In recent years, the University of Illinois system has been a major site of graduate student worker organizing. Unionized graduate workers at both the Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses launched weeks-long strikes in 2018 and 2019, respectively, to secure contracts that provided basic financial stability.

Although waged by separate grad union locals, the two strikes were sparked by the same anti-union, anti-worker university administration. Now, amid a seemingly unprecedented health care and economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, the University of Illinois administration is once again revealing its apparent contempt for grad workers.

On March 12, three days after Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker declared a statewide state of emergency, the UI Board of Trustees jacked up student health insurance premiums, hitting both grads and undergrads. At the Urbana-Champaign campus (UIUC), premiums will shoot up by a whopping 33 percent beginning this fall. The move came at the same time the board voted to spend $311.8 million on putting up new buildings, and two months after the UI president was awarded a $235,000 raise.