By Peter Kaczmarczyk

Back in July we held our annual bargaining session with the university to determine the distribution of wages for staff. This was an especially frustrating year, because despite our best efforts to lobby the university and the fact that IU will be receiving stimulus money to plug gaps in the state’s budget for IU, IU decided they would not give raises to staff. While they did authorize a onetime bonus of $500 for those staff making under 30K a year, they claimed this was all they could afford, despite spending $144 million on new building projects and announcing over 120 faculty hires.

by Carole Baynes

There has been a lot of flu talk lately, and we thought you might like some tips to help prevent getting it. These are mostly just common sense things that your mother probably told you. It doesn’t hurt to review a few of them and practice some of the following good health habits suggested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

1) Don’t have close contact with people if you suspect they are sick or when you are not feeling well.

2) Stay home from public places like work or school when you are ill. It may stop others from getting sick too.

by Karen Adkins-Fleener

by Victor J Kinzer

I have been talking to a lot of people recently who are afraid the staff at Indiana University aren't going to get raises, or if we do, our raises won’t reflect the actual cost of living. The unfortunate truth is that IU hasn't given us a real cost of living raise in several years. Several years ago, it was standard to base support staff raises on the increase in the Consumer Price Index, and then money available above that amount was distributed generally based on merit.

by Jane Goldsmith

The unions at IU are governed by the Conditions for Cooperation as adopted by the Board of Trustees. On February 26, 2009, representatives from AFSCME (Bloomington, South Bend and Indianapolis campuses) and CWA (Bloomington and Northwest campuses) attended a meeting with their respective human resources representatives from each campus.