This campaign is open to students, faculty, librarians, academic advisors, staff, and community members.

On August 28th, after a year of negotiation, and a 12 hour marathon session, TAUP was ready to sign a Tentative Agreement for the faculty, librarians, and academic advisors at Temple University. Temple’s negotiation team chose to derail all progress made over our insistence on adding one line to the contract: “No academic professional or librarian shall be subject to discipline for utilizing their full allocation of ten (10) sick days.”

On our first day of negotiations, over a year ago, our bargaining team made the decision to begin with a proposal to fix Temple’s broken sick leave policy, a policy that subjects our Librarian and Academic Professional colleagues to discipline for taking the sick time they need and have earned. On paper, they have 10 days of sick time, but will be disciplined if they take more than 5.

After months of Temple’s negotiating team insisting they want to settle this contract, they made the decision to walk away from the table over a zero-cost, immoral policy. This is an issue of dignity. Nobody should be penalized for taking care of their health.

Tell Temple leadership: sick days are a human right.