08 Sep Management is Stalling
- UIC management fails to offer counters on 6 key articles, all in their possession for a month or longer
- Next bargaining session is in-person, Monday, September 12, 10:00-1:00 on West Campus, Student Center West, Room 206AB. All members are encouraged to attend.
- Fall Membership Meeting Thursday, September 15 @ 3pm at Hull House!
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Bargaining update
Five months in, and with faculty raises pending until the contract is settled, they need to stop stalling and bring serious counter-proposals, and real decision-makers, to the table.
After declining to schedule a negotiation session last week, citing the need to work on counter proposals with their new labor relations lawyer, the management team brought only one counterproposal to Tuesday’s meeting–and this counter on Governance was a simple reversion to their previous language. In short, management asked for an extension, but brought no work to show for the extra time. They have not presented any counters on six crucial articles:
- Article IV. Compensation, Leaves and, Group Health
- Article VII. Institutional Commitments
- Article IX. Appointment, Reappointment, Promotion, Layoff, and Recall
- Article XII. Hours of Work and Commitment
- Article XV. Discipline and Dismissal
- Article XXIV. Teaching Professor Ranks and Conversion.
On a number of other articles, they continue to pass counters that reject almost everything we offer with little or inconsistent explanation and no alternative language.
On Tuesday our team delivered counterproposals on Article VIII. Union Membership and Activity; Article XIII. Health and Safety; Article XIV. Physical Conditions; and Article XVIII. Grievance and Arbitration. After 45 minutes of caucus time, management came back with counters on VIII & XVIII–suggesting to us that, in fact, they have the potential to produce counterproposals when they put in the effort; they just don’t seem to be doing so between meetings.
When asked when the bargaining team could expect counters on compensation, management had no response but suggested that they would offer proposals on Article IX. Appointment, Reappointment, Promotion, Layoff and Recall and Article XII. Hours of Work and Commitment next week at our in-person bargaining session on Monday, Sept 12 from 10am-1pm at Student Center West, Room 206AB. We strongly encourage members to join us to see the bargaining process for yourself and offer advice during caucus discussion!
Join us in SCW or listen in on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85667197005?pwd=eHBBNUtrcnBDdjRGczFVUmxqdjJpdz09
Bargaining Timeline and Retroactive Compensation
The administration has not offered us the U of I 3.5% campus wage raise, arguing upcoming contract negotiations supposedly prevent them from doing so (nothing in the university rules nor labor laws prevent this). At the same time, we have negotiated since April and have yet to receive a counter on our Compensation proposal. We feel a great sense of urgency around negotiations because we know that the sooner we settle the contract, the sooner we all will get our raises for this academic year, retroactive to August. At this point, 175 days have passed since we delivered our notice of intent to bargain and we have spent 22 hours at the bargaining table, but faculty have now been working without a contract for almost a month. The UICUF bargaining team signaled our interest in settling this contract before the previous one expired, and management consistently agreed. Unfortunately, that deadline passed before the labor relations lawyer was even on board. In addition to stalling, management also isn’t bringing the real decision makers – the Chancellor, Provost, VC of Health Affairs, and VC of Faculty Affairs – to the table. It’s time for management to get serious about bargaining.
Member Meetings
We hope that you learned a lot about our platform and concrete proposals during the listening tours offered by the bargaining committee at various colleges in the past week. Two final meetings are still to come:
- Friday, 9/9@10:30 AM in 1550 UH for the Humanities, Social Science, the Tutorium and Graduate College
- Friday 9/9@noon EMTWS Room 2233 for CADA and the Colleges of Education and Social Work.
If you missed your college meeting, please be sure to join us at the all-member meeting on Thursday, September 15 at 3pm at Hull-House! Reach out to union staff at uicunitedfaculty@gmail.com for a remote option. We will have more discussion of the bargaining process, with a focus on our economic proposals.
In Solidarity,
The UIC UF Bargaining team
Xochitl Bada (Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies) | Aaron Krall (Senior Lecturer, English) | Andy Baker (Clinical Assistant Professor, Music) | Anna Kornbluh (Professor, English) | Becky Bonarek (Lecturer, Tutorium in Intensive English) | Charitianne Williams (Senior Lecturer, English) | Gosia Fidelis (Associate Professor, History) | Ian Collins (Clinical Assistant Professor, Daley Library) | Jim Drown (Senior Lecturer, English) | Jeff Gore (Senior Lecturer, English) | Jennifer Rupert (Senior Lecturer, English, Gender and Women’s Studies) | Kate Floros (Clinical Associate Professor, Political Science) | Kate Lowe (Associate Professor, Urban Planning and Policy) | Kevin O’Brien (Clinical Associate Professor, Library of the Health Sciences) | Kevin Whyte (Professor, Math, Statistics, and Computer Science) | Laurie Quinn (Clinical Professor, Biobehavioral Nursing Science) | Nicole Nguyen (Associate Professor, Educational Policy Studies) | Paul Preissner (Professor, Architecture)