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Bargaining Blog 8/27/26

We met for another bargaining session on Thursday, August 27, this time starting with the University’s counters. We asked bargaining unit members to attend again, and 24 people, in addition to the bargaining committee members present, came to show support. A showing like this tells management that we care and we’re serious about our proposals. Thanks to all who came on PTO! The University began by presenting their counters to all outstanding proposals. We’re reaching the end of bargaining, but there was still a lot to discuss. Below is a review by topic. Contract Length: They accepted language around a three year contract rather than the five years they initially proposed. Cost of Living, Insurance Caps, and Management Rights: They requested we withdraw our changes to the management rights clause and our proposals for Cost of Living Adjustment (CoLA) and insurance caps. We know these issues are important to staff, but after some back and forth, we agreed to this and decided to focus on...
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Bargaining Blog 8.25.26

On Tuesday, we had our second to last bargaining session before the expiration of our contract at the end of the month, and staff from all across the library showed up in force. 27 people took their lunch hour and/or PTO to show up wearing their "NO 0" buttons and use their presence to demonstrate to the University how much these negotiations matter and how invested they are in the outcome. Altogether, including added members of the bargaining committee, 40 members of the bargaining unit were represented. That's nearly half of us! This session, we presented our counters and started off with tentative agreements on New or Changed Classifications, Artificial Intelligence, and Incidental Sick Time and Extended Sick Time.  Compensation Our counter proposals led with Compensation. Our Union Representative, Frank, underlined the importance of these issues to us, alluding to all the people in the room. To really impress that point upon them, two testimonials were given. These te...
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Bargaining Blog 8/13/26

We had another bargaining session with management on Thursday, August 13. Our side presented first, offering a comprehensive packet of responses to their proposals and counterproposals. We came to tentative agreements on proposals related to holidays worked, bereavement leave, and family neonatal intensive care leave. We withdrew three of our language proposals related to defining emergencies, specifying positions within the bargaining unit, and the number of stewards able to attend grievance arbitrations; movement on these proposals has stalled and we think it’s important to focus our efforts on other proposals.    We then presented counterproposals on professional development, job classification, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and compensation, including cost of living adjustment (COLA) and caps on insurance premiums. Management asked a few clarifying questions during the presentations, and then we broke into caucus. We spent time during the caucus working on counterproposals...
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Bargaining Blog 7/30/26

 We had another bargaining session with management on Thursday, July 30. The session began with them asking us questions on our parental leave proposal. They then caucused for over two hours.  Afterwards, with only an hour left in the session, they came back and hastily presented counterproposals on librarian faculty promotion, bereavement, holidays, neonatal intensive care leave, and compensation. They also presented a proposal to clarify some language in our existing extended sick time article, as well as a new proposal on job classifications for staff. While some of these proposals are reasonable, we continue to disagree on major points in others.  For example, they did not present a counterproposal on staff promotion, opting instead to introduce a separate proposal on new or changed classifications. This proposal fails to take into account the high qualifications of many people in staff positions throughout the Libraries. It is particularly frustrating in light of how...
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Bargaining Blog 7/8/26

We met with management on Wednesday, July 8th for bargaining. The session began with management responding to our previous proposals on AI, bargaining unit work, steward time, and job titles in the union. We’ve been going back and forth on a couple of these, and they’ve rejected them yet again. We then presented our counterproposals for staff and faculty promotions, starting with re-introducing the staff promotion proposal. We stated our goals for the proposal, and one by one, the present members of the bargaining committee read the testimonials sent to us by staff, with one staff member coming in person on PTO to read their own. The testimonials were impactful and illustrated that there is a widespread need for staff promotion opportunities across the Libraries. We greatly appreciate everyone for taking time and energy to write and share their experiences with us. We also presented our revised counterproposal for faculty promotion, making slight changes in response to comments from ma...
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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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