Bargaining update 9/16/26

PROPOSALS

• Union (HSU-OPEIU39) proposed reworked proposals for the contract, linked here.

• Union proposed an update to work rules to address the problem members reported that workers were being told that there was no exception to the requirement to attend staff meetings, even if you had a class. Put together a proposed Memorandum of Understanding to take effect immediately.

  • University rejects the proposal and says they won’t have any counter-proposal. Their take is that to be “equitable” is to be “inflexible”. There will be no flexibility at all.

On-Call Compensation

• University proposed eliminating on-call pay for RA’s for holidays. Their proposal is that RA’s would get their “regular hourly rate”. We asked what that meant because RA’s are not paid hourly.

  • Keino (UIC) is proposing that we get “what we normally get paid”

  • He proposes that we do not get any additional money for holidays, breaks, or closings.

• Keino was screaming throughout this portion of the meeting, like why are you mad??? (Basically, they don’t know how to explain how people get paid for this work.)

Desk Issues and Concerns

• UIC says the pay issues with the overnight differentials were by accident and will be worked on, on the back end, to be fixed.

• We ask if they limiting when the differential will be applied? (Answer: no. It should be applied for any hours worked in the 12a-8a period)

• They will communicate with Ms. Kechia to see if the message she sent about back pay with differentials is correct or not.

What is the status with the staffing issues?

• We ask how they’re planning on dealing with short-staffing with all the Desk Workers who have quit over the problems with how they’ve implemented the night work.

  • UIC says they don’t think its short staffed and that they do not need to fill in the gap where we are lacking availability for the desk. So they are not looking to open applications for new desk workers to prevent desk closures.

What is the case with automated/AI scheduling?

• UIC/Keino says they are looking into the scheduling issues and are looking into where there are discrepancies. Does not feel that the AI is relevant in this discussion.

How are we fleshing out the overnight schedule?

• They are moving towards using a semesterly schedule. Any conflicts that workers have must be traded by workers themselves.