The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Employee Forum is an organization of SHRA and EHRA non-faculty Employees elected by their peers. The Forum’s mission is to advocate for and constructively address the challenges, needs, and opportunities of UNC-Chapel Hill Employees. It will:
Seek out the issues, interests, ideas, and participation of Employees Develop proactive, progressive recommendations to advise the Chancellor and their designees on University issues Actively follow up with Administration to ensure recommendations are being implemented Provide effective communication among all levels of Employees, faculty, students, and the administration, while keeping Employees informed about cross-campus initiatives Foster and engage an open and positive environment throughout the University community Support the University’s mission of teaching, research, and public service
The Employee Forum seeks to continually improve the quality of life at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for its Students, Faculty, and Employees through mutual understanding, recognition of Employee contributions, and respect for the worth of the individual.
History[edit]
Amidst the formation of a housekeeping union, staff concerns over [WHAT from Kay’s interview], and the early years of the Office of Human Resources, the Employee Forum held its first meeting on October 7th, 1992. With staff member Kay Wijnberg, then director of administration at the School of Law, presiding over 45 newly elected forum delegates, the Forum heard from Chancellor Paul Hardin and Provost Richard L McCormick. While Hardin hoped that the Forum would immediately consider how to use their Bicentennial campaign funds for staff training, development, and educational assistance, he also expressed hope that the Forum would come to advise him on employee-related issues:
“We have established the forum to advise me and other senior administrative officers regarding matters of concern to SPA and EPA non-faculty employees. I hope that the forum will open additional channels of communication among employees and university administration about general employment issues, current problems, plans, concerns, whatever.”
Over the next three decades, the Employee Forum’s structure, goals, and relationship to the Chancellor have shifted with changes to university and state politics, the perspectives of different staff delegates and chairs, and the values of the Chancellors themselves. Delegates have internally debated and shifted its role with regard to issues of, for example, employee compensation and representation, the character of its relationship with other employee organizations, and how to most effectively produce positive change. In this process, the body has been a space for employees to imagine and advocate for a better workplace for UNC staff, bring to light issues employees face on the job at UNC, recognize and reward employees for exceptional service and ambition, and come together as a unified voice during historical events affecting the campus community.
Paul Hardin: 1992-1995[edit]
Forum Chairs: Kay Wijnberg, Margaret Balcolm, Rachel Windham[edit]
During the first few years of the Forum, priorities centered around establishing protocol and function. The first Forum members addressed questions about election and responsibilities, the formation of different committees and their purposes, and the scope of issues the Forum should address. Over the course of the next couple of years, the Forum would establish committees to address various employee concerns and Forum functions. By 1994, the Forum had over ten standing committees, ranging from career development to compensation and benefits to university committee assignments. In May 1995, the Forum hired a permanent part time Forum Assistant, Matt Banks.
Starting in the Forum’s inaugural years, Chancellor Paul Hardin —accompanied by Laurie Charest, Associate Vice Chancellor of Human Resources—attended each of the monthly Forum meetings. The Chancellor responded to each resolution and whether he would or could carry it out or not. He even reviewed and applauded letters written by Forum chairs to, for example, the Governor. In its relationship to the Chancellor, the Forum both learned about and directly raised questions regarding the efficacy of university policy decisions, such as university grievance procedures, staff cuts and insurance policy changes, and relationships with the General Assembly. As would be the case with future Chancellors, other administrators, such as the Vice Chancellor for Human Resources and the University legislature liaison, advised the Chancellor on his comments and relationship to the Forum.
The Forum also began its tradition of hearing directly from employees. The group hosted staff from across the university, who discussed topics ranging from employee concerns over the statewide employee classification system and salary compression, to childcare, to the newly formed Housekeepers Association. The group also organized regular community meetings open to all employees to learn about and share their perspective on issues affecting staff and the campus community in general. Over the years, community meetings discussed, for example, the Office of State Personnel, the state Healthcare system, and cuts in University positions. The practices of employee presentations and community meetings have waxed and waned across different chancellors and chairs but remain a tradition to this day.
