Members Vote to Suspend Strike Until Fall 2022
Congratulations on wrapping up four weeks of historic and productive striking! Our hard work and unity have secured us many victories, including 625 Faculty Members voted YES TO UNION RECOGNITION. Hence, we are well-positioned to secure more victories moving into the summer and fall.
We’ve voted to suspend the strike (448 suspend vs 125 continue) until September 26. This means that members who were striking should plan to:
SUBMIT THEIR FINAL GRADES for the spring semester. The final grade deadline is today, May 10th, at 8pm.
Reach out to your students to inform them that the strike has been suspended and that you plan to submit their grades.
RESUME SUMMER TEACHING for the current summer sessions.
Please reach out to your department union representative(s) if you have any specific questions about what suspending the strike entails.
We have a lot of work to do this summer, and we’ve created a lot of momentum to do that work. Here is how to get involved in our collective actions (UE local committee, Canvas research and Research Assistant strike involvement) for the next stage of our fight.
For now, we grade and we celebrate!
Cheers,
The IGWC-UE Bargaining Committee
Bargaining Committee Statement on the Recommendation to Suspend the Strike
Indiana graduate workers have shown unbelievable courage and energy during the last four weeks. We conducted a historic strike that will change Indiana University forever. We have shown IU that they must respect the voices of graduate employees. We have shown graduate employees around the country how to stand up for their rights. Our union is a leading voice in the movement for unionization nationwide.
The faculty have responded to our strike with the first Special Meeting of Bloomington Faculty in 17 years today. Over 700 faculty turned out for this extraordinary meeting, and they voted overwhelmingly to take back the power to appoint SAAs from the Provost by 683 Yes and 39 No. We assume that the faculty also overwhelmingly endorsed a pathway for unionization for IGWC-UE. However, the Administration has refused to release the vote count at this time.
The faculty have sent a strong message to the Board of Trustees. It’s time for the Board to respond and recognize the will of the faculty. We won this victory through our strike and our unity.
We recommend a suspension of the strike. The strike will stop over the summer and resume in the fall after another vote of union members.
The thinking behind the decision to suspend the strike is twofold:
We want to see the effects of the strike and of the Special Meeting of Bloomington Faculty on the Administration and the Board of Trustees. That will take time to play out over the summer.
If we are going to continue the strike, we want to do that under conditions we choose and under conditions in which we are strong. We are strongest when we are teaching hundreds of classes during the fall and spring semesters.
To further strengthen a fall strike, the General Membership Meeting has endorsed the creation of a committee to explore a plan to ask graduate instructors to move their classes off of Canvas for Fall 2022.
The General Membership Meeting has endorsed the creation of a committee to explore how Research Assistants Strike Committee to explore how research assistants could join instructors in the strike.
This summer, we will set up our UE local union. At the beginning of the fall semester, we will elect union officers and a new bargaining committee.
As always, we hope the Administration will talk with the IGWC-UE. We hope that pressure from our strike and from the Special Faculty Meeting will lead the Board of Trustees to provide a pathway to unionization. We also hope that removing ourselves from Canvas and preparing RAs will further strengthen a prospective strike and bring the Administration to their senses.
This strike has changed Indiana University. Each one of us is more courageous now than we were four weeks ago. We are more unified now than we were four weeks ago.
IU Administrators will always know that we can strike. They will have to account for that when they want to ignore us or put us low on their priority list. Our goals of union recognition, a living wage, and ending the fees are ambitious. We knew we wouldn’t win them all at once. But we will never go back to the years in which graduate employees can just be ignored. We are here and we have our union. We are an immovable force. We really are unstoppable.