My Summer at Staff Human Resources UIUC

This summer, I will be interning at Staff Human Resouces at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My supervisor is Heather Horn, Labor and Employee Relations Coordinator. Labor and Employee Relations (LER) is a section of Staff Human Resources and handle matters related to Civil Service (Union) employees. The LER department is comprised of 6 staff who are resources for the entire campus and thousands of Union employees. They negotiate the 21 Collective Bargaining Agreements UIUC has, hear and render grievance decisions, advise departments on how to handle disciplinary situations, and hold pre-disciplinary meetings.

My project was focused on the employee relations aspect of Labor and Employee Relations.  For each disciplinary situation, I created a case analysis for the individual which was used and reviewed by the Labor and Employee Relations representative. After a department brings forth a problem with an employee, I will read the contractual language related to discipline, assess how egregious the act was, and review the employee’s discipline and personnel file to understand their employment history.  Then I will put together the relevant facts, past history, questions for further analysis, and an overview of the big picture into a document and made a recommendation for which disciplinary step to take.

My expectations for this summer are very high! I felt very happy to know I am the only undergraduate LER has ever had as an intern. They usually only take graduate students from the Labor Relations College. This fact makes me very eager to do a great job. I am looking forward to learning about University Human Resources and see what a Labor and Employee Relations representative does. I know there will be a steep learning curve, but Heather is a wonderful supervisor and I feel confident I will learn and be able to contribute a lot.

One event I was able to attend was a talk Heather was giving to a department about the differences in their coworkers. In a single department there are faculty, civil service workers, academic professionals, and more. Although these employees work together, their benefits, hours, and expectations can greatly vary. For example, faculty do not have set hours. They work until the job is done or until they feel they are able to stop for the day. This is opposite to Civil Service employees because they have set hours, job descriptions and expectations, and cannot work late unless approved. These differences were creating tension between some coworkers, so this talk was an attempt to clear any confusion and an opportunity for the employees to ask questions. It was very informational for me because I was not aware of the differences between employees and how that can affect an office.