The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

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Council approves student group contracting process

Members of the University of Wisconsin student government voted unanimously to support a new contracting process for registered student organizations in a meeting Wednesday night.

Created by Associated Students of Madison representatives, the contracting process has been repeatedly discussed in ASM meetings for the purpose of making amendments to benefit student organizations which want to contract with third-party organizations.

Before voting in favor of the process, Shared Governance Chair Beth Huang wanted to make sure the process would be sustainable for more than a few years.

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Student Services Finance Committee Chair Sarah Neibart said the process allows for student organizations in compliance with UW System financial policy F50 to contract the hiring of non-university employees necessary in order for the groups to provide their services to students.

For an organization using the process to be in compliance with the policy, it must be a registered student organization. There must also be demand for the group’s services, the group’s service must not already be provided by the university and the group cannot have committed any ASM or university policy violations.

Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group is one registered student organization in immediate need of the contracting process because it is essential for the group to continue offering students its services, members said.

“[The chancellor] originally was not going to allow WISPIRG to hire an outside employee, but a compromise has been made,” Neibart said.

During open forum, Huang updated the council on the process of the Human Resources Design Working Teams involved in Phase One of the redesign project.

The working teams were formed in reaction to flexibilities granted to the university to “revamp” its personnel system last year, affecting 6,000 university employees, she said.

“All those issues that came up last year are being rehashed and re-brought up to be worked out in the HR design teams,” Huang said.

According to Huang, Phase One of the redesign is dedicated to basic workplace issues such as compensation, diversity, benefits and titling and a shift away from systems put in place by the university in the 1970s.

This plan would combine classified university staff with academic staff, which, at present, only include administrators, researchers and non-faculty instructors. The merging would double the total number of academic personnel.

Moreover, combining the two types of faculty would provide the new academic staff members with governance opportunities currently allowed only to academic staff, while eliminating their collective bargaining rights.

“Switching the employees from having collective bargaining rights creates huge issues that are intentionally radical,” Huang said. “But it may be best to have one system for employees.”

She added a future task for the working teams would be to decide how to build into the category system an allowance for collective bargaining rights if they should be reinstated by the Legislature in the future.

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