The Forum and its delegates also quickly established connections with other employee organizations. In 1993, the Forum established a relationship with the Faculty Council through the formation of the Faculty Staff Joint Committee, dedicated to encouraging collaboration on issues that affected both groups of university employees. Initiated in response to a conflict surrounding staff ranking for access to basketball tickets, one of the committee’s first orders of business was to develop a survey to study faculty/staff relations. When survey results were published in April 1994, it was clear that both faculty and staff needed to be better acquainted with each other’s responsibilities. The Forum sent recommended solutions to university Deans, Directors, and Department Heads. Since then, class interests and the difference in funding sources for faculty and staff have limited the substantive interactions between faculty and staff—as well as between staff and students—but the groups have come together regarding cultural issues such as the disposition of the Confederate Monument (“Silent Sam”).
The Housekeepers’ Association, which had demanded the university address racial discrimination in pay since 1992, brought their pay proposal to the Employee Forum in hopes that the Forum would endorse it. The Forum—with members who represent the spectrum of employee perspectives, including managerial ones—did not officially endorse the proposal over disagreements around the attendance policy. However, the Personnel Policies Committee met with the Association to discuss their demands, expressing support for their fight for the concept of a “livable wage,” and the Forum often invited members of the Housekeepers Association like Barbara Prear and James Holman to bring their issues to the Forum. While Chancellor Hardin resisted the Housekeeper’s legal case against the University, Forum delegates consistently pressed both Chancellors Hardin and Hooker for updates regarding the status of the case, which was finally resolved in 1996. By the end of the settlement, it was clear that the housekeepers had made an impact on university-staff relations. When the Chancellor announced that the university’s newly increased salary base for permanent employees, he did admit that the “Housekeepers Association at UNC-CH had focused the University and State’s attention on this issue.”
The State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC) also began appearing at a number of Forum meetings, encouraging members to join the organization and support the group’s legislative activities. Many forum members and leaders —including the first forum Chair, Kay Wijnberg—were or would become active in SEANC. However, the Chancellor’s office continually worked to keep the group and other state level employee associations at bay in its relationship with the Forum, especially because of SEANC’s explicit legislative priorities and allegiances.
That said, the Forum did commit itself early on to be an advocate for UNC staff to the North Carolina General Assembly. In January 1994, the Public Affairs committee was established with the purpose of “supporting Employees’ ongoing contacts with individual legislators” and “establish[ing] the Forum’s voice with such external constituents as the UNC Board of Governors and the UNC system President and lobbyists, UNC Hospitals, other state agencies, the N.C. General Assembly, SEANC, the Governor, and the Office of State Personnel.” The committee outlined its goal of making legislative contacts and gathering data to advocate salary increases for employees. While the General Assembly was (and continues to be) frugal in regards to staff salary increases, the Forum regularly had the support of Chancellor Hardin. In 1993, for example, the Forum “sought and received Chancellor Hardin’s and University system President C. D. Spangler’s public support for a 6% salary increase for Employees.”
Meanwhile, the Forum also worked to exert internal pressure for improved staff pay and benefits. The Compensation and Benefits Committee, for example, was established in [date] to conduct research on geographic pay, longevity pay, and salary compression. Forum resolutions during the first few years quickly centered on pushing the University administration to Chancellor to advocate for employee pay raises. In the context of an unsympathetic legislature, the group combined a tactic of condoning existing efforts of the administration to advocate for SPA pay increases to the General Assembly, as well as pushing the administration to be more explicit in its efforts. In 1994, for example, the Forum passed a resolution “Seeking Support for SPA Salary Increases,” requesting that “the UNC General Administration and the UNC Board of Governors seek public and legislative support to improve the salaries and benefits of all University employees by also including a statement of support for its SPA employees in the narrative of its formal budget request and summary.” One of the most impactful efforts by the Forum in this period was their successful push for a compensatory time off policy. In 1992, the Personnel Policy Committee decided to study the possibility of establishing this kind of system at UNC. Working with Payroll, Contracts and Grants, and the Office of Human Resources, the Forum was rewarded with creation and implementation of a new compensatory time policy by the end of 1993.”
The Public Affairs and Compensation and Benefits Committee established in the early years of the Forum would go through many iterations and directions over time. Over the years, the committees—which coupled with and evolved into the Communication committee, Legislative Action committee, and finally combined into an omnibus Personnel Issues committee in 2012—have partnered with SEANC, UNC lobbyists, the Human Resources office, and other powers to advocate for employee-friendly legislation. They have passed resolutions directed at the legislature itself, orchestrated letter writing campaigns to legislatures, and corresponded and met with state representatives and senators. More recently, the Personnel Issues Committee has moved away from government lobbying efforts. However, the committee continues to field employee on-the-job and campus climate concerns, to investigate staff/management issues, to clarify university policy to staff, and to develop career banding and staff retention recommendations..
