Bargaining Session #13 Recap: We Won’t Celebrate the Status Quo

We met with management and the mediator for our second mediated session and 13th session overall last Tuesday, September 29. Our next session is very soon: we will meet with management for the 14th time this Friday, October 2nd from 1-5 PM. While we will still be on Zoom to accommodate the remote mediator, we will meet in SSB Conference rooms B-C for those who wish to discuss, ask questions, and be in physical community with one another.

Before the session, we had passed a package of TT and NTT articles including Article XI. Governance, Article XV. Discipline and Dismissal, Article XVIII. Grievance and Arbitration, and the side letter on Tenure Discipline Taskforce.

Over half of our time was spent in separate caucus rooms again while management looked over our most recent batch of proposals. During the session, both sides tentatively agreed to:

• The side letter on the creation of a Tenure Discipline Taskforce, and
• Our proposals for Discipline and Dismissal (both TT and NTT) without the list of management-proposed NTT disciplinary actions short of suspension that were worse than actual suspension. Additionally, we won the inclusion of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) and the Environmental Health and Safety Office (EHSO) in the list of entities that must share any information gathered during an investigation of a bargaining unit member.
  Before taking anything off the table, however, we will wait to see management’s accurately written and color-coded counterproposals.

Management also returned a counterproposal on Governance. But the biggest news out of this session came in Grievance and Arbitration where, as a response to the pressure we've applied to management through our organizing, management abandoned their attempted clawback of “grievant” vs “union.” (For a reminder of why this was at issue, see our YouTube recap from August with one of our bargaining co-chairs.)

This result should be recognized for what it is: a return to the original, status quo language. And we won’t celebrate the status quo.

Their approach to Grievance mirrors how they are bargaining the whole contract: unserious. Management could have agreed to this article when presented with it in April. Instead, they decided to waste our time and try to gut our contractual rights piece by piece. With their attempted clawbacks, management continues trying to position us in a fight to return to status quo language: a backwards, stagnant position that does not account for current circumstances let alone consider the future. There is no leadership in that positioning.

We are fighting for a contract that is forward-looking and proactive, one that solves current problems and anticipates future issues. We cannot look backward.

Join us for Session 14, our second bargaining session of the week, on Friday, October 2 from 1-5 PM on Zoom and in Student Services Building (SSB) Conference rooms B-C. Come to the session and bring a colleague!

Reminders:

• Use a UICUF background or Zoom profile pic to show solidarity.
• Add “UICUF” to your name once in the room.