25 Jul Know-Your-Contract Mid Summer Roundup
- UICUF completed contract negotiations this Spring and our 2018-2022 NTT contract and TT contract are available online for your review.
- Our Know-Your-Contract Series is also available via our website, and will continue through the summer to help explain your contract rights.
- UICUF will offer department-specific Know-Your-Contract workshops this fall. To request a workshop for your department, contact us at UICUnitedFaculty@gmail.com.
- Save The Date: Help welcome new faculty to UIC, the afternoon of August 21st.
As most readers will know, UICUF completed negotiations for new faculty contracts this past Spring, after a prolonged bargaining process and a last-minute deal to avert a strike. If you haven’t done so already, we highly encourage our members to visit our website and review or download your new contract.
In addition to publishing the actual contract language on our website, we’ve committed to an ongoing effort to help our members actually understand what that contract means for their day-to-day lives. To that end, we’ve published a series of Know-Your-Contract articles this summer on various topics of interest to our members, and will continue the series through the end of the summer.
Beginning in the Fall semester, we will also be offering Know-Your-Contract workshops on a department-by-department basis. In particular, many of our contractual rights must be asserted and maintained through shared governance (example: defining work load expectations), and the 2018-2022 contract adds new dimensions to faculty rights through these principles. Union staff, officers, and volunteers will be available to help members ensure that their departments are fully informed about their rights. If you would like to schedule a workshop for your department on a particular subject, or simply for an overview and discussion of these rights, email us at UICUnitedFaculty@gmail.com.
In the meantime, here is a summary of the Know-Your-Contract topics we’ve covered so far:
KNOW YOUR CONTRACT – RAISES
Extensive information on how pay will be determined, including the types of raises (Minimums, Merit, Compression/Equity), the role of shared governance in deciding pay increases, use of guaranteed Professional Development funds, and how retro pay will work. Note that retro-pay is still being calculated at the time of this publication.
KNOW YOUR CONTRACT – PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FUNDS
A deeper dive into Professional Development funds, including guaranteed amounts, and how to use them.
KNOW YOUR CONTRACT – DISCIPLINE AND DISMISSAL
A detailed explanation of your rights in the discipline process, including the right to union representation, expectations of due process, and what each step of that process should look like.
KNOW YOUR CONTRACT – EVALUATIONS
Learn about your right to a timely, transparent, and appropriate annual evaluation, how they should be performed, how student input can and can’t be used, and what these evaluations should and should not be used for.
KNOW YOUR CONTRACT – WORK LOADS
The new contract specifies a role for shared governance in defining work loads in each department. Learn more about how those definitions should be created, what must be covered in these definitions, and how your work expectations are protected from abrupt changes mid-contract.
KNOW YOUR CONTRACT – APPOINTMENT AND REAPPOINTMENT
Reappointments are a big deal, especially for NTT faculty. A key element of our new contract was to speed up time to muti-year appointments, and improve the notification process. Learn about your rights regarding multi-year appointments, when they should be applied, and when you are entitled to know about your appointment status each academic year.
KNOW YOUR CONTRACT – ACADEMIC FREEDOM
One of the most important, but also hotly debated concepts in academia today, we explain specifically what our contract and the UI statutes have to say about academic freedom, how it is protected, and how we can further strengthen these important rights.
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We issue regular updates via email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and on our website. We encourage everyone to like and follow us on social media. If you want to contribute your story, pictures, video, or other content related to the activities of the union, email us at UICUnitedFaculty@gmail.com. With your support, we are making UIC an even better place to work and learn!
