Visiting acpros, UI reach agreement for union contract
By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor 217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu After several months of negotiations, including the assistance of a federal mediator, the UI reached its first agreement with about 300 visiting academic professionals at the Urbana campus represented by the Visiting Academic Professionals/AAP-IEA-NEA bargaining unit. The union contract, ratified in December and retroactive to Aug. 16, runs through Aug. 15, 2009. The agreement established a minimum salary of $26,650 for visiting APs, the same minimum salary for academic professional employees for that time period. Bargaining unit employees will receive 2.5 percent across-the-board increases over their 2005-2006 base salaries, retroactive to Aug. 16, provided that they were hired and on the university payroll prior to that date. For the second and third years of the contract, visiting APs will receive 2.5 percent raises over their base salaries or the percentage increase provided by the campus general salary program, whichever is greater. “Visiting academic professionals play an important role on the Urbana campus, and we’re pleased that we were able to work collaboratively with them to reach this agreement,” said Robin Kaler, associate chancellor for public affairs. Visiting APs voted to unionize in the spring of 2005, and the bargaining unit was formed later that year after the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board ruled that the group could organize.
The UI also reached a tentative agreement with the Graduate Employees Organization, IFT-AFT Local 6300, on Feb. 2, but details will not be disclosed until the agreement is ratified. The GEO, which represents about 2,700 of the 6,048 graduate assistants on the Urbana campus, was certified by the Illinois Educational Labor Board in December 2002. GEO has been working without a contract since August, when the initial contract expired.
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