Fellow workers,
Below please find the candidate statements for the GEO officer positions for the 2022-2023 academic year. These will be available to read at the polling stations in the Campus Center and outside the membership meeting on May 5. Voting will take place in-person at the following times and locations:
CAMPUS CENTER CONCOURSE:
Monday, May 2 11 am-2pm
Tuesday, May 3 2pm-5pm
Wednesday, May 4 2pm-5pm
…and at our general membership meeting on Thursday, May 5—exact room TBA. The meeting is scheduled from 5-7; voting will therefore be available from 4-5:30 outside the room.
Additionally, because two or fewer candidates ran for the co-chair position, these will not be placed on the ballot along with the rest of the officer positions. Instead, following the GEO bylaws, there will be a vetting process rather than an election by acclamation of unopposed candidates. This will take place at a special meeting of the Stewards’ Assembly, scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday 4/27 from 5:30-6:30 p.m. This meeting will take place over Zoom, and is open to ALL members of GEO—whether or not you’re a steward. You can register for it here. We encourage every member to attend and hope to see you all there.
If you have any questions at all—about voting, about the special Stewards’ Assembly meeting, about candidate statements, or about GEO elections more broadly—please write to elections@geouaw.org.
CANDIDATE STATEMENTS
Cai Barias, GEO Co-Chair:
Hello – Thanks for taking the time to read this and participate in our election!
My name is Cai Barias and I’m a steward and second year PhD student in the history department. I am excited to be a part of a democratic union and to continue our fight for equity for all graduate workers at UMass. As co-chair, my greatest hope is to foster a strong union culture within the university where all members feel empowered to fight for their rights. With Thomas Corcoran, Antonis Gounalakis, and Kevin Sun, I believe we can not only win better contracts for our workers, but also continue to build an inclusive union community.
As co-chair, I believe it is my job to preserve the administrative structure of GEO so that our members can mobilize effectively. GEO exists through collective power and ensuring equity and a democratic process relies on stability and accountability within our organization. To that end, I look forward to working with the Steering Committee, Joint Council of the Local 2322, and university administration to advocate for our membership at all levels of the union structure. The strength of our organization also requires transparency, and through the GEO newsletter I will ensure clear and consistent messaging for all our members. I will make sure the website is up to date with steward contacts, contracts, and dues forms, and will also work to display GEO information on department websites. Finally, I intend to work with members of other unions at UMass and in the Pioneer Valley to encourage collective actions like the UMass Unions United Rally this past February.
I’ve been active in GEO since becoming a steward during my first year of graduate school in 2020. During my second year, from 2021 to 2022, I served both as a steward and the Steward’s Assembly Co-Chair. I also served on the leadership of the Graduate History Association from 2021 to 2022 and through these experiences have learned about the challenges graduate workers face as both students and workers at UMass. In the past two years, I have worked with international colleagues to address the structural conditions, like visa limitations and language barriers, that make work more difficult. I also responded to cases of gender based harassment in the workplace – an issue that transgresses the boundary between student and worker. And most recently, I worked with my co-steward Kevin Sun to facilitate coffee hours, enroll new members, and mobilize our colleagues to attend bargaining meetings through the spring semester.
Lastly, I approach this work as any other, from my position as an Asian American feminist that is committed to anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-carceral politics and to equity in all its forms.
Thank you again for your consideration.
In solidarity,
Cai
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Thomas Corcoran, GEO Co-Chair:
Dear Fellow UMass Grad Employee,
My name is Tom Corcoran, the current membership organizer of the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) at UMass and candidate for co-chair in this year’s election. Over this last year GEO has labored tirelessly to improve workplace conditions on campus, expand our membership base across university departments, and create a union culture that both includes and empowers. The COVID-19 pandemic, nor an administration adverse to graduate employee unionization could break our stride on the road to strengthening our collective power. As membership organizer, I was at the forefront of these efforts. Serving as co-chair, along with Cai Barias, Antonis Gounalakis, and Kevin Sun, I will continue to build upon this momentum, as we fight for a better contract, enhance member inclusion, and advance the democratic principles of our union .
