Bargaining began at 8 am and, as planned, covered the articles on Grievance, Governance, “Health and Safety,” “Physical Conditions”(admin. proposal) and Physical Environment (union proposal covering similar items).

The latter proposals were discussed for the second time. Admin. maintained that governance could actually not be covered in a union contract since the University Statutes alone governed practices and a union contract could not override the Statutes. Kay countered that the Statues provided little guidance and no specifics. She informed the admin. team that the University Senate is currently working on language that would define the status of NTT faculty within the Statutes. The admin team seemed uninformed about the nature of the Statutes or the initiative of the Senate to remedy the situation, but it refused to further consider our faculty governance article.

Health and Safety were then discussed at some length. Our team questioned the general nature of the admin’s proposal and its vague commitments, while it seeks to obligate all BU members to report any violation of health and safety laws. We learned that the Illinois Occupational Safety and Health Act applies to the University and that the University is committed to following the provisions of this Act in our workplaces.

Our “Physical Environment” proposal which asks the University to provide us with appropriate equipment to do our work (access to computers, phones, office space, mailboxes, IT equipment for teaching, lab equipment as appropriate, access to the library ) was rejected for cost reasons.

“Are you sure tenured professors have these things”? we were asked. We do not know, but we do know that we need these items to do our jobs! Since we rejected the admin’s vague and non-committal language on these articles, the admin team withdrew both the Health and Safety and the Physical Conditions articles it had proposed.

The last part of the session was taken up with a renewed discussion of the Grievance article. We objected to the admin’s insistence that in order to reach a binding resolution to a grievance we had to have an HR representative at each meeting between employee and employer. This was a new demand on the admin’s side and we were unwilling to accept this example of regressive bargaining. After some firm words from our negotiator the admin. agreed to withdraw this sentence. We expect an agreement on the Grievance article in the near future.

The session ended at 10:43.

Our Eighteenth bargaining session on October 18 began with a brief side conference on inaccuracies in the administration’s list of bargaining unit members released to us on September 20.

We then proceeded to begin our bargaining session with a detailed discussion of the grievance article. Questions that were discussed centered on whom to file an initial grievance with — many of us have multiple supervisors and it is not always clear who would be the proper person to with whom to take this step. We want to make sure that our members are not disadvantaged by filing with the “wrong” person inadvertently, or because their complaint is judged to be not “in good faith” by the administration. We also had concerns over the term “academic judgement” which admin. used in its grievance proposal.

We then received the admin’s second counter proposal to our proposals on discipline and discharge as well as to the no-strike/no lockout provision. These are very straightforward and standard clauses in most contracts and our proposals on these items are relatively brief. Administration wants the union to take on a large disciplinary role towards its own members, something we reject.

After an admin. caucus of eighty minutes we reconvened and our chief negotiators TAd a brief clause on “electronic availability of agreement”.

We then continued the discussion about grievance and clarified additional points . After a second caucus of about twenty minutes, the admin. team was unable to present us with a cogent proposal that reflected our understanding of the discussion.

Altogether we spent about an hour at the table, and one hour and twenty minutes in caucus. About twenty-five minutes were spent in side-bar conference.

Our next bargaining Session is on October 22 at 8 am.

Our negotiating team met once again with the administration negotiators Monday, September 21 for the scheduled three hour session. The topics on the agenda were the Preamble and Purpose clauses, Union Rights, and the Fair Share articles we had proposed. We began by discussing the “Discipline and Discharge” and the “No Strike, No Lockout” provisions we had both submitted previously. The administration proposals were lengthy and quite restrictive. We will continue discussion of these proposals in future sessions.

We then moved on to the other topics. It took nearly half an hour to figure out that the admin. team was not only completely opposed to any “Fair Share Clause” in our contract, but that they found this article, a core part of labor contracts in our state, “troubling.” Our preamble to the contract (in which we state our common purpose as a community dedicated to the common goals of higher education) was also rejected out of hand. “We are not willing to agree to a lot of that” was the curt dismissal from the other side.

After a caucus of nearly two hours, the administration team submitted a counterproposal on union rights. While much of this counterproposal contains language that we will be able to agree on, we were struck by the admin.’s insistence that our union had no place at the annual orientation for new faculty. “That’s our event, and we will run it as appropriate.” We also re-submitted a set of counterproposals on strike and lockout/discipline and discharge as a combination package. We spent some time clarifying the appropriate way to discuss background checks as part of our negotiations and then agreed on further bargaining dates. Our next bargaining session will take place on October 7.

All in all we spent only about sixty minutes of our three hour session talking to each other, as the admin. team continues to use the bargaining time mostly to caucus rather than to bargain. We will continue to push for the settlement of all our outstanding issues. We are also hoping for the university to present its economic proposals soon, something we have been waiting for during the past nine months.

The Local # 6546 negotiating team met for its 17th session with the administration. Kay Emmert led our team, as always. On the agenda were two main items: Access to Personnel Files and Grievance. Both articles had been discussed in previous sessions. Our team submitted a carefully revised version of our original proposals as a result of these previous discussions. At the beginning of the session Kay explained the changes we had made to the grievance proposal and the reasons for these changes. After 28 minutes the admin. team requested a caucus.

Two hours and 15 minutes later, the admin. team returned and presented their grievance counter proposal which contained almost none of the suggestions we had made. In fact it had only a few very minor changes from the admin. original, first presented last winter. The admin. team then reassured us, that in their opinion, we were “very close” to reaching an agreement. Since the admin. proposal did not incorporate most of our proposal, our team leader had to re-visit important issues regarding the notification and timelines for filing a grievance which have yet to be addressed by admin.

The remaining few minutes were then used by the admin. team to question our counter proposal on access to personnel files. Admin. team members asked about the meaning of such terms as “faculty” or “academic employment.” As the clock had already run over time, we agreed to have further discussions at the next meeting on Sept. 21. The admin. team expressed the hope that future bargaining sessions could be structured more efficiently. No concrete proposals were offered on how to accomplish this, however.

Because of “caucus time” requested by admin., less than an hour of this three and a half hour session were spent “at the table,” not untypical in our experience over the past year. This represents a colossal waste of our time. We are appalled at this waste. We come prepared and ready to bargain, admin. seems to think they can wing it and get by with minimal engagement. Let’s not have them get away with it! The committee which prepares for bargaining (Bargaining Research Committee) meets on Mondays, 5-6:30. Come and join us!