About

What is UWGB-United?

UWGB-United is a union of UW-Green Bay Faculty and Academic Staff striving to make this campus the best workplace it can be, which leads to the best educational experience for our students.   We represent a significant portion of the Faculty, and we are working to improve workplace conditions for ALL members of the UW-Green Bay workforce, whether they choose to become union members or not.  We are not part of the campus shared governance structure, but we work with shared governance to help make it more effective, efficient, transparent, and representative of all voices on our campus community. For example, our union was instrumental in establishing the Joint (Faculty and Academic Staff) Committee on Workload and Compensation on campus, and we continue to work closely with that committee to accomplish shared goals.

This campus really is a great place to work and teach.   We are in a union because we want to ensure that it stays that way, and we want to strive to make it better.  We can do that if we have a voice in how the university works, and the union gives us that voice.  Essentially, UWGB-United are faculty and academic staff committed to campus excellence; people who believe that the best way to achieve this is through unified action, through raising our collective voice. 

How does the union work? 

UWGB-United is the local (6511) of American Federation of Teachers (AFT)-Wisconsin.   Union members pay dues to AFT-Wisconsin, which achieves several important goals:

AFT-WI unites many K-12 and University educators across the state, and even throughout the country, and this makes us part of a nationwide union movement, and access to a broad network of professionals and information.   We decide on our own constitution and dues structure at an annual convention. 

• AFT-WI has employees who work as lobbyists on our behalf in state government, and help us to organize to address issues of statewide importance.
• AFT-WI provides us with a representative to work with our local union, and to help us find people and resources to make us a better local.
• AFT-WI retains a lawyer who works on behalf of us as a unionized group of employees, and occasionally AFT-WI will legally represent members in dealing with workplace grievances.

UWGB-United, though, is largely independent in that we decide how to organize on our campus and what our agenda will be.   We wrote and approved our own constitution, in which an Executive Council is elected by the local membership.  This Council consists of a President and Vice President, a Secretary, a Treasurer, and several representatives:  One for the College of  Liberal Arts and Sciences, one for the College of Professional Studies, and an Academic Staff representative. 

Two things that the Executive Council does are, first, to appoint members to various committees that do much of the union’s work.  These include the Organizing Committee; the Grievance Committee; and the Meet and Confer Committee (whose purpose is to meet with campus administration to work on common issues). Second, the Council advises the President and helps the President to set and accomplish an agenda for the union.   The Executive Council is always happy to hear from members who are willing to get involved with union-related issues.