I’m keeping up the best I can here, but between you two are keeping me pretty busy! Joyce, I have now see your April USC 2013 report, which we just received from the senate office, and I see it confirms that the USC has NOT endorsed the specifics in the IGPA proposal. I am glad too see that but sorry to see President Easter HAS endorsed the proposal, including the 2 % reduction of pay that will be required to increase our contributions to the system. This is not an attack, just a disagreement with his position, and I believe it is a disagreement is in the interests of our faculty. I’d like always to be careful, Nick, but I am not sure exactly what else to call it when 2% of our salary would be deducted to cover the increased contribution required because the state did not meet their obligations to us.

“2. The Conference deliberated about whether to endorse the April 9, 2013 letter signed by the public university presidents and chancellors supporting the revised IGPA 6-point pension plan. Last year, the Conference wrote a letter outlining basic principles for acceptable pension reform, and endorsed the spring 2012 version of the IGPA proposal (attached as addendum). Because the matter required more careful thought and further information about the revised IGPA proposal, we postponed this decision. (The revised IGPA proposal may be found here: http://igpa.uillinois.edu/pensions).”

USC’s 2012 position on pension reform was strong and I am proud of it. That’s why I copied it for you here,

USC has taken no position on the latest IGPA proposal. Please don’t mix the two.

I also think that union advocates need to be careful about complaining about “2% reductions in pay.”

There are two possibilities here: It could be that the report is wrong and USC never did support the IGPA’s specific proposals, only the general principles distributed last spring. In that case President Easter endorsed the proposals without USC support. He is entitled to that because as you know, all consultation is strictly advisory. Or it could be that the report is right. The group did support the IGPA proposals but has now changed its mind and will not support the 2 % reduction in pay and the reduction in future retirement income (the COLA cuts). In any case, if the President’s public support of these cuts and transfer of the pension burden to the university reflects his consultation with USC over the past year that might return us to your own question: Is that good representation of faculty interests? A union would be part of the lobbying that has fought cuts in benefits owed to us by the state and would be a part of any future negotiations regarding our benefits.

Joyce

Dear Joyce,
We have provided answers to most of this several times before. However, I will try to do so again here.

As you know, the claim that signatures on the statement of purpose may be used as legal proof of support for collective bargaining continues to be repeated, despite the fact that this is absolutely impossible. So, yes, a number of those in opposition, including the Provost of the University and its Chief legal counsel, have implied that this is, in effect, a card campaign. When this distortion is made over and over, despite documentation to the contrary, one begins to wonder where ignorance of the process ends and a conscious effort to mislead faculty begins. Such efforts may be designed to discourage faculty from even expressing an opinion on this question, but if they are the effort is not working.

We acknowledge that you do not share our goal of an academic union for faculty, and you do not like how we are going about it. In turn, we ask you to recognize that the activity we are engaged in is legitimate and legal and that we are scrupulously following a pattern recognized in Illinois law, one that was used in recent union efforts at UIC, the U of Oregon, and elsewhere. It sometimes seems that objections to our conversations with colleagues have less to do with our own campus union and its methods and more with labor law, government policy, and democratic process.

We are using faculty signatures to judge opinion regarding collective bargaining. I should note that we offer any faculty member who prefers it the option to sign the mission statement confidentially. In some departments, there is clearly fear of retribution, especially among untenured colleagues or those awaiting promotion to full.
Since conversations “behind closed doors” have been invoked by those in opposition to convey a sense of intrigue, I should explain that. We have no reason to close the door. We are often asked to do so, however, apparently out of fear. It saddens us that some colleagues feel they cannot express their opinions openly,but we understand this, given the campaign against the union by some faculty and administrators.

Faculty organizers normally come from outside the department, so they are not in a position to intimidate faculty. Obviously, administrators and senior, well-connected anti-union faculty are. Although campus policy does not require us to do so, we ask colleagues for private email addresses and thus avoid using university email whenever possible.

Regarding claims of harassment: We trust our colleagues to tell us if they don’t want to talk. As we’ve said repeatedly, if someone says they are not interested in discussing collective bargaining, we leave and make a note not to contact them again. The only situation in which an organizer might return more than once is if a colleague expresses no opinion and wants time to think about the question. The claim of harassment is easy to make and more difficult to document. For this reason, we have not raised it, even in those cases where organizers have been verbally abused or accosted while engaged in a perfectly legal activity. For some faculty, a knock on the door and a simple question might be viewed as harassment, though clearly it is not. Such claims of harassment can easily become another way to discourage the organizing activity and is perhaps it is being used this way in some cases.

As to the expected duration of the organizing activity, we are engaged in two thousand conversations across campus, listening to faculty concerns and understanding faculty issues, from pay and benefits to health and safety. These conversations are extensive because we want to know what the entire faculty thinks about critical issues, not just the Senate. We’ll continue listening to and talking about these concerns as long as the university is a space for public, collegial discourse.

The decision as to whether or not to proceed to a card drive will be made when we have completed our assessment of the faculty.

Very best,

Jim Barrett