NULWU blog

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...

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...

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...

 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...