In its initial years, the Forum also immediately began to advocate for what would become a consistent priority for the group: staff representation on campus decision making bodies and processes. For example, one of the first requests the Forum made was a formal letter to the Provost expressing concern there was no staff on the University’s Black Cultural Center Working Group, which was formed to make programmatic decisions regarding what would become the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History. The Chancellor responded to the Forum’s request and subsequently appointed delegate LaBron Reid to the working group. Over the course of the next couple of years, Forum delegates would be represented on, to name a few examples, the Women’s Concerns Coalition, the Bicentennial Campaign Committee, the Chancellor’s Awards Committee, the Faculty Council, the Athletic Council, the University Enrollment Management Committee, and the Sexual Harassment Committee. Over the next couple of decades, chairs successfully pushed Chancellors to appoint staff to vice chancellor hiring committees, Chancellor search committees, and even committees of the Board of Trustees.
Michael Hooker: 1995-1999[edit]
Forum Chairs: Rachel Windham, Ann Hamner, Robert Schreiner, Linwood Futrelle, Jane Stine[edit]
Attending his first Forum meeting on July 1995 with experience initiating an employee organization at his previous university, Chancellor Michael Hooker expressed hope early on to establish a close relationship with the Employee Forum. This relationship, he told the Forum, would require them to come to him with their concerns, whether publicly or anonymously. “I need to be educated and I will be educated,” he stated, “only to the extent where people step forward and tell me what I need to know.” After fall community meeting in 1995, then chair Rachel Windham sent him a letter saying his presentation was a “tremendous success. The calls continue to comment on how ‘open’ you were and how encouraged employees felt following the exchange.” During Hooker’s tenure as Chancellor—cut short by his death in office—the Forum continued to feel out its role as an advisory body and employee organization.
The group continued to stake its position on financial issues, asking the Chancellor to oppose House Bills on grievance procedures and compensation packages, investigating employee positions on health insurance changes, childcare, and parking, and providing feedback solicited by the Vice Chancellor for Business and Finance on Pan-University budgetary allocations. In addition, the Forum also pushed for staff representation and on the job improvements. “After three years of trying,” the Forum convinced the University to expand the local calling area (so employees didn’t have to dial long distance or use a calling card to call home). Delegates advocated for more staff training and educational assistance, successfully pushed for representation on Provost search committees, encouraged departments to establish their own recognition and awards committees, and invited State legislators and the UNC System President to attend Forum meetings. Throughout, the Chancellor gratefully and enthusiastically acted on the Forum’s suggestions.
One of the biggest issues the Forum tackled was the prospect of privatization and outsourcing on campus. In the Fall of 1995, the state legislature initiated a study of the potential for cost saving of privatization on multiple UNC system schools. The prospect was highly contested by groups across the Chapel Hill campus, including students, the Forum, and, especially, the Housekeepers’ Association. In 1996, an “Outsourcing Steering Team” was established to investigate for the Chancellor “whether work done by printing services, records management and residence hall housekeeping should be privatized or retained in-house.” The Forum responded by writing a resolution outlining certain provisions that must be met if any privatization were to occur. The resolution stated that “in utilizing competitive, market-based privatization efforts four principles must guide the University’s actions,” including 1) basing privatization on quality and cost-effectiveness, not ideology 2) considering the organizational knowledge long-term employees bring 3) including monitoring provisions and 4) considering the impact of privatization on employees and including them in the decision making process. The Chancellor heartily agreed with his principles in his response to the Forum, and ultimately housekeeping services were not privatized. These principles would continue to guide the Forum as it faced future prospects of employee privatization.
In 1996 the Forum also established itself officially in the organizational chart of the university. Recognizing that the Faculty Council of the university was on the organizational chart as a direct advisory group to the Chancellor, Forum Chairs Rachel Windham and Ann Hamner asked that “consideration be given to including the Employee Forum in the same fashion as the Faculty Council.” The Chancellor enthusiastically agreed to the placement of the Forum directly reporting to him on the organizational chart. The Forum would thereafter use this new gained authority to request positions similar to the faculty council on certain committees, such as the University’s Administrative Council.
