June 27, 2024

“Considering that individuals can spend over 90,000 hours of their lives in their work environment, ensuring we have an institution that complies with OSHA policies, buildings that are safe, and employees who are trained and supported, is the minimum acceptable standard at Illinois State University.” Testimonial on Health and Safety authored by Dr. Alicia Wodika, Dr. Jacqueline Lanier, and Dr. Jennifer Peterson of the Department of Health Sciences, ISU

Today’s session began with Admin Spokesperson Mark Bennett stating that the ball was in their court to respond to our proposals from June 5. Admin’s team presented counters for Grievance and Arbitration, Non-Discrimination, Gender Expression and Transition, and Disability Accommodation. They also presented a packet counter on Discipline, Union Rights and Identification of Union Representatives, and Personnel Records. 

In these proposals, the admin showed that their overriding concern is to avoid measures that limit their power; in their words, they do not want their “hands tied.” Regarding Personnel Records, Bennett stated: “We don’t agree to limit the types of records we may be able to keep. Nor are we willing to agree to where they are held - we don’t believe the law requires us to do that, or that it is effective if we were limited with what we can hold.“ Our members have stated that this is problematic, because they don’t know what items are included in their file that might be used in promotion or disciplinary settings.  

Bennett noted that, while he personally thought Gender Expression and Transition (GE+T) to be important, he argued that it would be cumbersome to ISU’s Human Resources if we had a separate contract clause. Instead, he argued that GE+T should be folded into a general Non-Discrimination proposal. However, many of our UFISU observers felt that protecting the gender rights of faculty with specific language outweighed bureaucratic convenience, and some of the admin’s examples of bureaucratic hassle seemed far-fetched. For example, Bennett cited the example of an unnamed individual (possibly not even a faculty member) who attempted to change their name on University records to Larry Dietz (former ISU President). Table Team member Derek Sparby offered a pointed rebuke of the admin’s refusal to stand up for trans and queer faculty.

In Union Rights, the admin still refuses to offer us time during new faculty orientation to talk about UFISU’s work and offer colleagues a chance to join as members. This refusal is problematic because a new employee might go weeks or longer before they find out that we are a unionized campus. However, the admin did agree to let us contact faculty using their work emails. While we have used this system in the past for critical updates, we were concerned the admin could attempt to block our communications.

We called a short caucus to discuss questions and to revise proposals. When we returned, we countered the Union Rights and ID of Union Representation proposal, and also presented a counter on Health and Safety, and Facilities. UFISU Table Team member Keith Pluymers read testimonials on Health and Safety from members in the Department of Health Sciences.

Caucus Discussions

Another caucus was called over the lunch hour, where bargaining members worked on a list of additional questions from the morning about the way the Admin team addressed our proposals. The table team worked on a number of counter proposals. 

“They have shown their hand that they don’t care about us as humans, just as employees to bring in revenue. They have a very different definition of ‘significant movement’ than we do.Their obsession with tax dollars and how it is spent is hard to hear, especially when the tax dollars spent on the administration’s lawyer is way more than a pre-tenure faculty’s 5 years of pay, including benefits. This seems to be foretelling of what we will get to later in Economics.” Dr. Micheal Rowley, Family and Consumer Sciences

Upon return, Admin countered the Union Rights + ID of Union Representative proposal, noting that UFISU can conduct meetings on University premises during non-work hours (but what that means is challenging - whose non-work hours? When are these?), and that we are still not allowed to meet with new members during orientation time. 

After more caucusing, UFISU presented counters on Personnel Records, and Gender Expression and Transition, supported by a letter from ISU’s Queer Coalition. This letter describes their unanimous support that employees can express their gender identities without fear of consequences,  and that ISU would develop a transparent process to change preferred names in all ISU systems, would not share information about gender or transition without permission from the employee, and would create a task force to examine and suggest revisions to ISU policies, processes, and procedures. This letter also states that employees should be able to use the restroom that matches their gender identity, that ISU should create at least one all-gender restroom per building, and that ISU should maintain a map of all-gender restrooms on campus. 

We also presented counters on Academic Freedom, Intellectual Property, and Shared Governance. Overall, the all-day session was a marathon, with multiple caucuses, punctuated by passing of proposals and counter-proposals across the table. But there were moments of levity. For example, when the teams resumed after the final caucus, Table Team member Debbie Shelden observed that bargaining began four months earlier, sparking the following exchange between Ashley Farmer and Bennett.

Ashley: “Are we ready?  First, it’s our 4 month anniversary!  You can send flowers to my office.”

MB: “Let’s hope we don’t have an annual or first year.  What is the gift?”

Ashley: “TA’s? [tentative agreements]” 

MB: “I guess this is why I’ve always had trouble in my relationships.” 

Join us for our next session: Wednesday, July 10, from 9AM-1PM in the Alumni Center.  Come see what proposals we are working on and how we describe our intentions and the needs of our members, and participate in discussion on how we can move forward towards agreements that support our members. Come help us build a better community for our members!