I have been an active member of GEO throughout my tenure at UMass. In the department of sociology, I served as a steward during the 2016-2017 academic year, and, this past year, as membership organizer. These positions allowed me to work closely with our members, and both helped me to learn about the issues important to their well-being and development as educators, researchers, mentors, and parents. As co-chair I will work to uphold the institutional infrastructure that enables members to actively engage in one of the most important processes to achieve this growth: democratic unionism. Together with the Joint Council of UAW 2322, the GEO Steering Committee, and our broad network of department stewards, we will support our current and future members to the fullest of our abilities. To maintain transparency and ensure our members stay informed on union events, meetings, and mobilizations, I will ensure contact and communication remains consistent on our website, newsletters, and social media channels. And, to advance the project of coalition building, I will help GEO to continue to build strong relationships with unions on the UMass campus, as well as labor unions and organizations in the Pioneer Valley.
Finally, as GEO continues to move deeper into our contract negotiations with university administration, we have started to see the beginnings of important wins for our membership. Our long fights over a reduction in graduate student service fees and the inclusion of non-working fellows into the collective bargaining unit now appear ever closer than before, as we continue to push for a much-deserved raise that keeps pace with rising inflation. However, there is still much work to be done. As co-chair, I will help to foster an active membership base informed on the importance of collective bargaining for our current contract and for many contracts to come.
On behalf of the Solidarity Slate, I ask that you vote Cai Barias for co-chair, Antonis Gounalakis for mobilization coordinator, and Kevin Sun for membership organizer. I am humbled for your support in this election. Thank you.
Solidarity,
Tom Corcoran
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Ivan Williams, Membership Organizer:
Fellow Workers,
The pandemic has revealed the University’s true priorities, and it’s not our success or wellbeing. The University has taken the crisis of pandemic as an opportunity to enrich its partners in the housing and construction industries at our expense. Whilst we observed lockdown and quarantine in correspondence with the law and civic responsibility the university embarked on a campaign of austerity, counting on the pandemic to soften the public backlash. While we faced the threat of sickness, hunger, and homelessness the University endeavored to expose us to greater risk. North Villages and Lincoln Apartments, which housed mostly families and graduate students, were destroyed, exacerbating the existing housing crisis to new, extreme heights. For the University this was not enough. Whilst plotting with developers, the administration saw fit to pick our pockets further, exploiting our status as students by raising fees to the tune of an entire month’s pay. Presently, between extortionate fees and rent, graduate workers are expected to produce world class research and teaching while surrendering up to 90% of their income to unproductive landlords and an uncaring administration.
In the face of this callous opportunism, we must meet this campaign to impoverish us with aggressive and charismatic organizing. Thus central to my priorities as a membership organizer will be regular, consistent organizing. The distance, separation, and risk created by the pandemic fundamentally restricted our ability to publicly organize and connect with grad workers; grad students matriculated over the pandemic had no opportunity to connect in-person with the union. It is abundantly clear that we must have a persistent public presence in the lives of grad workers so as to ensure the university never feels so emboldened again.
The particular hardship inflicted to international graduate workers cannot be understated. It is clear the university had made it a priority to direct its revenue-generating schemes at the expense of international workers, whose visa status incorporates an additional element of precarity that the university has taken advantage of. Non-GEO contracts paired with the nightmare of the American Visa system, add up to a general culture of fear, leaving international workers overworked and overburdened. Thus, also central to my priorities as membership organizer, is organizing particular to international students such as organizing around visa fees and predatory non-GEO contracts. As evident by the successful ‘whine-and-dine’ event hosted by the GEO, international workers are ready to fight back, and I’m ready to fight with you.
For many of us the pandemic was one of the worst, if not the worst time of our lives. Many of us have lost loved ones, fallen ill, been evicted, and generally experienced deep depression, anxiety, and loneliness. The Administration chose to take advantage of us in this moment of crisis and fear. We will not forget this.
The antidote to austerity is solidarity. I ask you to vote for me to show the administration the power in a union; the power of solidarity!
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Kevin Sun, Membership Organizer:
My name is Kevin, he/they, and I am currently one of the stewards for the History department. I’m running for GEO membership organizer as part of the Solidarity slate with Cai Barias, Tom Corcoran, and Antonis Gounalakis.
Comrades, the way the university has acted in this bargaining session is unacceptable. They have refused to consider any of our economic demands. Rents are skyrocketing in the pioneer valley and yet the administration tells us that we should accept a paycut and continue paying our employer. They want to weaken our ability to file grievances over workplace harassment, proposing we work solely within the administration’s processes that— especially in light of recent events at Harvard— students and workers do not trust. They think they can get away with this because “things have always been this way,” or “that’s just the way things are.” Well GEO is not the kind of union that accepts things “the way they are.”
