Message to Deans regarding possible GEO strike

Dear Deans,

We are anticipating there will be a GEO strike tomorrow, though bargaining continues throughout today.  I ask you to look carefully at this website, geobargaining.uic.edu, which has a lot of information and should answer most of your questions. A few key points found on this website:

Graduate students can choose not to strike and to teach their classes so classes should not be cancelled en masse. However, the assumption is that everyone is striking, so the grad students who want to teach must let someone know – the dept head or HR person. We will gather that information centrally from the departments later.

Students who strike and do not teach will not be paid for those days. This is why it is so important that departments track who is and who is not on strike. Your college needs to find a way to track this.

Faculty may not strike in sympathy and are expected to teach their classes. Faculty are responsible for figuring out how to cover the material not covered when their TA chooses to strike and not to teach.

There is more information at geobargaining.uic.edu.

Thank you,

Susan Poser
Provost & Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs