News

24 Aug Bargaining Update #8: Defining Workload, Holding the Line on Due Process

Defining Workloads

This bargaining session, the UIC United Faculty team presented a new article on workload. It is UIC United Faculty’s position that faculty need a voice in workload decisions, specifically through existing shared governance processes. The union has registered a number of complaints about dramatic shifts or inconsistent accounting of workloads, often imposed unilaterally by administrators with little or no faculty input. We do not feel that such coercive, top-down practices are appropriate for determining the working conditions of dedicated professionals. 

While imposing a one-size-fits-all solution on every department would be equally inappropriate, we do feel that existing shared governance structures can and should be engaged. Shared governance is one of the most important principles in academia, and UICUF believes that giving an engaged, empowered faculty a voice in how workloads are defined is the most practical way to address each unique department’s needs.  

Reining in SIT Scores

We also sought to discuss other articles, but no specific movement could be found on anything currently on the table. The UIC Administration team rejected any notion of contractually addressing the use of student evaluations of faculty, often referred to as SIT Scores. While the faculty senate has tentatively accepted the use of these evaluations, they offer a stern warning against their consideration absent other methods:

“It is important that all participating faculty and students are aware that a growing body of research exists to suggest that student evaluations of teaching may be biased in terms of specific faculty populations, such as women and individuals of minority status. For this reason, the data from student evaluations of teaching are not to be used in isolation from other recommended approaches to the evaluation of teaching effectiveness…”

An over reliance on, and potentially improper use of these notoriously flawed scores in evaluating faculty has been a major, ongoing concern for our members. While the University Administration clearly doesn’t want to even discuss the use of SIT Scores in faculty evaluations, or the publishing of such scores, we intend to continue advocating for common sense guidelines, and further study of the issue in general.

Holding the Line on Due Process

Our team, meanwhile, was forced to reject proposals from management that would simply enshrine an unsatisfactory status quo regarding academic freedom protections and discipline and dismissal procedures. Having seen the opaque and often subjective way that the university handles faculty discipline, UIC United Faculty simply cannot accept that less is more when it comes to due process protections for our members.  

Overall, UIC United Faculty is disappointed in the University Administration team’s unwillingness to discuss these concerns in earnest. We will, however, be returning to the table next time with the hope that further progress can be made, and that Labor Relations will not categorically stifle discourse on issues that matter to our members.

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Our next contract bargaining session is Wednesday, September 12th. In the interim, we will continue to post weekly articles on topics of critical interest to our membership.

For the duration of the bargaining process, we will be issuing periodic updates via email, facebook, twitter, and here on our website. We strongly encourage everyone to like and follow us on social media. With your support, we can make UIC an even better place to work and learn!

In Solidarity,

UIC United Faculty Bargaining Team

Aaron Krall [Co-Chair], Senior Lecturer, English | Kevin Whyte [Co-Chair], Professor, Math, Statistics and Computer Science | Kheir Al-Kodmany, Professor, Urban Planning and Policy | Xochitl Bada, Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies | Joaquin Chavez, Associate Professor, History | Jim Drown, Senior Lecturer, English | Chris Kanich, Assistant Professor, Computer Science | Paul Pieper, Associate Professor, Economics | Paul Preissner, Associate Professor, Architecture | Laurie Quinn, Clinical Professor, Biobehavioral Science | Jeffrey Sklansky, Associate Professor, History | Charitianne Williams, Senior Lecturer, English | Milos Zefran, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

03 Aug Bargaining Update #7: The Football Gag

Kick the Football, Charlie Brown!

Three weeks ago, the UIC United Faculty team proposed changes to discipline and dismissal in our contract. We aimed to describe a process for discipline that is Fair to the faculty under scrutiny; Transparent, so that all parties know what to expect; and Consistent, so that faculty are treated equally across the university.

When we presented our changes, we received predictable push back from the University Labor Relations representative, who is the administration’s bargaining lead. Despite this, local UIC administrators, who also sit on the admin team, engaged with us at length on this topic, saying that clear guidelines could be useful all around. The UIC administrators at the table went as far as to ask our team for rewrites of the article, with bullet-point steps for a discipline procedure.

While we’d gone into it expecting equivocation at best, the offer to consider clear discipline procedure after some rewrites was a welcome development. The request, after all, fit our goals of making explicit the mechanisms of an often vague and inconsistent process, and had come out of what we felt to be a very productive engagement over mutual values.

“AAUGH!”

Perhaps, after years of hard bargaining tactics from U of I Labor Relations, it was naive to think that having local UIC administrators at the table would change the dynamic. We took the request for rewrites at face value, but when we arrived at the table this Wednesday, the Labor Relations lead made it clear that they had no intention of letting us play ball.

In their counter proposal, virtually all of the rewrites they asked for us to provide were dismissed. When asked where the desire for specific discipline guidelines had gone, Labor Relations only acknowledged that a faculty member should be notified when discipline is taking place. Any process beyond that most basic principle, they consider to be too “one-size-fits-all.”

This counter proposal, which went notably unremarked upon by UIC administrators in the room, further stipulated that non-renewals are not discipline and wouldn’t be covered under this article. Labor Relations justified this by pointing out that it is rare to have any NTT discipline issues reach a formal stage, asserting that covering non-renewal under this heading would be obtuse. We can’t comment on the volume of so-called “formal” discipline cases involving NTT faculty, but it seems a tautology that a process lacking “formal” steps would imply a dearth of “formal” discipline. Moreover, when faculty can simply be non-renewed, with or without cause, why bother with formal discipline at all? Excluding non-renewal from the NTT discipline process only exacerbates the opacity we believed we were invited to address.      

By dismissing our efforts to address UIC administrators requested changes, it feels very much like Labor Relations is pulling away the football at the last moment.

Campus Safety and Grid-Lock

Discussion on campus safety was somewhat more direct. Administration refused to consider our proposal to form a committee or task force to deal with safety concerns pursuant to the new scheduling grid. The reason: having anticipated some campus safety concerns, there already is a plan in place to deal with safety in the new scheduling grid. See the Campus Scheduling Committee Report (after-hours safety proposals on pg15). Further, any concerns should be brought directly to the Provost.

Unfortunately, fully one-fourth of our members responding to our survey last fall said they had concerns about safety on campus. In particular, many of our members signaled specific concerns about teaching late classes under the new scheduling grid. We do appreciate that the Provost’s office is working to address some of these issues. However, we are not entirely satisfied with the suggestion that our concerns can be satisfactorily handled without meaningful input or oversight from stakeholders outside of administration. It is still our hope that some form of collaborative process can prevail, for our members’ peace of mind, and that of others in the community.

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Our next bargaining session is Wednesday, August 23rd.

For the duration of the bargaining process, we will be issuing periodic updates via email, facebook, twitter, and here on our website. We strongly encourage everyone to like and follow us on social media. With your support, we can make UIC an even better place to work and learn!

In Solidarity,

UIC United Faculty Bargaining Team

Aaron Krall [Co-Chair], Senior Lecturer, English | Kevin Whyte [Co-Chair], Professor, Math, Statistics and Computer Science | Kheir Al-Kodmany, Professor, Urban Planning and Policy | Xochitl Bada, Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies | Joaquin Chavez, Associate Professor, History | Jim Drown, Senior Lecturer, English | Chris Kanich, Assistant Professor, Computer Science | Paul Pieper, Associate Professor, Economics | Paul Preissner, Associate Professor, Architecture | Laurie Quinn, Clinical Professor, Biobehavioral Science | Jeffrey Sklansky, Associate Professor, History | Charitianne Williams, Senior Lecturer, English | Milos Zefran, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

19 Jul Bargaining Update #6: Administration Finally Responds…Sort Of

A Minimal Response

In our last session, the United Faculty team invited and encouraged the Administration’s negotiators to return with counter proposals, which they have so far withheld. We feel that it is difficult to negotiate if the other side only ever demands more of our positions, without staking any of their own. After all, how can we close the gap between our two sides on a given article if they refuse to tell us where they stand?

Well, yesterday, the Admin team did finally respond to our request for counter proposals. To be fair, they had warned that doing so might draw the two sides further apart, but we encouraged them to respond anyway. Given that warning, it’s not surprising that Administration chose to offer only the status quo.

We Just Really Love the Language In This Contract

The Administration team chose to return to the table with a counter proposal on only one of the four articles under discussion at this time. The article in question, regarding Academic Freedom, was returned unchanged, aside from a minor language correction. Note that while we’ve TA’d a number of articles with such minimal changes, this rebuttal is different. The United Faculty had originally brought a proposal with what we view as substantial and important upgrades, to ensure a fair, consistent, and transparent process for academic freedom reviews.

The Administration team’s reasoning for doing the bare minimum? They told us, as they have said repeatedly from the start of negotiations, that they just really love the current contract, and don’t want to see anything change.

A Missed Opportunity

We on the United Faculty side of the table view this move as a missed opportunity on the part of the Administration’s negotiating team. They have already stated that they agree with several of our positions in principle, but rather than bring substantive counter positions and attempt to move toward consensus, they’ve chosen to simply say “no” to our proposal.

We hoped, and still hope, that we can meet with the Administration’s team and truly discuss and bargain over areas of mutual interest, but so far we aren’t exactly being met half-way. Unfortunately, this is not unprecedented. It is, in fact, a move right out of the standard management playbook: Give us nothing, and hope we’ll bargain against ourselves. (Check out #4 on Harvard’s list of Hard Bargaining Tactics)

Moving Forward

The Admin team has responded to the strictest, most minimal interpretation of our request for counter proposals on areas currently under discussion. Of course, it is still very early in the process, and we will continue to appeal to their desire for a fair and efficient process. To us, this means a give and take, and especially where there is no financial implication, a discussion of shared values. We value our university, and want it to be the best place it can be, for us to work, and for our students to learn.

Our next bargaining session is Wednesday, August 1st.

For the duration of the bargaining process, we will be issuing periodic updates via email, facebook, twitter, and here on our website. We strongly encourage everyone to like and follow us on social media. With your support, we can make UIC an even better place to work and learn!

In Solidarity,

UIC United Faculty Bargaining Team

Aaron Krall [Co-Chair], Senior Lecturer, English | Kevin Whyte [Co-Chair], Professor, Math, Statistics and Computer Science | Kheir Al-Kodmany, Professor, Urban Planning and Policy | Xochitl Bada, Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies | Joaquin Chavez, Associate Professor, History | Jim Drown, Senior Lecturer, English | Chris Kanich, Assistant Professor, Computer Science | Paul Pieper, Associate Professor, Economics | Paul Preissner, Associate Professor, Architecture | Laurie Quinn, Clinical Professor, Biobehavioral Science | Jeffrey Sklansky, Associate Professor, History | Charitianne Williams, Senior Lecturer, English | Milos Zefran, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

12 Jul Bargaining Update #5: 3rd Session Progress

Our Last “Easy” TA

In our 3rd meeting with the University’s bargaining team, we opened with another quick Tentative Agreement on Article XVII – Access to Personnel Files. This is the last of our language streamlining changes that simply bring the NTT and TT contracts into closer alignment without changing their substance.

What’s Still On The Table?

We currently have 4 substantive proposals on the table, all originating from the United Faculty side. These are some of our non-economic proposals, which is to say that they do not deal with salaries and benefits, or directly impose other costs on the University or the Union.

Fair, Transparent, Consistent

In this session, we began with a focus on Discipline and Dismissal, and Academic Freedom. It is our hope that we can use the bargaining process not to dictate discipline outcomes, or define academic freedom, but to refine the process through which these principles are applied and upheld. Specifically, we are aiming for greater fairness, transparency and consistency, so that a faculty member, or an administrator, can go into these situations with a very clear idea of the steps, rights, and responsibilities involved on all sides.

The University’s team, which includes individuals from system and campus administration, as well as some individual department heads, seemed to agree that there would be value in such clarity and guidance. Of course, agreement in principle is not the same as an agreement on paper, but the United Faculty team sees this as a first step toward defining processes that everyone finds reasonable.

Next Steps

We didn’t come to any further Tentative Agreements, and likely won’t see more TA’s without hashing out some details from what’s already on the table, but we did make progress. We’ve agreed to take the University team’s input and make revisions to some of our proposals, but also sincerely hope to see counter-proposals from the University next time we meet.

Our next bargaining session is next Tuesday, July 17th, from 2:00-5:00.

For the duration of the bargaining process, we will be issuing periodic updates via email, facebook, twitter, and here on our website. We strongly encourage everyone to like and follow us on social media. With your support, we can make UIC an even better place to work and learn!
In Solidarity,

UIC United Faculty Bargaining Team

Aaron Krall [Co-Chair], Senior Lecturer, English | Kevin Whyte [Co-Chair], Professor, Math, Statistics and Computer Science | Kheir Al-Kodmany, Professor, Urban Planning and Policy | Xochitl Bada, Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies | Joaquin Chavez, Associate Professor, History | Jim Drown, Senior Lecturer, English | Chris Kanich, Assistant Professor, Computer Science | Paul Pieper, Associate Professor, Economics | Paul Preissner, Associate Professor, Architecture | Laurie Quinn, Clinical Professor, Biobehavioral Science | Jeffrey Sklansky, Associate Professor, History | Charitianne Williams, Senior Lecturer, English | Milos Zefran, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

28 Jun Bargaining Update #4: Early Tentative Agreements

TA’s and Our Second Day at the Bargaining Table

We had another interesting day at the bargaining table Wednesday. We TA’ed some easy articles, discussed some of our previous proposals, and introduced two new article proposals.

For those who are unfamiliar with the negotiating process, or just need a refresher, “TA” in this context means Tentative Agreement (not Teaching Assistant!). It is a mechanism in the process wherein all parties agree to accept the article under discussion. Discussion on that article is then assumed to be closed, and generally can’t be reopened unless both parties agree. TA’ing articles usually means you’re making progress, but as one might expect, the first few are the easiest.

In this case, the University team came to the table ready to sign 3 articles for both Tenure Track and Non-Tenure Track contracts, which we proposed last week with no changes:

Article V – Diversity and Affirmative Action

Article XVI – Labor Management Meetings

Article XX – Electronic Availability of Agreement

They also agreed to sign 3 articles with minor language changes that don’t alter the substance of the contract, but were inserted to align the Tenure Track and Non-Tenure Track contracts more closely:

Article I – Purpose

Article XI – Governance

Article XXI – Savings Clause

Though we won’t necessarily be publishing changes in real time, you can view the current versions of these articles on our contract page. They aren’t the most exciting, but they are important nonetheless.

Reaching Tentative Agreements on these articles is a clear step in the right direction, if a small one. We discussed several other articles, including Non-Discrimination, which we proposed last week, and we brought two new proposals around Academic Freedom, and Discipline and Dismissal.

Fair and Efficient Negotiations

It may seem like we’re moving at lightning speed, but things will doubtless slow down from here as each side weighs proposals and counter-proposals. We continue to have every hope of completing this process efficiently and fairly, but we will not be rushing to the finish line at the cost of careful consideration of each proposal in turn. All-in-all, though, we are off to a good start!

Our next bargaining session is in two weeks, July 11th, from 2:00-5:00.

For the duration of the bargaining process, we will be issuing periodic updates via email, facebook, twitter, and here on our website. We strongly encourage everyone to like and follow us on social media. With your support, we can make UIC an even better place to work and learn!
In Solidarity,

UIC United Faculty Bargaining Team

Aaron Krall [Co-Chair], Senior Lecturer, English | Kevin Whyte [Co-Chair], Professor, Math, Statistics and Computer Science | Kheir Al-Kodmany, Professor, Urban Planning and Policy | Xochitl Bada, Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies | Joaquin Chavez, Associate Professor, History | Jim Drown, Senior Lecturer, English | Chris Kanich, Assistant Professor, Computer Science | Paul Pieper, Associate Professor, Economics | Paul Preissner, Associate Professor, Architecture | Laurie Quinn, Clinical Professor, Biobehavioral Science | Jeffrey Sklansky, Associate Professor, History | Charitianne Williams, Senior Lecturer, English | Milos Zefran, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering