Many classrooms at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sat empty on Monday as a result of a strike by graduate students who teach or do research.
About 1,000 graduate students employed by the university signed up to picket academic buildings in shifts during the day, with about 500 on the lines at any one time, said Peter O. Campbell, a spokesman for the Graduate Employees Organization, which has about 2,600 members. Graduate students generally teach about 23 percent of all undergraduate course hours on the campus.
Negotiations between the graduate students’ union and university officials reached an impasse over the administration’s refusal to guarantee the continuation of tuition waivers for all teaching and graduate assistants. The administration has argued that such waivers are protected under a policy adopted by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois system. But union representatives say the board policy is insufficient because it covers only graduate employees who are Illinois residents, not the majority of teaching and graduate assistants, who are from other states.
Robin Kaler, a spokeswoman for the Urbana-Champaign campus, said most classes continued uninterrupted on Monday. The administration temporarily moved some teaching assistants’ classes to buildings that are not being picketed, she said, so the assistants did not have to cross picket lines. In other cases, she said, teaching assistants and faculty members were giving students alternative assignments so the students did not have to come to class.
Representatives of the Graduate Employees Organization and the administration are scheduled to resume talks Tuesday morning. Mr. Campbell, the union spokesman, said the union planned to continue the strike until it received what it regards as a satisfactory tuition-waiver guarantee. “We feel it is very important,” he said, “to put pressure on the university administration and demonstrate that we are willing to withhold our labor for a fair contract.”
