Academic Unions

Keith Nyquist

The dues are determined by the union and may be different for each group. Please contact a union representative for additional information.

It means that the union (UFA) negotiates the wages, hours and terms and conditions of your employment collectively. You may no longer negotiate those matters with university administrators (e.g., your department head, dean, etc.) on your own behalf.

The amount of union dues is set exclusively by the union. The withholding from payroll of union dues and/or fair share fees is a matter that will be addressed in collective bargaining negotiations.

No, you cannot as long as you are in a covered position. While not all employees may wish to be represented by a union, the university generally is unable to remove an employee in a covered position from the certified bargaining unit.

At least 50 percent plus one of the tenured and tenure-track faculty members at NIU signed cards, papers or petitions that authorized UFA to be their exclusive representative for the purpose of negotiating salaries and terms and conditions of employment.

No. Illinois labor law assumes you read and understood a union authorization card, paper or petition that you signed, and revoking your signature after the union has been certified will not impact the Labor Board's June 9, 2016 ruling.

Yes. Because a majority of tenured and tenure-track faculty signed cards, papers or petitions in support of the union, all tenured and tenure-track faculty in covered positions are represented by United Faculty Alliance. All faculty members in the bargaining unit are subject to the wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment negotiated by the union on their behalf.

Questions regarding membership dues should be directed to the union.

As part of its duty to maintain the status quo concerning matters that are a mandatory subject of bargaining, the university and its colleges and departments will continue to follow existing policies and procedures with respect to matters that directly concern wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment during the period of negotiations. For example, under existing policy, units have the ability to continue providing competitive counter-offers and promotions.

The faculty/staff grievance procedure remains in place notwithstanding any ongoing collective bargaining negotiations.

No. Illinois law allows a union to be selected as collective bargaining representative without an election through a "card check" procedure, which involves collecting signatures from a majority of employees in the proposed bargaining unit and submitting the signed cards, paper, or petitions to the Illinois Educational Labor Board (IELRB) to establish that a majority of the employees want the union to represent them. A majority is defined as 50 percent plus 1 of the employees in the proposed bargaining unit.

Collective bargaining negotiations are conducted exclusively through representatives appointed by the union to its team and by the university to its team.

In general, individuals who hold tenured and tenure-track positions at the university (except in the College of Law) totaling a 51 percent or greater FTE are in the unit. Positions with the following titles are included in the bargaining unit: Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor.

To be full-time, an Instructor must have received an appointment of 1.00 FTE. Under UPI Agreement Section 4.1 (b) ("Assignment of Duties"), the workload of a full-time Instructor is twelve (12) credit hours per semester, plus or minus one.

On June 9, 2016, the IELRB certified the United Faculty Alliance, IFT-AFT, AAUP, as the union representing tenured and tenure-track faculty at NIU.

Excluded from the unit are faculty whose appointments are adjunct, part-time (less than 51 percent FTE) and all non-tenure-track faculty, all faculty of the College of Law, and anyone who is deemed to be a supervisory, managerial, confidential, or short-term employee as those terms are defined under the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act.

Yes. The certification does not preclude the university from continuing the practice of promoting faculty through the ranks, including providing a promotional salary increase associated with the new rank. The University is required to maintain the status quo regarding wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment during the period the collective bargaining is being negotiated and promotional salary increases are included in the status quo.

Only the College of Law faculty are excluded from the UFA bargaining unit; all other colleges are covered.

Check with your college-level human resources administrator. For further information, you may contact Human Resource Services, specifically Marlene Bryant atmbryant@niu.edu.

The Instructor's appointment percentage as referenced in his/her executed offer and appointment letter is the official determinant of bargaining unit status.

The UPI Agreement is applicable only to members of the UPI bargaining unit. To be included in the bargaining unit, an Instructor's appointment must be and remain 50 percent FTE or greater. However, under UPI Agreement Section 3.8 (a) ("Break in Service"), an Instructor who previously was included in the bargaining unit, but then receives an appointment of less than 50 percent FTE, will maintain his/her years of service and seniority on the UPI roster for up to 4 consecutive academic semesters even though he/she is no longer included in the bargaining unit.

Not until the issue is negotiated with the union. Because tenured and tenure-track faculty have chosen to unionize, salary increases must be negotiated with the union along with other terms and conditions of employment. Applying any university salary increment program to employees in a bargaining unit would constitute a unilateral change that the university is prohibited from doing once a union has been certified as collective bargaining representative.

NIU and UPI negotiators are meeting regularly and making progress. It isn't possible to predict when negotiations will conclude.

Estimating the period of time it will take to negotiate the first UFA tenured faculty union agreement would be pure conjecture.

The management team is in formation, and it is expected that chairs will be included as recommended by the college deans.

Section 7.1 of the UPI Agreement requires that the annual meeting be conducted by January 31 for the purposes of:

• Discussion of required and optional evaluation materials to be used for evaluation;
• Procedures to be employed for obtaining optional evaluation materials;
• Relative weights to be given to evaluation materials and expectations of performance;
• Jointly developing any "other" performance criteria that will be utilized for the evaluation that would be in addition to the required criteria shown in Sections 7.2 (a) through (f) of the UPI Agreement; and
• Use of any of the "optional" evaluation materials discussed in Section 7.6 of the UPI Agreement; and Discussion of whether or not the Instructors and Department Chair "jointly agree" to the use of unsigned student comments as a component of the "optional" evaluation materials, as provided in Section 7.7 ("Qualitative Student Comments") of the UPI Agreement.

No. The right to the presence of a union representative is related to individual disciplinary investigations and/or grievance meetings. The annual meeting is a departmental business meeting.

Further questions should be addressed to the director of Academic Employee and Labor Relations, NIU Human Resource Services. Members of the bargaining unit may also contact their union representatives.

It is best to first inform their dean's office about the need to contact UPI, and then, as appropriate, contact Marlene Bryant at mbryant@niu.edu in Academic Employee and Labor Relations, either directly or through the dean's office, to discuss any UPI representation or contract related questions. Marlene Bryant can then manage any necessary communication with UPI, while keeping the chairs, deans' offices and Provost's Office informed.