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Bargaining Blog 6/16/26

On Tuesday, June 16, the bargaining committee met for a fifth time with management. The session consisted largely of a discussion on librarian and staff promotion. It began with management providing a lengthy counterproposal on promotions; this was followed by a lengthy discussion among the bargaining committee in caucus. We then reconvened with management to clarify certain points. Here followed another, briefer caucus and then, upon having everyone in the room again, some tentative agreements were made. Management did not respond to our proposals on AI, professional development, or several outstanding non-economic proposals. Management’s counterproposal for librarian promotions was largely a rejection of our proposal in favor of the language in the current contract, with some minor changes and one major regression. Management maintains that librarian promotion is working well, given that 19 librarians have been promoted; what they neglected to mention was that nine librarians have be...
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Bargaining Blog 6/4/2026

 On Thursday June 4, we had our fourth bargaining session with management. This was a big one; we introduced two new major proposals and we came to 2 new Tentative Agreements (TAs).  Our TAs for this session covered: Discipline - Represented workers will now be informed of their right to have a union representative present at discipline-related meetings. Open Positions - If a represented worker’s position is reclassified, the resulting role does not need to be posted and that employee does not need to apply for their own job. If a vacancy occurs and Northwestern decides to fill that open position, the job will be posted and a search will be conducted. We began the session by presenting counterproposals on nondiscrimination, artificial intelligence, layoffs and furloughs, and flexible work arrangements.  Then, we presented two proposals that the bargaining committee has been working on for a long time. The first of these deals with librarian and staff job classification an...
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Bargaining Blog 5.19.26

 On Tuesday May 19, we had our third bargaining session with management. While we made significant movement towards agreement on some proposals, we continue to disagree on others. We are still working on the non-economic proposals presented during our first and second bargaining sessions. In this session, we had multiple counterproposals to present on management rights, stewards, artificial intelligence, discipline, and open positions. Management rights include adding titles to the list of represented workers covered by the contract and defining who can do bargaining unit work and when. We are still redeveloping our proposals on equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination and will counter at our next session, on June 4. After our initial presentation, each side went into caucus for a very, very long time… Half an hour before bargaining was due to end, management returned and hastily presented their counterproposals. They countered on flexible work strategies, open positions...
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Bargaining Blog 5.5.26

On Tuesday, May 5, we had our second bargaining session which resulted in our first Tentative Agreements (TAs)! As a reminder, a TA means that we have reached a consensus on proposals between the NULWU bargaining committee and the NU Administration; but these are not officially approved until after our union members vote on and ratify our contract. Our TAs for this session covered: Union Rights - we ensured that the Union can utilize the Forum Room for meetings  Grievance and Arbitration - if more than one Represented Worker files on the same issue simultaneously, we can now expedite the grievance process  Our bargaining session began with NU Administration responding to the 12 proposals we introduced at our first session on April 14. They provided five counter-proposals to our original twelve, two of which resulted in our TAs listed above. Although they rejected the other seven of our original proposals, they did seem willing to engage in further conversation around these iss...
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Bargaining blog 4/15/2026: Time for a second contract!

On Tuesday, we had our first bargaining session for our second contract! Before we presented our first set of proposals to the University, we discussed ground rules. As we did for our first contract, we agreed to open bargaining, meaning union members who are not on the bargaining committee can attend bargaining sessions on their lunch breaks or PTO. Having members attend bargaining sessions signals to the University that members care about the issues being discussed. Members can also share testimonials on how the issues at hand affect them. This will become especially important when we get to economic proposals further down the road, so stay tuned! We also agreed that the Union can share information about bargaining sessions publicly, like on this blog and on social media! This will help us share updates about our bargaining sessions for our bargaining unit, the campus community, and the general public. After introductions, we shared our first set of non-economic proposals, or proposa...
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Blog 8/19/23

It’s been a long time coming! We have a contract! On Thursday, 91% of our union membership voted to ratify our first contract!!! We are thrilled to be here after three years of organizing. The contract has many wins that meet our bargaining priorities: Raises Across the Board Protect Our Benefits Path to Promotion Invest in Our Development Transparency, Equity, and a Voice Wins include: Raises for everyone! The first year everyone will get a 3.75% raise OR the minimum salary of their rank, whichever is higher. We will get 3% raises in Years 2 and 3 of the contract Non-librarians will be eligible for longevity raises based on their years of service: 1% at 5 years, 1.5% at 10 years, 2% at 15 years, and 2.5% at 20 years. Librarian rank and promotion! We will have three ranks for librarians: Assistant, Associate, and Senior. The ranks will have salary minimums the first year of $70k for Assistant, $80k for Associate, and $90k for Senior. Librarians will start applying for promotion in the...
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Bargaining Blog 7.31.23

We are very happy to announce that we have come to a tentative agreement on our first contract! Since our last bargaining session, we reached an agreement on the two remaining proposals, Compensation and Librarian Promotion.  For Compensation, we agreed that: Our salary floors for each position will be increased by at least 5% for every title, with some above 20%! For the first year of the contract, everyone will either receive a 3.75% increase, or the new salary floor, whichever is greater. Everyone will receive a 3% increase for the second and third years of the contract Non-librarian staff will receive percentage-based longevity raises at 5, 10, 15 and 20 years  For Librarian Promotion, we agreed that: Entry-level librarians will start at Assistant Librarian, and can get promoted to Associate Librarian after 5 years, and Senior Librarian 5 years after that We are promoted based on job performance, research and scholarly contributions, and service to the profession and unive...
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