Northwestern administrators presented their “last and best” contract offer during a second round of negotiations with labor union Local 681 on Friday. Union members will meet Thursday to vote to ratify or reject the contract.
The university has consented to a three-year agreement with an annual 3.25 percent wage increase for the union’s members, said Ron Nayler, NU associate vice president for facilities management. The union may choose to extend the contract for an additional two years, during which employees would be given a 3.5 percent annual raise.
Local 681 represents 89 of approximately 200 unionized workers at the university, including many of the university’s manual laborers, mail delivery workers and store keepers.
The union’s recently expired contract, negotiated in 2000, provided a 4 percent annual wage increase.
“Everyone would like to have seen a contract like we just ended, but the economics of the times don’t call for it and don’t permit it,” said Guy Miller, NU associate vice president for human resources and a member of the university’s negotiating committee. “The key question is: What are other employees in the nation receiving? And five years ago 4 percent was the average and today we’re closer to 3 percent.”
NU’s offer is “superior” to the wage packages provided by local peer institutions, said Nayler, who is also a member of the negotiating committee. For example, the University of Chicago pays members of its laborers union a maximum 3 percent annual raise, he said.
“We pay our folks in 681 more than the University of Chicago currently,” Nayler said. “And our offer for wage increases for the next three to five years are significantly above what the University of Chicago wage increases for the next few years will be.”
Last month 681 members staged a public protest outside of Ryan Field during NU’s football game against University of Wisconsin-Madison. Members complained that NU had offered too small a salary increase to keep pace with the rising cost of living, and that 681 workers were paid inferior wages compared to other campus employees.
The protest was not discussed at Friday’s meeting, Nayler said. He described the negotiations as “friendly” and “professional.”
Union leadership will neither oppose nor support the contract when it is submitted for Thursday’s vote. While Miller said he is optimistic that the contract will be ratified, he added that the university is readying for the possibility of a strike should union members reject it.
“That is an eventuality that we need to be prepared for,” he said.
Whether rejecting the contract would lead to a strike would depend on the members’ decisions, said Thomas Penning, president of Local 681. “There could be a possibility of that, but it would be decided by the membership, by the rank and file,” he said.
Penning declined to comment on most details of the contract, saying he preferred to save that information for union members at Thursday’s meeting. He said he was surprised that the university had revealed any specifics of the contract.
“The members I’m talking to, I’m not giving them that information because I want them to attend the meeting,” Penning said. “What (NU is) trying to do is get this contract ratified through the newspaper.”
Reach Jordan Weissmann at [email protected]
