To Barbara Wilson, Amanda Thein, Sara Sanders, Clark Stanford, Daniel Clay, Ann McKenna, Kevin Washburn, Denise Jamieson, Julie Zerwic, Donald Letendre, Edith Parker, Amy Kristof-Brown, Tonya Uden-Holman, and Russell Ganim: 

We, graduate workers at the University of Iowa, demand the elimination of all fees. No one should have to pay to work. For too long, TAs and RAs have footed the bill for basic services that we are entitled to as workers. These fees amount to thousands of dollars throughout a graduate school education, keeping workers in poverty and debt. This is unacceptable.

We know the University of Iowa has the resources to finance the basic maintenance and operations of the campus without charging graduate workers. Yet, this administration squeezes some of its most vulnerable and lowest-paid employees by charging them excessive fees to work. Other universities, including our peers in the Big 10, such as Indiana University and the University of Michigan, have eliminated or significantly reduced fees for graduate employees in response to graduate worker pressure.

While UE Local 896/COGS has successfully negotiated a 50% reduction in mandatory fees through past contracts, the University of Iowa continues to increase fees and manipulate how fees are classified to keep increasing charges. These include fees imposed on international and first-year graduate students that the University of Iowa requires but arbitrarily excludes from the “mandatory fees” category. In the 2023-2024 academic year, first-year international graduate workers at the University of Iowa, under our current contract, will pay more than 7% of their yearly wages back to their employer. Until the University of Iowa agrees to eliminate fees, they will always have a mechanism to extract more money from graduate workers with no recourse. 

We are the employees who teach classes and labs, interface with students, and conduct research at this institution. The University of Iowa works because we do. We should not be paying fees to our employer. Our poverty undermines the teaching and research mission of this University. If the University of Iowa strives to be a dynamic center of learning and research, it will end the fees for graduate employees. 

I demand that the University of Iowa eliminate all graduate worker fees.