The Forum also expanded its reach to other employees during this period. Beginning in 1997, the Forum began publishing an insert on the Forum in the University Gazette entitled “InTouch.” Over the years, “InTouch ” would be used to inform employees of Forum proceedings, keep employees abreast of policies that affected them, and even to advocate for legislative reform.
William McCoy: Acting Interim Chancellor, 1999-2000[edit]
Forum Chair: Jane Stine[edit]
Forum Chair Jane Stine established an important personal bond with interim Chancellor William McCoy following Chancellor Michael Hooker’s death in 1999.
There were also structural changes made by the Forum during this period. From 1999-2000, the Forum automated its electoral voting process for the first time, and, in 2000-2001, shifted operations from a calendar to a fiscal year.
James Moeser: 2000-2008[edit]
Forum Chairs: Joanne Kucharski, John Heuer, Tommy Griffin, Ernie Patterson[edit]
Chancellor James Moeser attended his first Employee Forum meeting on September 6, 2000. He began his tenure asking the Forum for their assistance as he worked to get a bond referendum for campus construction and maintenance passed on the November 2000 ballot. He expressed his vision that the Forum play “a key role in our effort to educate your fellow employees and others about this critical issue in the coming months.” The Employee Forum supported these efforts, and the bond referendum passed by three quarters of North Carolina Voters. In turn, the Employee Forum began its relationship with Chancellor Moeser pushing for more participation with the new administration. The first resolution received from the Forum in January 2001 “urg[ed] Chancellor Moeser to hold frequent community meetings,” citing the success of a community meeting the Chancellor held the previous Fall on the bond referendum. In November of 2001, no less than three community meetings were held on the then timely subject of administrative flexibility, and in 2002, a meeting was held to discuss Employee compensation, personnel flexibility, and campus construction. In addition to frequent community meetings open to all staff, the Forum also consulted closely with the Office of Human Resources and the Chancellor himself. “In particular,” the Forum’s 2002 Annual Report noted, “the Forum has worked closely with representatives from Human Resources, with several Human Resources officials meeting regularly with Forum committees on a range of personnel and policy issues.” In June of 2001, in response to a request for an in person meeting with him from then Employee Chair Joanne Kucharski over “HR flexibility concerns,” Moeser agreed to meet over breakfast to “initiate a constructive dialogue on this issue,” noting that he was “sure that we are not doing everything possible with the current system, as you suggest…”
Likewise, Moeser was quite responsive to the Forum’s resolutions, even if he did not (or could not) always fulfill the included requests. During his tenure, the Forum passed over 65 resolutions, with requests ranging from the elimination of outsourcing to staff salary increases to educational assistance programs for employees. The Chancellor responded to each one, writing to the then-current Forum Chair explaining how he would carry out the recommendations of the resolution, that he would pass the resolution onto relevant HR officials or state representatives, or why he felt he could not fulfill the requests. The Chancellor passed along a Forum request for flex time in response to high gas prices to Housekeeping Services and sent a resolution on the UNC System Health Plan Pilot to state senators and representatives. The Forum would work closely with Chancellor Moeser for most of his tenure, though largely as a result of the diligence of the Forum and its Chairs to make sure that their voices were given priority. Chairs worked assertively for representation on, for example, the Advisory Committee on Transportation, the Master Plan Steering Team, University Priorities and Budget Committee, the Tuition Task Force, and the Chancellor's Award Committee.
Over the course of Moeser’s Chancellorship, the Forum broadened its own charges, expanding the issues it publicly addressed, pushing for more direct representation within the university’s power structures, and questioning the limitations placed on the body. This—and the high stakes of many of the issues on campus—led to a sometimes-tense relationship between the Forum and university administration, and among Forum members themselves.
Personnel Flexibility
In 2001, in the context of heavy state budget cuts and worries over staff employment, the Chancellor’s Office pushed for the legislative passage of personnel flexibility reforms. UNC Administrators argued that, by being able to develop a system outside of the State Personnel Act, which determined Human Resources and Compensation processes for all state employees, the university would be able to reduce cuts to staffing that followed state budget cuts. The Chancellor directly asked for the Forum’s support in encouraging University administration and the state legislature to pass management flexibility and—at least in the early 2000s—the Forum “followed suit.” In Spring of 2002, a University committee assigned to research the impact of personnel flexibility recommended the policy to the legislature. The policy did not pass and was tabled until the 2003 session.
