November 19, 2024
“We are making a formal request for mediation. It is not enough for our members right now. They are increasingly frustrated, and this is our 31st session in over 265 days. We are not comfortable moving forward without a full proposal.” Dr. Ashley Farmer, Co-Lead Negotiator, UFISU
The administration team opened with responses on Grievance and Nondiscrimination. The admin team is holding on to their belief that we should not be able to grieve if the university fails to follow past practices in the application of policies. Mark Bennett, their lead negotiator, raised concerns about how an arbitrator or the Union could know the intent of the university’s policies. He stated they don’t believe we should be able to grieve policies the faculty have no part in creating. Perhaps Bennett is confused, given faculty play an active role in shaping policy via shared government. We have historically had a role in shaping the policy of the institution.
Administration also continues to hold on to its version of Nondiscrimination. The admin team doesn’t believe the Union should be able to file a grievance if systemic discrimination against our members is discovered. Bennett believes we have multiple avenues to pursue resolution for these issues, even after we raised concerns. They also believe the Nondiscrimination article addresses the concerns addressed in our Name Changes proposal. They also did not accept the language that we wrote in grievance for us to agree to pull our Workplace Bullying/Professional Ethics proposal. Our co-lead negotiator, Dr. Ashley Farmer, noted that this means we will no longer retract our Name Changes and Workplace Bullying/Professional Ethics proposals.
Next, they moved on to a response on Disability Accommodations. Bennett stated that they moved substantially on the proposal. He also stated this is far more than any other UPI chapter or other union in the state of Illinois has in their agreement. They acknowledge how important this is to our members. They changed their language from physical or mental impairment to disability. We see this as a win because their language had been outdated and offensive to many of our members. Despite our movement last week to allow for individualized timelines for accommodation decisions and implementation, they restated their belief that our proposal hinders the interactive process and does not take into account the many variables that can impact time to implementation. We did raise the issue that our language accounted for factors beyond the university’s control. They also acknowledged that OEOA has been understaffed and ineffective in the past, but note that has been corrected and it will function better in the future. We are not in agreement on how generous they believe their response is for our disabled members.
They rejected the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) about an advisory panel to proactively address disability issues on campus and an annual report about the university’s efforts in this arena. They noted this goes beyond our unit. They are unwilling to respond given it is a permissive subject of bargaining and that it does have a broader reach than our members. We believe this is no different than negotiating for locks and facilities, where we are negotiating for the common good.
Bennett said they continue to work on their Workload proposal. We responded to but did not provide a counter to their Milner proposal. We are holding that any attempt to separate Milner faculty from the faculty workload article is unacceptable. We have concerns that this is an effort to deskill and deprofessionalize the contributions of Milner faculty. We hold that the library is an essential part of the university and it requires library faculty for its effective administration. Dr. Farmer noted that all departments on campus have things that make them unique, and we don’t write language specific to each of those conditions. She emphasized that we want Milner to be included in our Workload proposal instead of being separated out. Bennett and the admin team are caught up on the fact that Milner faculty do not teach or teach via overload unlike the rest of the faculty for whom teaching is the largest portion of their responsibilities. They did acknowledge that they believe Milner faculty are faculty, but maintain that they are not teaching faculty making it necessary to address them separately.
We returned from caucus without a counter proposal, but instead we requested mediation. Ashley noted our frustration with their responses to our proposals. She noted we refuse to bargain away rights. Our members still have not heard about crucial economic issues that affect our working conditions and our students’ learning conditions. She stated that our members are ready to go to mediation and requested that the administration team join us in our request for mediation. The Table Team had the mediation request ready to go and had already located an available arbitrator for several of our upcoming bargaining sessions. Unsurprisingly, Bennett tried to say we are refusing to bargain and was full of outrage at our request. Ashley restated that we plan to keep bargaining and try to make movement on some of the proposals on the table and emphatically stated we are still committed to bargaining. We reiterated that we are responding to what our members wanted by placing the request for mediation and their desire to see economic proposals. Bennett continues his hypocritical stance harping on our refusal to address management rights until we see an economic proposal while still refusing to produce an economical proposal. We continue to have concerns that their management rights proposal will weaken shared governance. We emphasized that we are still willing to discuss several proposals on the table. Ashley did a masterful job shutting down Bennett’s efforts to bait us into an unfair labor practice. It was clear that Bennett was rattled by our request and Ashley’s response.