provide KN95/N95 masks across campus, and to ensure flexibility for graduate student workers who are expected to teach or work in campus facilities. These measures will slow the spread of COVID and improve equity in campus safety.

We await a response from the IU Administration to this call for action.

We also anticipate — by February 1, 2022 — that the IU Board of Trustees will respond to our submission of nearly 1,600 union cards. With these cards, we called into motion IU’s policy HR-12-20 to enact a union vote for graduate workers. The policy clearly requires that IU hold an election for the recognition of a union when “a petition has been received indicating that at least 30 percent of the employees within the appropriate staff unit favor an election” – a benchmark far surpassed by the IGWC-UE.