CHAPEL HILL - The UNC system Board of Governors approved guidelines Friday it says will protect university workers if they are shifted into a new university personnel system this year.

Amid protesters’ interruptions, the board passed “guiding principles” that bill sponsor Sen. Richard Stevens, a Wake County Republican, says would be inserted into any legislation that might be approved.

UNC President Tom Ross and the board have said the guidelines would allow employees to help build a new system that would ultimately serve them better than the State Personnel Act, under which the estimated 22,000 affected workers now fall.

The legislation creating the new personnel system, Senate Bill 575, missed a deadline to be considered during the upcoming session, but its personnel provisions could be added to a final budget bill.

UNC system officials say they need a personnel system tailored to the higher education environment to give them flexibility during tough economic times. They say any new system would contain a grievance process, protect whistleblowers and preserve health and other benefits.

Opponents say UNC system leaders are asking workers to take a chance on a new system before it’s been created. Some workers have expressed concern they could become “at will” employees able to be fired at any time without cause.

According to the guiding principles, current SPA employees would not be required to become “at will” employees in their current jobs but could choose to accept transfers for promotions to “at will” positions, which means they would serve at the will of the chancellor.

Five coalition members tried to listen to discussion on the bill during a Board of Governors committee meeting Thursday, said Laurel Ashton, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill. They were told an earlier meeting had run over and that they would be brought back in when the bill was being discussed. But the group was invited back only after the committee had finished talking about SB 575, she said.

“They pretty much manipulated us out of being at the meeting,” she said.

“Nothing is legally binding, so we don’t know what the future will hold,” she added. “Once again the message is ‘Trust us and our good will.”

As public safety officers removed her from Friday’s full board meeting, Zaina Alsous, 21, another UNC-CH student, said the group was forced to interrupt the meeting because it had been ignored.

“We have been left with no other option to get voices heard,” she said. “This is a major policy change that will give power to all future board members that might be less inclined to protect the rights of workers.”

But Phillip Dixon, a Greenville attorney, and chairman of the Personnel and Tenure Committee said he made sure the group’s comments were submitted to the rest of the board and stayed after the committee meeting on Thursday to answer questions from students for about an hour.

The committee did not discuss SB 575 during its meeting and only voted on the updated guiding principles, he said. The students were not in the room during the vote, but he’s not sure what delayed them. After they entered the room, he reintroduced the item to give the committee the opportunity to reconsider, which it declined, he said.

Dixon said he was surprised that students interrupted Friday’s full board meeting but said he admired their concern. “I think everybody wants to make sure our employees are treated fairly, and if anything I think we bend over backwards," he said. “How do you make [the provisions] specific when you don’t know what the (final) legislation is going to say?”

Opponents of the legislation say that as the makeup of the Board of Governors changes, so can the policies, but Dixon said the State Personnel Commission that oversees the State Personnel Act is appointed by the General Assembly like the UNC Board of Governors.

Charles Thomas Brink, an SPA electrician and chairman for the Staff Assembly, the body that represents employees at the UNC system’s 17 campuses, said the Board of Governors included all the changes the assembly wanted and has consulted with employees from the beginning, he said.

A unified personnel system could help employees get raises and make sure their concerns get heard by a body focused on university employees, Brink said. President Ross has assured him that the collaboration would continue if the legislation is passed this year.

“I’m going to take him at his word and nothing has happened to tell me otherwise,” he said.