Visiting Academic Professionals Resist U of I Furlough Days

While academic professionals at the University of Illinois are preparing to take unpaid furlough days, some of them believe they shouldn't have to. They're the 300 or so visiting academic professionals at the U of I's Urbana campus. Unlike other AP's, the VAP's have a collective bargaining agreement with the university.

Their chief negotiator --- Alan Bilansky of the Association of Academic Professionals --- says that agreement exempts them from mandatory furlough days, the same as with other union workers on campus.

"We want to make sure that the university really wants to do this, when we've made it very clear that they're covered by a collective bargaining agreement", says Bilansky. "And you can't just arbitrarily give them a pay cut. If they're moving forward with it, we're going to have to move forward with an unfair labor practice (complaint)."

But U of I spokesperson Robin Kaler says the directive for unpaid furlough days definitely covers visiting academic professionals, because -- unlike other union employees -- their agreement does not have any language forbidding furloughs..

"The VAP collective bargaining agreement covers people who are not civil service employees", says Kaler. "The 17 collective bargaining agreements we have with civil service employees say specifically that we must follow civil service rules, which do not allow for fuloughs."

Visiting academic professionals at the U of I do the same work as academic professionals, but they are hired and fired differently. Only the Urbana campus VAP's have a collective bargaining agreement with the university.