Graduate Workers Healthcare Campaign: Victory!

In the spring of 2021, we won a major victory by securing fully-subsidized health insurance plans from the University for our graduate student workers.

You can read the original demands of the campaign below.

The University of South Carolina must offer part-time, undergraduate workers and graduate workers affordable, comprehensive healthcare, including COVID-19 and mental healthcare. 

The health and safety of all students and workers on campus must be a priority. The current pandemic has drawn even greater attention to this need, by introducing increased risk for essential workers on campus. If workers' health and safety are compromised, so too are students. 

We demand that the University offer undergraduate workers and graduate workers affordable, comprehensive healthcare, including mental healthcare (as is offered to full-time staff and faculty through the state plan). In addition, students and part time staff should have access to the same benefits that full time faculty and staff on the University plan. As part of that, the plan should cover the costs of COVID care if the person becomes infected as a result of working on campus. 

Specific demands

1. We call for the University system to cover the entire cost of UofSC health insurance for graduate workers at UofSC.
2. We call for the University system to offer all health insurance benefits offered to faculty to graduate students for the appropriate additional cost.
3. We call for the university to cover all COVID related safety and health care costs for University workers that are not working remotely.
4. We call for the university to cover all mental health services during and after the COVID pandemic, even if workers use more than 10 sessions per year or are out of state.