Faculty at William Rainey Harper College, in Palatine, Ill., ended an 11-day strike on Oct. 20 after voting 158-12 to ratify a new contract. The strike was the first in the history of the Harper College Faculty Senate, a union of full-time faculty that is affiliated with the Cook County College Teachers Union/IFT/AFT. "Not one of the 206 faculty crossed a picket line," says Norman Swenson, CCCTU president and AFT vice president. Swenson and two others were arrested for trespassing shortly after dawn on Oct. 15. They were in the midst of convincing electrical workers, bricklayers, ironworkers, crane operators--more than 20 construction locals in all--to stop work on the college's $90 million building project. That shutdown, along with the union's clear solidarity, were the elements that caught the administration off guard and made a critical difference in reaching a settlement, says HCFS secretary Jim Edstrom. Salaries and health insurance costs were the biggest issues in the negotiations. The college was offering raises that sounded generous but that would have been consumed by 41 percent increases in the cost of health insurance. In the end, faculty got a four-year contract with raises of about 5 percent each year and a reasonable structure for paying health insurance that benefits all college staff. [Trish Gorman]

[October 24, 2002]