With my co-steward Cai Barias, we have taken a proactive approach in speaking with graduate workers in my department, getting to know their core issues and organizing members to be more active participants in our bargaining efforts. From signing collective statements to giving testimony at the bargaining table, I try to be creative in my approach to broaden participation in our campaigns. Recently I have been making an effort to do more inter-departmental organizing, starting with a joint history and economics department social. Before coming to UMass, I lived in Oakland, California, and was an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America, elected as co-chair for my chapter’s Racial Solidarity Committee, and, as co-chair, supported campaigns to organize public school workers and halfway house residents.
UMass works because we do, and that also applies to our union. Organizing requires creative-problem solving and an inclusive approach that seeks to build relationships and broaden commitment to the union. As membership organizer, I will use the support the union gives me to further expand my organizing toolset. I will bring my experience to build a long-term sustainable organizing culture and collective solidarity around the issues that affect us everyday. I would collaborate with each departments’ stewards to understand their challenges and support their organizing — whether that’s through socials, training new organizers through our bargaining campaign, or other approaches to building shop floor militancy.
Lastly, I’d like to affirm my commitment to furthering a union culture that is anti-racist and anti-sexist in words and in deeds. These are necessary commitments constitutive of a democratic union culture that is able to take collective action. As a union, we must be vigilant in struggling against the racialized and gendered forms of oppression that graduate workers confront everyday, which only serve to consolidate management’s power over graduate workers. Our demands and organizing should articulate a vision for a world free of racism and sexism.
An injury to one is an injury to all. Let’s show our bosses the real power of worker solidarity!
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Antonis Gounalakis, Mobilization Coordinator:
Hello fellow graduate student-workers,
My name is Antonis Gounalakis and I am a Ph.D. student in Economics. I have been honored to serve on the Steering Committee for the last four years and as a steward for my department for the last 5 years. In these positions, I have advocated for the interests and concerns of my fellow workers. Additionally, as an international student (from Greece), I am familiar with the complexities and difficulties related to immigration status (F1 Visa holder), which were magnified during the last administration and the pandemic.
For those of you who have participated in membership/steward meetings, you know that there are many issues that I care deeply about regarding our union, including its priorities and strategy. My personal view as a graduate student-worker, is that union leadership must steer the union in order to align with the needs and wants of its members. As GEO is a democratically-run, member-driven union, it is crucial to have transparency and accountability in any action (or inaction) that we take. GEO should always aim to increase its member base, while keeping members engaged in every step of the process. Ideally, I would like to foster higher participation rates than we have currently (in meetings, actions, elections etc).
We are still living through challenging times of multiple crises – the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and its humanitarian and global financial ramifications, the rising cost of living (rent, energy, food etc), and the imminent environmental crisis – that affect us all and prove the limitations and failures of our current economic and political system. The financial impact of those crises is amplified by the inadequate response from both the government and the UMass administration. Despite having over 360 million dollars in endowment, the University is currently offering wage increases that do not cover the official inflation rate, is proposing to increase our fees and is increasing rent in the new “affordable” family housing for graduate students. They are still not offering us sufficient summer funding, as if our basic needs such as housing and food cease to exist once the Spring semester has ended. They would prefer we take out loans and go into debt to pay for our living expenses, while they are using our fees to pay off University’s debt. In order to change this trajectory, we will need to increase our members, to increase our organizational capabilities and collectively show up both at the bargaining table and outside of it in order to pressure the administration to submit to our demands. We will have to follow the lead of the rising labor movement that is sweeping once again across this country, which has brought huge victories in workplaces like Amazon and Starbucks. We will come up against institutions, Supreme Court decisions (JANUS) and legislation that are enforcing an uneven playing field in order to suppress labor power and our ability to organize. We will need to fight collectively and organize in order to succeed, but we will persevere!
Lastly, I sincerely hope that you will consider voting for me, along with Cai Barias and Tom Corcoran as Co-Chairs and Kevin Sun for Membership Organizer. I believe that our slate brings new perspectives to the table regarding the challenges that we are facing, while allowing us at the same time to have some necessary continuity and experience in our leadership positions.
