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!

Our bargaining team had a total of six bargaining sessions over the summer. While some progress was made on the more technical issues (such as access to personnel files) we were unable to reach any tentative agreements and we have received no economic proposals at all from the administration.

In our last session on August 11, the Administration also refused to engage in any substantive discussion about Evaluations. We know that the way to provide the best educational experience for our students, is to have reliable, consistent evaluation procedures. Evaluations also help our members chart a path for professional development and promotion. But this demand seemed entirely too much for the Administration. They feared that if our contract mandated regular evaluations of faculty, it would be entirely too complicated and they would be set up for contract violations. The burden of evaluating non-tenure track faculty appears too great for them to bear.

Instead of engaging in substantive discussion about evaluations, the post-Wise Administration is anxious about our e-mails. When discussing the right of NTFC to use the UIUC email system for union communications, the Administration’s team expressed concern about the potential for “defamatory” (uncivil) remarks which might be conveyed about them by union officials via e-mail. To us this concern projects their own shame. There is no evidence that non-tenure track faculty are embroiled in scandal or are part of the legal battles over first amendment infringement and union-busting at our university. Recent events have made it clear the Administration will take care of its own defamation. As faculty and union members, we have no interest in hiding our own communication while policing the content, or the tone of email communications or others.

As we continue to work toward our contract, we remain firm in our stance that non-tenure track faculty deserve transparency, true faculty voice, and ability to shape our institution and our work within it.

It is nearing the end of summer, as you may well know. Our team has been working hard to secure important rights and precedent for our unit. This week’s bargaining session began with our bargaining team’s detailed counter proposal on Grievance. Our team also began discussion on Appointment-Reappointment procedure and Union Rights in the campus community. Additionally, our team received an amended proposal on Personnel File Access and a counter-proposal on Non-Discrimination from the administration.

Our bargaining team put in a great deal of effort on the grievance counter proposal as many of the members of our unit are not represented in any systematic way under current university policy. It seems clear from the administration bargaining team’s proposal that they are not aware of, nor are they particularly concerned about these gaps in the governance and operations of the university. In the university administration’s amended proposal on Access to Personnel Files, the administration’s team moved toward our team’s concerns; however, their proposal omitted our call for giving a unit member the ability to grieve material that is unsuitable for inclusion in a personnel file.

Additionally, the administration’s team moved toward our proposal on non-discrimination but continues to exclude language protecting members despite immigration status or parental status. Perhaps most disturbing was a discussion on the Union Rights proposal we presented. We propose that the union should have the right nature of the union’s ability to contact unit members via university email. An administration bargaining team member asked whether the union would send “defamatory emails” about administrators using the email under such an arrangement. They seemed Their side of the following discussion seemed to suggest that if our campus union uses campus email addresses then the administration has the right to police the content of those messages. We find this unThis is not acceptable in an intellectual community (nor any for that matter, and it only does a disservice to the diverse constituencies multiplicity of our community which is where our strength lies). We will continue to push for the union’s and its members’ right to be an integrated, non-stigmatized part of the university community.

While we have made progress on some of these proposals we have yet to reach tentative agreements on them. Our next bargaining session is scheduled for August 11, at 1:30. The bargaining team will continue to negotiate on all currently open proposals. I with primary emphasis on the topics of ( I forgot which two). If you would like to attend the next bargaining session and lend your insight as well as your support, please contact our lead negotiator, Kay Emmert (ake153@hotmail.com) or communications chair Dorothee Schneider (communicationsloc.6546@gmail.com).

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.