However, there was not actually consensus around the impact of personnel flexibility among employees and Forum members. In August 2002, two of the employees who had served on the University committee— including the first chair of the Employee Forum, Kay Hovious (Wijnberg) and future delegate Steve Hutton— shared their dissenting perspective. According to Hovious, 3 out of the “7 or 8” SPA employees on the committee actually voted against the majority report, while “two-thirds of [the] Forum representatives voted against management flexibility.” Describing the negative impact of management flexibility on employee’s “property interests” (their right to the expectation of continuing employment), their access to grievance arbitration, and longevity pay, Hovious suggested that “management flexibility was yet another manifestation of the administration’s ongoing war against their own employees.” Personnel flexibility would continue to be a contentious issue for the Forum, and its collective stance on it was far from cemented. In April of 2008, the Forum passed a resolution against the University’s proposed creation of an equivalent Human Resources system to replace the State Personnel Act.
Task Force
State budget cuts continued to be a problem throughout 2002 and 2003, impacting the focus of the Forum’s advocacy as well as the functioning of the Forum itself. According to the 2003 Forum Annual Report, “increased job responsibilities” and issues of morale related to “hikes in personal health insurance coverage, cost of living, and other expenses without corresponding increases in base salaries or merit pay” resulted in the resignation of nearly 20 Forum delegates in the 2003 calendar year. In November of 2002, a resolution was passed requesting that “a portion of tuition increase revenues be devoted to staff and faculty salary increases.” While the UNC-Chapel Hill Tuition Advisory Task Force and the Board of Trustees proposed that over one million in tuition increases go to staff salaries, the UNC System Board of Governors said that this should be a decision of the State Legislature and thus rejected the proposal.
In this budget context, in the wake of “sparse pay raises and higher health-care costs for employees in recent years” and in the midst of a campus discussion sponsored by UE Local 150 of the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union on the 2001 book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, in August 2003, the Chancellor’s Task Force for a Better Workplace met for the first time that same month. The group’s charge was simple: to determine “what is working well for our employees, what can work better and what else can be done.” According to the chancellor’s briefings for the September 2003 EF meeting, the Task Force “emerged from discussions with Tommy Griffin, Judith Wegner and Matt Tepper.”
To begin, the Task Force sent out a survey of all SPA and EPA non-faculty employees to crowdsource ideas on how to improve the workplace at UNC. After evaluating survey results and meeting as a group of faculty, students, and employees and working within subcommittees rewards, awards and recognition; advancement opportunities; work-life support; work environment; learning; and benefits —the Task Force published in February 2004 a report on their findings and proposals. The report recommended proposals in three tiers:
• 1) short term steps, such as establishment of an ombudsman’s office, increased access to health screening and health foods on campus, and offer of computer literacy programs • 2) Medium term steps, such as establishing an emergency loan program, increasing financial assistance to employees for higher education, and exploring ways to make parking more affordable and • 3) long term steps, such as expanding on-campus day-care, providing improved health insurance with less out-of-pocket costs, expanding employee tuition waivers, and developing low-cost housing for employees.
The Chancellor decided to give the money that would have been used to his increase his salary that year—an amount of $25,000—to “implement the recommendations of the task force,” and noted that donors would be willing to contribute additional private funds.
To track the progress and ensure the implementation of the task force’s proposals, the Forum established a Task Force Monitoring Committee. The committee worked closely with the then Associate Vice Chancellor of Human Resources, Laurie Charest, to assign each Task Force recommendation to various university officials and groups. By the Spring of 2004, a number of proposals had begun implementation, including the creation of a Campus Ombuds office, a computer literacy and computer loan initiative, a Student Undergraduate Staff Award, and a Summer Work Fair for children of University employees. At the same time, the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost sent a memo to Deans, Department Heads, and Human Resources facilitators to alert them of the new flexible scheduling policy encouraged by the Task Force. By December of 2004, for example, the Ombuds office had hired Wayne Blair and UNC Professor Laurie Mesibov, and a staff emergency loan program and scholarship program for children of UNC employees had been implemented. While unable to accommodate such suggestions for departmental group ombuds meetings, the Omsbud office frequently updated the Forum on its development, reporting in 2006 that it had handled nearly 300 cases in its first year. By May 2005, Human Resources reported to the Employee Forum that, per a suggestion of the Task Force, a policy that “all supervisors will now have as a principal function their support of professional development for their charges, and that they would be rated on their support” beginning in 2006. Many Forum members were heartened by the movement the Task Force generated and some remember this time as one of the most productive years of the Forum.
