This communication was sent to supervisors of AFSCME 1890 members on November 14, 2023.
Colleagues,
I am emailing you today to inform you that the Board of Trustees formally approved the AFSCME 1890 Collective Bargaining Unit at the November 9, 2023, meeting. You are receiving this email because HRS records indicate that you have one or more employees who report directly to you in this bargaining unit.
At the Supervisor Session on November 27, 2023, HRS and the Director for Labor Relations, Jesse Perez, will be on hand to provide more details of this contract and to address any questions you may have. Before that meeting, I wanted to inform you about several key elements of the new contract, many of which go into effect immediately.
Effective Immediately
- Performance Reviews during the employee’s probationary period are now a requirement of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. They must be completed at month three (3) for a six (6) month probation and at month five (5) and at month nine (9) for a twelve (12) month employee. HRS will continue to notify you via email of these times.
- 5% Increment. A 5% Increment retroactive to July 1, 2023, will be paid to bargaining members employed in the unit on or before July 1, 2023, on the November 30, 2023, payroll.
- One-Time Payment. A one-time payment with increasing amounts, based on the member’s years of service at NIU, will be paid on the November 30, 2023, payroll for all members in the unit as of the date of the Board of Trustee’s approval.
- Overtime. The university has agreed that supervisors cannot require employees to flex their schedules to avoid overtime payments. In addition, overtime will now follow the university’s policy on overtime.
- Promotion. The university and unit have agreed to follow the university’s policy to determine an employee’s wage when approved for a promotion.
Effective January 1, 2024
- $16.00 Minimum. A new minimum wage has been established for the 1890 bargaining unit. Effective January 1, 2024, all members with wages below $16.00/hour will be increased to the new minimum.
- Inversion. The university has agreed to begin addressing this bargaining unit’s wage compression and inversion concerns. Comparing employees against other employees in their classification and reviewing their wages and years in classification by quartiles, the university has identified 76 employees whose wages do not align with their expected years in the classification quartile (for example, an employee in the third quartile of their years in that classification and has a corresponding wage in the second quartile, will be aligned to the minimum for the third quartile). Additionally, HRS is preparing plans to continuously monitor and address these concerns for the entire university.
*Lists of affected employees in both categories will be provided to you in December.
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For specific information on how Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) impact your budgets, please contact your division’s budget manager(s) and/or review the central guidance issued by the Budget Office as provided during the FY24 budget development.
I look forward to our conversation on November 27, 2023.
Take good care,
JA
John Acardo
Senior Associate Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer
(He/Him/His)
