NULWU blog

Today was our first bargaining session after we shared economic proposals in January! These are the proposals that may cost the university money, such as wages, benefits, promotions, and professional development. Our last blog post detailed our economic bargaining priorities. Economics is an exciting step in the process, because it means we’re heading into the final phase of contract negotiations. It also means that we’ve successfully come to tentative agreements with the university on most of our non-economic proposals. We are still negotiating with the university on layoffs and COPE deductions, but we hope to settle those issues soon. We’ll be honest with you, this bargaining session was disappointing, in part because the university refused to engage with our proposals on issues that we know are important to our members, such as path to promotion, rewarding longevity, making benefits for staff and librarians more similar, and flexible work strategies. Their counter to our wage propo...

  We’re back! It’s been a while since our last post, but we have a good reason for our radio silence. Since our last meeting with the University in November we have been hard at work on preparing for the economic phase of bargaining. The good news is that this work has paid off (we hope literally) and on January 17, we delivered our package of economic proposals to the University bargaining team! First, we counterproposed on two outstanding non-economic proposals: Union Membership and Dues: we continue to negotiate over whether the University will process deductions when employees have opted to contribute to COPE, which is SEIU’s political action committee. COPE funds support legislative efforts to improve workers’ rights in Illinois and nationally. Again, we consider an elective deduction of this sort to be no more difficult to process than those the University already processes for payroll deductions for transit cards, parking passes, or the NU Cares fund. Furloughs and Layoffs: ...

  This session brings us closer to wrapping up our non-economic proposals! We are excited to move on to the next phase of bargaining very soon. In this most recent session, we counterproposed on: Union Membership and Dues: we continue to negotiate over whether the University will process deductions when employees have opted to contribute to COPE, which is SEIU’s political action committee. COPE funds support legislative efforts to improve workers’ rights in Illinois and nationally. We consider an elective deduction of this sort to be no more difficult to process than those the University already processes for payroll deductions for transit cards, parking passes, or the NU Cares fund. Furloughs and Layoffs: we continue to negotiate over the amount of notice required for furloughs or layoffs. We strongly feel that represented workers deserve more than a few days notice when furloughs or layoffs are planned. The union would also like more notice so that we have time to negotiate with ...

Happy anniversary NULWU! October 12 was the one-year anniversary of our march on the provost’s office to deliver our union petition. We have come so far since then: announcing our intent to unionize, our election win, and now we’re a union bargaining at the table with the University! What is the best way to celebrate our anniversary? Negotiating a contract!   This session we negotiated over three proposals: Union Membership & Dues, Subcontracting, and Layoffs. We were able to come to a Tentative Agreement (TA) on Subcontracting. We appreciate that the university agreed to not displace any bargaining unit staff members with contract workers. We also TA’d on Management Rights, a mandatory subject of bargaining that affirms the university has the right to operate and manage the university as long as that does not conflict with the Collective Bargaining Agreement.    We made a lot of progress on Union Membership & Dues. One point we’re still negotiating on is how th...

Last week, the NULWU bargaining committee delivered a welcome letter and local Evanston treats to the new Dean of Libraries, Xuemao Wang, inviting him to attend this week’s bargaining session and meet the committee. We are happy to report that Dean Wang accepted our invitation and attended the opening of Thursday’s bargaining session, providing some remarks before members of the bargaining committee introduced themselves. While he did not stay for the actual bargaining session, we thank Dean Wang for his time and attention and look forward to working with him this academic year as he settles into his role at the Libraries and University. We then announced tentative agreements on three clauses: No Strikes, No Lockout; Severability; and Equal Employment Opportunity Policies. We are especially excited to report the positive progress and tentative agreement on the No Strikes, No Lockout clause which will allow our members to demonstrate support for other labor groups on campus during non-w...

The NULWU bargaining team, along with a representative from SEIU Local 73, had another bargaining session with management on 8/30/2022. We presented four counterproposals to the university team: Union Membership Equal Employment, Opportunity, and Non-Discrimination No Strike No Lockout Layoffs and Furloughs The University bargaining team countered these proposals and added a proposal on Severability that had been overlooked in past sessions. No tentative agreements were reached during this session. We continued to have a lively dialogue over No Strike No Lockout. While we agree that during the terms of the contract Represented Workers will not strike or engage in activities that amount to a stoppage of work, the issue of whether Represented Workers can demonstrate support for other labor groups on campus during non-work hours, such as a lunch break or after work, is still up in the air. We have been advocating for our right to engage in this activity, because we feel very strongly abou...

The NULWU bargaining team, along with representatives from SEIU Local 73, had another bargaining session with management yesterday. We are excited to report that we made progress on several non-economic proposals, coming to tentative agreements (TAs) on the following: Hours of Work/Overtime - in this article, we were able to convince the University to allow time and a half pay for staff who due to an emergency, may be required to work beyond the 40 hour work week at service points. Previously these staff were directed to flex their time instead of being paid for the additional hours of work. This is important for staff at our service points, who may have no choice but to work beyond their scheduled shift in order to maintain library operations and services.  Open Positions - we negotiated that they will be required to give an initial interview to qualified members of the bargaining unit. If the unit member is not hired for the position, they will now have an opportunity to meet wit...