Grad students who want to unionize always claim it’s about pay. Then something like this happens which shows it’s also about politics and power.
Campus Reform reports:
Grad employees get cold feet over ICEThe Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), a public sector labor union representing graduate employees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, shared a petition asking for the university to remove job postings from the U.S Border Patrol, ICE, and other DHS programs.“U of I should not allow a racist and abusive organization to recruit students,” GEO’s Solidarity Committee said in a Facebook post sharing the petition. “The University of Illinois Career Services and Student Affairs should stop hosting job postings for the Border Patrol and for all other agencies involved in the abuse of migrants.”GEO has also declared itself a “sanctuary union” and has lobbied for the University of Illinois administration to refuse cooperation with ICE“In addition, U of I should cease partnering with the DHS and providing research and technological support to these agencies,” the group said.Despite the fact that 52 percent of U.S Border Patrol employees are Hispanic, according to the Houston Chronicle, the petition suggests that the Border Patrol is “racist.”Titled “End U of I’s Complicity in the Racist War on Immigrants,” the petition, which had only 49 signatures at the time of publication, calls for the university to pull the job postings from the university’s student job posting website, Handshake @ Illinois.The petition also targets the university’s Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (CIRI), which works to bolster U.S. infrastructure, and the institute’s projects with the Department of Homeland Security. The petition calls for the university to stop participating in projects “that facilitate the work of the U.S. Border Patrol, ICE, or any other DHS program implicated in human rights abuses.”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY