Bargaining Update

Friday 3/29 was our seventh bargaining session. Our co-lead negotiator Dani Nyikos was unable to attend, so co-lead Rachel Fein-Smolinski was joined by Kay Emmert to fill in for Dani for the day. We presented our counterproposal for Hours of Work & Commitment, and the admin team presented their counters for Discipline & Dismissal, Health & Safety, and Physical Conditions & Institutional Commitments.

Our bargaining team continued to advocate for the issues that are most important to specialized faculty. Among these issues are (a) defining work expectations to combat overwork, and (b) allowing specialized faculty with terminal research degrees to serve as PI’s. The admin team’s lead negotiator tried to argue that these two stances are somehow contradictory, stating: “You say we should let you do your jobs, but you also say you don’t know what your jobs are.” 

Our lead negotiators responded by acknowledging that with many different types of positions on campus, our members’ top priorities may be wide-ranging, and on their face may even seem contradictory. Kay said, “Please don’t diminish our members’ concerns by saying they are rhetorically contradictory.” 

It was disappointing to hear such a facile oversimplification of our proposal, but we hope that the admin team will come to a fuller understanding of the issues. There’s no reason why specialized faculty with terminal research degrees shouldn’t be able to serve as PI’s. It is already the policy in Grainger, and the admin team has not offered any justification for why this policy that works for Grainger wouldn’t work in the other colleges.

The admin team also indicated that they do not plan to improve access to gender affirming care, as outlined in our proposal. For more information about why this matters, read this story on our website.

Fortunately, there is some good news: the admin team has indicated that they’ll bring an economic proposal (including wages, benefits, and leaves) at our next session. After 4 months of bargaining, we are ready to see their economic proposal!

How You Can Help

Now is the time to show that these issues are important to all specialized faculty- not just those of us who are on the bargaining team! With a strong show of support, we can send the message to the Board of Trustees and UIUC upper admin that specialized faculty deserve better. 

Mark your calendar:

• Mon April 22, 3:10pm: UIUC Senate Meeting- Fund Your CBA’s
• Fri April 26, 9am-12pm: Pack the Room at Bargaining
• Thurs May 2, 10am-2pm: Reading Day Work-In and Solidarity Rally

Next Session: Pack the Room!

The UIUC admin team has committed to presenting an economic proposal, including wages, benefits, and leaves, in the next session. Join us there, to show support! We need as many people in the room as possible. We’d love to fill the room with specialized faculty, and members of the general public are welcome to come and support us as well. You can come late, leave early, or stay the whole time. 

• Friday, April 26, 9am-12pm
• Location: Illini Union Ballroom

Want to be in the know?

Would you like to know more, including upcoming events and bargaining updates?

• Follow us on Instagram: @ntfc6546
• Like us on Facebook: NTFC Local 6546
• Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/EpJNQXhX

In Solidarity

Theresa Dobbs

NTFC Communications Chair

Some UIUC Employees are Denied Coverage of Gender Affirming Care

In the state of Illinois, insurance companies are required to cover treatments for gender dysphoria and not to discriminate on the basis of gender identity. 

Because of this, insurance companies generally cover top surgery, bottom surgery, and some amount of hormone therapy and counseling. However, these are not the only types of gender affirming care. 

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) lists the treatments that insurance providers ought to cover when a patient’s doctor deems it medically necessary. This list includes:

• Facial feminization surgery
• Facial masculinization surgery
• Facial hair removal
• Voice training
• Vocal cord surgery

A direct quote from WPATH’s Medical Necessity Statement, referring to the above treatments:

“The medical procedures attendant to gender affirming/confirming surgeries are not ‘cosmetic’ or ‘elective’ or ‘for the mere convenience of the patient.’ These reconstructive procedures are not optional in any meaningful sense, but are understood to be medically necessary for the treatment of the diagnosed condition.”

But most of the insurance companies that service UIUC employees ignore this guidance. They take advantage of a loophole and classify the above treatments as cosmetic- even when an individual’s doctor deems them medically necessary.

For example, Aetna excludes voice training, facial hair removal, and all the surgeries in the bullet points above, deeming them to be cosmetic, no matter what one’s doctor says.

Meanwhile, the University has chosen to do nothing. Despite the University of Illinois’ professed commitment to supporting trans and gender diverse employees, they have chosen to side with the insurance companies and allow their employees to go without medically necessary care.

What Can We Do About It?

For the Non Tenure Faculty Union, this is an issue close to our hearts. A significant portion of specialized faculty at UIUC are trans or gender diverse, and some of us have personally experienced being denied gender affirming care due to this issue.

As specialized faculty, we also are part of the broader campus community, and we see this issue affecting UIUC employees outside of our bargaining unit. (We suspect it may also affect students, but we are not as familiar with UIUC’s student insurance. If you have knowledge about this, we’d love to talk with you!)

We are currently bargaining our third Collective Bargaining Agreement with the University. In our proposal, we propose that the University set up a reimbursement program for expenses of gender affirming care that are not covered by insurance. The negotiations over our contract will take place throughout the Spring semester, and perhaps into the summer.

In our initial bargaining sessions with administration, their team expressed doubts about whether such a program is needed. They expressed a belief that all medically necessary gender affirming care is already covered by insurance. It seems they are unquestioningly following the lead of insurance companies, rather than following WPATH’s standards of medically necessary care. 

In our March 29 bargaining session, the admin team indicated that they do not anticipate changing their existing policies on gender affirming care. But we’re not giving up.

If they genuinely believe in providing medically necessary healthcare to their trans and gender diverse faculty, what will they do when the insurance plans they offer fail to do that?

