The history of the merger proposal
The Civil Service and Administrative/Professional councils have a long history. The CS Council was established in 1959, and the AP Council in 1976 as the “Professional and Technical Staff Council.” Both councils have long acted as a voice for staff in Illinois State’s shared governance system, concerning themselves with issues such as employee benefits, performance evaluations, and recognition of staff. Over the decades both councils have accomplished a wide range of goals for their respective employment classes. So why merge?
The idea of a merger has been present among members of both councils for many years. Serious discussion of the possibility began, however, in mid-to-late 2021. Two major themes led to the initial discussions. First, ISU was completing a university-wide transition of many AP employees to CS status; the result was a significant decrease in the total number of AP staff, including several AP Council members who had to leave during their terms. Second was a return to the long-standing question of representation in the Academic Senate. Each council has a single voting Senate representative, who also serves on the Planning and Finance subcommittee. Whether that representation is adequate was a long-standing question on the councils—a joint request for increased membership was originally sent to the Senate Executive Committee in 2018—but the councils returned to this issue with renewed purpose.
Discussions between the councils revealed shared concerns about whether they were able to adequately represent their constituencies given the shifts in employment class membership, and whether the two divided councils were able to adequately work together to better advocate for their constituents on the Senate. Working groups were formed. One returned to the issue of representation in the Senate, while the other looked directly at the idea of a merger. The merger working group met through March of 2022, and developed an initial proposal that was discussed by the two councils between April and July of 2022. The proposal was sent back for revision in the fall of 2022. Both councils voted to support the proposal in the fall of 2022. A reconstituted merger working group began the process of constitution review, making sure that such a merger was possible and determining what it would take to incorporate it into the Senate and shared governance bodies, in the first half of 2023. Having determined that a merger was possible and how it could be incorporated into ISU’s constitution, the councils sent a joint letter to the Senate Executive Committee in August of 2023 proposing the merger. At the same time, the councils began a campaign to start discussing the proposal with staff across ISU, culminating in public information sessions held in November of 2023. While the feedback received was generally positive, it was concluded that more time was needed to inform staff across the institution and receive feedback before moving forward with a merger. That process of informing and asking for feedback includes this message and those coming out throughout this calendar year.
The reasons for council support of a merger
Throughout this history, three core issues emerged that led the councils to ultimately support a merger.
First, adequate membership on the councils. Ensuring adequate council membership has been an ongoing concern for both councils for several years. On the AP side, the AP-to-CS transition in 2020 and 2021 significantly decreased the total number of AP employees eligible to serve on the AP Council, exacerbating concerns about finding enough staff to serve on the full council. The CS Council has also faced issues with finding adequate staff in recent years, including times when entire CS employment subclasses had no representatives to fill that class’s seats.
A lack of adequate staffing results in greater difficulties for both councils in completing their mission. Important committees, like the committees overseeing the distribution of staff awards and scholarships, may have difficulty finding enough people. Representative roles to external shared governance and other groups may go unfilled. Discussions of important issues have fewer voices representing a smaller range of the employment classes. Elections are sometimes uncompetitive, uncontested, or involves seats with no one running. While both councils continue to function and carry out all of their duties, having fewer members to share those duties creates a greater strain on those serving. The councils came to feel that working as a single council, with a single election process, would allow them to run more competitive elections, fully staff the committees that carry out much of their work, and make sure that adequate voices are represented when issues of importance are brought forward for consultation.
Second, effective representation of staff. Perhaps the most important function of the councils is to provide representation of staff on various shared governance bodies, from the Academic Senate down to the Parking Committee. As part of these groups, the councils often have similar, in fact often identical, goals. Senate policies that impact AP employees almost always impact CS employees as well; concerns that CS employees want to bring up in the Campus Communications Committee’s quarterly letters to the Board of Trustees are shared by AP employees; and everyone, always, is concerned about parking. Given the very large overlap of interest, coordination of the councils is greatly beneficial. But the division into two councils, with different communication systems, different election procedures, different forms of staff outreach, different meeting times, and so on makes coordination very difficult. As a result, the councils found that they were less effective than they thought they could be in coordinating and advocating for staff in ISU’s shared governance structure.
A merged staff council largely eliminates this issue. One council means one group that shares information, meets together at the same time, and by default coordinates on most of its activities. CS employees would know about AP concerns (and vice versa) because they’re sitting on the same council, whereas now it requires complicated coordination and often many emails between various individuals or subgroups from each council. There would be shared reports from liaisons to shared governance bodies, and shared deliberation about how best to advocate for staff. Note that this is not to say that there are no relevant difference between CS and AP staff and how they are affected, for instance, by Senate policies. Various recommendations in the merger proposal were designed to address just this point, such as designating minimum numbers of seats for each employment class and creating a special subcommittee to discuss class-specific issues, and will be discussed in detail in later articles. In short, the councils found that what they shared went far beyond what they did not, and that the separation into two councils interfered with, rather than supported, their efforts to represent their constituents
Third, coordination on events, activities, and initiatives. Beyond the heady matters of elections, shared governance, and the like, the two councils coordinate on a range of programming. Long-standing events such as the food drives, social hours, and children’s holiday party involve CS and AP staff working together. This work is complicated by the division into two councils for the same reasons that coordination on shared governance issues is. Back-and-forths to coordinate on events between separate groups that meet at separate times can take months; events sometimes get duplicated unnecessarily; and promotion of events becomes difficult with lack of a centralized promotion and communication system. The councils found again and again that the separation made carrying out their projects more difficult, and a merger, as above, would largely eliminate this issue by putting everyone in the same room, on the same team, formulating the same plan.
Securing adequate representation on the councils; effectively representing constituents in shared governance structures; and coordinating on shared events, activities, and programming are the three primary challenges that the councils found themselves confronting again and again. The idea of a merger turned those challenges into opportunities—making sure we maintain competitive elections that bring a wide range of representatives together to fully staff a council; presenting a better-coordinated, more united front in the many shared governance scenarios where staff find their interests in alignment; and creating a dynamic council that can efficiently develop and promote programming for ISU staff are the three aims of a united staff council, and both councils concluded that forming such a council would be the best way to achieve these aims.
Next month: Structure of the council part I: Basic structure, membership, executive board
Whether a single staff council could achieve its aims depends, of course, on how it is constituted. Next month will dig into the basic structure of the proposed staff council, including council size, how members are selected (and apportioned by employment class), and the nature of the executive board.
