While some NIU employees became eligible for a 4 percent pay raise this fall, Health Services found itself in a bargaining war with the university.

Steve Cunningham, associate vice president of Administration and Human Resources, said faculty, civil service, supportive professional staff and graduate assistants became eligible to receive the raise through the university’s Fiscal Year ’08 salary increment allocation guidelines approved by the Board of Trustees on Sept. 20.

Carol Sibley, coordinator of preventative medicine for Health Services, said NIU Health Service workers rank among the lowest paid university health workers in the state.

“We’ve been trying to communicate with the university repeatedly over the years about raising our wages,” Sibley said. “I’ve worked here for 19 years and every time someone in the university has gotten a raise, we have gotten one too.”

Sibley said low pay is an issue with all of the approximately 60 employees on the Health Services staff. Sibley said their wages cannot support a good quality of life. Of all the Health Services employees, 48 of them are union, in the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Those 48 people have a combined 463 years of experience in the field, Sibley said.

“A registered nurse who has worked here for three years is making less than $15 per hour,” Sibley said.

Sibley said that Health Services needed a stronger voice, so they joined the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the same union that also represents NIU’s Building and Food Service workers.

Cunningham said that since Health Services has joined the union, NIU must bargain directly with the AFSCME.

“As of that date, all wages, hours, terms and conditions of employment became mandatory subjects of bargaining between the union and NIU,” Cunningham said.

Sibley, who is part of union bargaining committee, said that they need to set aside many days to meet with the university to hash out an agreement.

“We provided 14 different days that we could meet with the university in the month of December and the university came back with 1 day that we could meet,” Sibley said.

Cunningham said the bargaining process takes time and he expects the negotiations to be complete in a reasonable time frame sometime next year.

“In collective bargaining, all terms and conditions must be negotiated between the parties,” Cunningham said. “Thus, the salary increase component is part of the larger package of language, work rules, procedures, etc. that are negotiated, resulting in the full agreement especially for a first agreement, such as the Health Services, this process typically involves several exchanges of proposals between the parties involving various aspects of employment,” he said.

Sibley said that Health Services and the AFSCME want to get a deal done as soon as possible.

“We like our jobs here and we would like to continue working here, we just need fair pay for it,” Sibley said.