Students and professors at University of Illinois at Springfield could soon
experience campus life without the help of secretaries, food service workers,
and janitors, if mediation between their union and UIS administration fails
to reach a satisfactory settlement.
Members of the UIS chapter of University Professionals of Illinois Local 4100 voted unanimously Monday night to serve the administration with an official “intent to strike” notice. Filed Wednesday, it gives the university at least 10 days to reach an agreement before the staff can walk out.
Union officials are optimistic a settlement can be reached, but that they want to have a full range of options when they return to the negotiating table with federal mediators on Nov. 4, says Dave Kamper, field representative of UPI’s umbrella organization, the Illinois Federation of Teachers.
“We’re still operating on the presumption that we can reach an agreement in good faith. That’s been our goal all along,” he says. “We’re not using this as a way to circumvent the mediation process . . . . We’re just trying to make sure we have more arrows in our quiver when we sit down to talk.”
Cheryl Peck, UIS’s director of public relations, declined to comment because the letter hasn’t yet reached the university. But she says Wesley Weisenburn, UIS’s assistant vice-president for human resources, believed progress was made during the Oct. 21 federal mediation session.
“He thought it went very well and so did the mediator,” Peck says.
But UPI chapter president Normajean Niebur wasn’t happy with the first mediation session. “It was a travesty. We didn’t get anything,” she says. “We got an offer so ridiculous it made you want to cry.”
UPI represents about 150 employees, making it the largest union on campus. It includes the maintenance and clerical staff, kitchen workers, and audio-visual technicians — in general, the lowest paid personnel.
“We have people in the bargaining unit on food stamps, living in Section 8 housing,” Neibur says.
The union members have been working without a contract since Aug. 28, but their complaints date back to 1995, when the U. of I. system absorbed the school once known as Sangamon State University.
That’s when “step raises,” or automatic annual pay increases, vanished for most union members, UPI officials say. Last year, after federal mediation and their first-ever “intent to strike” letter, UPI members settled for a 2.8 percent raise. Other campus employees got only a 2.75 percent raise, but UPI was still dissatisfied with their deal.
For one thing, the other employees had been receiving 2.5 percent annual raises. For another, the other employees were getting more actual pay.
“If you’re making $160,000 a year, 2.75 percent is a lot of money. But when you’re barely making $30,000, 2.8 percent is not a lot,” Niebur says.
Furthermore, the raise was almost immediately swallowed up by a cost increase for health insurance.
In fact, Kamper estimates that these lower-level employees have suffered a 10 percent net decrease in take-home pay over the past five years. “That’s after you figure in inflation and health insurance,” he says. Union employees also complain of increased fees for parking and gym use, plus the loss of discounts on cafeteria meals.
Meanwhile, these UIS employees are paid significantly less than their counterparts on campuses in Chicago and Urbana-Champaign. For example, a secretary III in Springfield has a pay range of $9.41 to $17.15 per hour, while the same job at UIUC earns $12.41 to $18.37, according to U. of I. Web sites.
These employees also say their workloads have increased. Secretaries in particular complain that Banner software, implemented at the beginning of the school year throughout the U. of I. system, has made routine computer tasks more difficult. The system performed so slowly during registration, U. of I. was forced to waive late-registration fees, according to a Sept. 22 story in the UIS Journal.
The same article cited an e-mail to students from UIS Chancellor Richard Ringeisen, in which he admitted that Banner was performing at an unacceptable level.
Some clerical staff have sought medical help for “Banner syndrome,” which Niebur describes as “extreme stress, gastritis and depression” associated with using this unwieldy system.
One secretary, who requested anonymity citing a fear that she would lose her job, says her stress was relieved only when she accepted the system’s flaws. “Once you realize that it’s never going to do what you want it to do, all the anxiety is gone,” she says.
She has similarly bleak perspective about UPI’s chances at bargaining. “Our union people remind me of Cubs fans,” she says. “Wait till next year; it’s gonna get better. And it never does.”
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2004.