We hope to work with campus organizations and RSO’s to amplify this issue. With broad support from campus community members both inside and outside of our union, we are hopeful that the University will listen! 

Get Involved!

Follow us on social media to learn about updates and actions that you can take!

• Follow us on Instagram: @ntfc6546
• Like us on Facebook: NTFC Local 6546

Do you have personal experience or relevant knowledge to share with us on the topic of Gender Affirming Care in the UIUC campus community? Or do you want to plan an event together? Or are you a trans new employee trying to navigate the confusing thicket of insurance options? We’d love to hear from you! Our DM’s are open on social media, or you can email us at ntfc6546@gmail.com. 

In Solidarity

Dani Nyikos, NTFC Co-Lead Negotiator

Theresa Dobbs, NTFC Communications Chair

Bargaining Update

Last Friday was our sixth bargaining session. After signing tentative agreements on the four articles we agreed on last time, we continued looking at Hours of Work & Commitment.

In the last session, multiple specialized faculty members came and spoke about their experiences of serious overwork. Currently, in instances where a faculty member is concerned about their excessive workload, the only person they can go to is their unit’s Executive Officer (generally, the department chair). Here are some reasons why this is highly problematic: 

1. The executive officer is often the same person who assigned them excessive work to begin with.
2. For non tenure faculty with little job security, the executive officer has sole discretion of whether the faculty member is to be reappointed for another contract.
3. The executive officer is under no obligation to justify non-reappointment decisions. So specialized faculty have no protections against retaliatory or capricious non-reappointment, making the fear of retaliation very real.
4. To resolve a disagreement between two parties, it is a best practice for a third party to mediate the conflict. Especially when there is a significant power differential, as in faculty and EO’s, a third party is needed to ensure protections for the vulnerable complainant.

Our proposal involves defining clear job duties for each position, and allowing bargaining unit members to file a grievance with their union if they feel they have been assigned an excessive workload. The grievance procedure will effectively hold administration accountable, while protecting bargaining unit members from retaliation.

We presented our comprehensive proposal back in December, so the ball was in the admin’s court to present their own proposal on Hours of Work & Commitment.

The admin team’s proposal was shocking in its lack of substance. They proposed maintaining the status quo and codifying it in our collective bargaining agreement. Despite our lead negotiators’ clear explanations of why the current procedure lacks proper checks and balances, the admin team made it clear that they value flexibility for management over protections for faculty.

Another concerning moment came when the admin team flatly refused to discuss the possibility of the University funding the collective bargaining agreement. This is worrying because in the case of an increase to the salary floor, for example, units/departments will be squeezed financially due to higher expenses without corresponding increases to their budgets. We will have more information soon about a resolution to be brought to the University Senate to remedy this problem!

How You Can Help

The admin team is giving us poor quality counterproposals to see if we have the support of our membership behind us. If we lack that support, they will keep hammering us with empty language and nonexistent protections. 

Even if you have not come to union events often or at all, you have an important role to play! Our Flyering Scavenger Hunt is coming up on Friday, March 29, 2-4pm, and it would be wonderful to have as many specialized faculty there as possible to show support! We’ll have more information in a separate post. In the meantime, mark your calendars!

Next Session

As we are still very far apart on Hours of Work & Commitment, we will table it for now and will await more proposals from the admin team at our next session.

• Friday, March 29, 9am-12pm
• Location: TBD

Want to be in the know?

Would you like to know more, including upcoming events and bargaining updates?

• Follow us on Instagram: @ntfc6546
• Like us on Facebook: NTFC Local 6546
• Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/EpJNQXhX

In Solidarity

Theresa Dobbs

NTFC Communications Chair

ntfc6546@gmail.com

Bargaining Update

Today was our fifth bargaining session, and it was a productive one! We are ready to sign tentative agreements on four articles: Grievance, Personnel Files, Unauthorized Work Stoppage, and Nondiscrimination. This should bring us closer to receiving a proposal on wages from the admin team.

After agreeing about those articles, we began discussing another article: Hours of Work & Commitment. In this article, we have proposed a system that holds units accountable for providing documents outlining job responsibilities that are fair, transparent, and up-to-date. We also have proposed that every faculty member’s duty percentage be congruent with their job title (for example, a Research Assistant Professor should not have teaching as 50% or more of their duty percentage).

The admin team was initially skeptical about whether overwork is an issue among specialized faculty. 

Three specialized faculty members came up to the bargaining table and spoke about their experiences and the serious overwork they’ve found themselves compelled to do. In all cases, they were expected to do extensive work that exceeded their 100% appointment without additional compensation. 

After hearing this testimony, the admin team engaged in dialogue with us, and agreed to consult with admin at the colleges about this problem. They seem to be undecided whether intervention is needed to prevent overwork, or whether it should continue to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, when people complain. Given that many specialized faculty have short-term contracts and little guarantee of job security, many are reluctant to complain about overwork. We hope that the admin team will see that a better procedure is needed to protect specialized faculty from overwork.

Tell Us About Your Overwork!

The admin team weren’t sure overwork is an issue, citing that they have not heard many complaints coming in to HR. This is a time to speak up, so they can see that it is indeed a problem many of us face! If you’ve been expected to do work that exceeds your duty percentage, here are two ways to take action:

1. Contact Illinois Human Resources and let them know.
   1. (217) 333-2137
   2. ihr@illinois.edu 
2. Contact your union! Any information you share with us will be kept confidential.
   1. ntfc@gmail.com 

Next Session

We will continue discussing Hours of Work & Commitment at our next bargaining session, which is ironically during Spring Break. If you’ll be in town, feel free to join us! All members are welcome. 

• Friday, March 15, 9am-12pm
• Levis Faculty Center, room 300