Ratification Vote Results

The membership has ratified the tentative collective agreement by a unanimous vote of the majority of members.  The new collective agreement will go into effect August 16, 2016.  Once the official copies have been signed by both sides, they will be posted on Academic Human Resource’s website and AAP’s website: https://aapillinois.wordpress.com/ 

I would like to thank the other members of the bargaining team for their work: Lisa Bievenue (Illinois Informatics Institute) and Jason Mierek (Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities) as well as our IEA UniServ Director, Steve Vaughan. The bargaining team met many times over the spring session to hear your concerns and to draft our initial proposals.  The team met in several sessions over May and June with the University’s team in negotiations.

I would also like to thank and acknowledge the work of the University’s bargaining team, headed by Robb Craddock (Labor & Employee Relations), including Sue Key (Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research), Joe Bohn (College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences), Heather Horn (Academic Human Resources) and Drew Schlosser (Labor & Employee Relations). While we may not have seen eye to eye on all issues, the University’s team worked hard with us in good faith to reach this agreement.

As we move forward this year, there are a few major areas the association will be focused on in the Fall session. First, is the implementation of the Department of Labor new overtime rules. There are a number of members who are affected in our bargaining unit (as well as non-visiting APs). We will be in discussions with AHR and monitoring the implementation of the rules in December. Second, as many of you who watched one of the recent information sessions about healthcare know, the state of Illinois might double insurance premiums retroactively to July 2016.  The association is in discussion with the IEA to determine how to best proceed if the retroactive doubling of health premiums does happen.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the difficult and professional work that you, our members, are doing during this time of continued budgetary uncertainty. Both visiting and non-visiting academic professionals have been asked to take on more responsibilities as critical positions have been eliminated or remain unfilled in units across campus. The funding situation is simply untenable for higher education at our institution and across the state. The association is advocating, in partnership with the IEA, for legislators and the governor to find a sustainable and adequate funding solution going forward.

We will be in touch about all of these efforts over the course of the coming months.

Please email us at aapillinoisedu@gmail.com if you have any questions, concerns or issues.

In solidarity,
Joe
—
Joseph Roy
Linguistic Data Analytics Manager
President, Association of Academic Professionals (IEA-NEA Local)
School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign