This week’s bargaining session began with a detailed discussion of both sides’ proposals on “Personnel Files”. This portion of the contract will govern the material that can be placed in each of our personnel files, relationship of these materials with evaluation procedures and how our work at the University is documented.
We want to ensure that all NTTs have access to their personnel files, that materials placed in these files are related only to a faculty member’s work at the University, and that the content placed in and the administration of personnel files conform with the Illinois Personnel Records Review Act (820 ILCS 40). The administration team showed some flexibility when we asked for more precise and detailed language, but we were not able to reach an agreement in this first discussion of the topic.
We also discussed our proposal on “Evaluations.” Previously, the administration team asserted that they did not consider this a suitable topic for a collective bargaining agreement—they reiterated this again this week. They consider Provost Communications (specifically #25 and #26) sufficient and comprehensive on the issue of evaluations.
Our team pushed for consistent and well-publicized procedures, directed by Departments and with input from NTTs, in order to put in place evaluations that actually matter for our members and their professional development and advancement. Provost Communications #25 and #26 are recommendation documents that only deal cursorily with Instructors and Lecturers, who comprise a large part of our membership. Further, many Departments have no evaluation procedures in place and have made no moves to create them. We collected information from members on this topic, some of which we shared in anonymized form with the administration team.
We agreed to re-visit this topic at a future bargaining session. The next bargaining session is planned for July 15 at 1:30pm. The topics will be a second discussion of the brief preamble we have proposed for the “Purpose” article, as well as the grievance proposal. Please get in touch with our lead negotiator Kay Emmert (ake153@hotmail.com) or with communications chair Dorothee Schneider (communicationsloc.6546@gmail.com) if you would like to participate.