Some members of the Forum expressed concern over the way that the Task Force recommendations were carried out and pushed---with varying degrees of success---to make its programs as responsive to employees as possible. Some Forum members critiqued that the Task Force didn’t contain enough “line” workers, particularly from Housekeeping and Groundskeeping. Moreover, some proposals made to the Chancellor’s Task Force for a Better Workplace were not implemented, despite their support from Forum committees. A significant proposal from the Personnel Issues Committee recommended the creation of an SPA Administrative Standards task force made up of “high levels across the university” to demonstrate the top administration’s willingness to “persuade all that inappropriate management practices will not be overlooked or tolerated” and to monitor university compliance with SPA management and compensation. This recommendation was tabled. Likewise, the Task Force did not address issues of compensation because, alleged the Chancellor, they “must be addressed by the General Assembly.”
While the Task Force did not make recommendations related to employee compensation, employee health insurance and staff salaries were a prominent issue in 2004 and 2005. The Forum’s Personnel Issues Committee —chaired by groundskeeper David Branigan—was particularly active during this period, and initiated a number of successful resolutions and campaigns on issues ranging from a $2,000 flat salary increase for State Employees to a postcard mailing campaign that fought increasing out of pocket healthcare costs.
Staff Assembly
Another major success of the Forum during this period was the formation of the long sought-after system-wide staff assembly in 2006. The Forum, in cooperation with other UNC System campuses, had pushed for a statewide representative organization for university staff forums since Chancellor Hooker’s term. In 1998, in their lobbying efforts for a system-wide organization, the unofficial grouping of staff organizations convinced the UNC System President Molly Broad to mandate establishment or recognition of a representative staff organization for each of the 16 system schools. In 2002 “Forum representatives attended a May 30 meeting in Boone representatives from several other UNC system staff organizations.” In his first year in office, UNC System President Erskine Bowles created a System-wide UNC Staff Assembly and the forum sent three representatives to represent UNC-Chapel Hill. To this day, the body, in cooperation and concert with the University Chancellors, President, and Board of Governors,” represents the staff of the 17 schools that make up the University of North Carolina.
Dental Technicians
Despite the success of the task force and the staff assembly, the relationship between the Forum and the Chancellor noticeably soured in the last two years of his term. The Forum was confronted with the issue of privatization again in 2006, when the Dean of the Dental School chose to outsource dental lab work, resulting in the termination of 15 university lab technicians. To the Forum’s disappointment, Chancellor Moeser endorsed the decision. In response, the group passed a resolution demanding a twelve month moratorium on further outsourcing, accompanied by a Forum cosponsored march for “ Fairness and Accountability” from the Dental School to South building. Using InTouch to spread the news, the Forum solicited employee perspectives on the issue. The Chancellor defended his endorsement. Subsequently, the Forum passed a second resolution, “strongly counseling” the Chancellor to reconsider the outsourcing protocols endorsed by Chancellor Hooker in the 1990s that called for employee involvement in privatization decisions and recognition of the qualitative value of long-term employees.
Another conflict emerged soon after, when the Gazette refused to publish an article on collective bargaining in the Forum’s InTouch insert. According to the Gazette, the article, a report on a sociology graduate student’s research on advocates for collective bargaining, did not conform with the university’s “legislative priorities.” The Forum, which in 2006 had written a resolution advocating for a repeal of the collective bargaining ban, responded with a resolution condemning the censorship.
Radical Contingent and Debates over role of forum
During this period, Forum delegates strongly debated the role of the Forum and the responsibility of Forum representatives. Some delegates pushed the boundaries of what they could advocate for and how, taking on controversial issues—such as collective bargaining and privatization—at times adopting an oppositional stance against the Chancellor’s decisions. Others were more cautious of maintaining a cooperative relationship with the administration. In addition, some delegates pushed back on Forum Chair and Staff Assembly representatives for the Forum’s consensus position when, for example, lobbying for staff raises.