Stand up for a fair contract settlement

As of September 1, it has been 428 days without a contract for us, and our three sister IEA locals. The Faculty Association bargaining team met in negotiations with the Board (Administration) bargaining team earlier this week and more sessions are planned for this week and the future. In short, the report from our FA team is that the Board position has not substantially changed from the unacceptable terms imposed on our unit last spring. It is imperative that faculty in our unit become more involved in expressing their displeasure with the Board’s terms. Thursday’s demonstration was a step towards getting that message out.

Report from the FA Bargaining Team

Over the last few bargaining sessions, the Board team has maintained its position of saying NO to our efforts at contractualizing language that protects Faculty interests and holds the Administration accountable.  They are saying:

• NO to having a transparent and accountable process for layoffs that does not undermine our tenure rights.
• NO to having a transparent and accountable process for furloughs that does not undermine our rights to collectively bargain salaries.
• NO to our academic freedom right to determine the method of delivery of our courses.
• NO to our right to choose whether or not we want to develop and teach Distance Education courses.
• NO to including language that protects the student/faculty ratio as more distance education courses are taught.
• NO to including language specifying that the delivery of SIUC courses not be outsourced to other institutions.

At the end of our last bargaining session, we were verbally informed that the Chancellor was working very hard to put together the following salary increases over 4 years:

FY 11: 0%
FY 12: 0%
FY 13: 0.5%
FY 14: 1%.

Our team’s  response to the Board team is that the Chancellor has to work much harder (at least as hard as she did to change our university’s logo).

In reality, due to the furlough days, a 2% reduction in pay was imposed in FY 11. Under the Board’s proposal, the slice of the pie put towards faculty and academics will just get smaller and smaller. To date, there has been no movement on a number of other key issues involving workload and overload, sexual harassment procedures, and conflict of interest policies.