Eight days into a strike over pay, healthcare and workload issues, talks abruptly ended when negotiators for the City Colleges of Chicago left the bargaining table on Oct. 27. On the same day, lawyers for the Cook County College Teachers Union filed an unfair labor practice with the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board. They charged that City Colleges chancellor Wayne Watson and other college presidents approached CCCTU members on the picket line offering threats and promises that amounted to illegal attempts at direct negotiation with the workers.

The 1,300 faculty and professional staff at the City Colleges of Chicago went on strike Oct. 19 for the first time in 27 years. This action came after the CCCTU had spent the past 14 months negotiating four separate contracts for the 550 full-time faculty, 200 full-time and 150 part-time nonteaching professionals and 500 campus police officers.

The City Colleges board is demanding that all faculty assume an average three-hour per semester teaching load increase to 15 hours and also accommodate larger class sizes. "We made it crystal-clear that this was a strike issue," says CCCTU president Perry Buckley.

At the same time, management is demanding hikes in the amount employees pay for their healthcare while offering salary increases that will leave workers experiencing an overall pay cut. A federal mediator is working the two sides.

Hundreds of faculty and staff have maintained the picket lines each day and students have chosen to honor the strike. Before the strike began, the student government association voted to support the faculty. That support reflects the fact that "the students believe their teachers, not the board," says Norman Swenson, chief negotiator for the CCCTU. On the second day of the strike, students organized a rally at the Malcolm X College picket line, and booed the chancellor when he arrived at the scene, according to CCCTU chief negotiator Norman Swenson.  On Oct. 28, hundreds of students rallied at City Hall to ask the Chicago mayor to help settle the strike that has interfered with the education of some 60,000 students.

Adjunct and part-time faculty are also honoring the strike.  A portion of them are represented by a separate union that has a no-strike clause in its contract. They have agreed not to teach any of the classes of CCCTU members, however.  One student told the Chicago Tribune on Oct. 23, that her college "was like a ghost town."

The seven colleges of the City Colleges of Chicago are Harold Washington College, Harry S Truman College, Kennedy-King College, Malcolm X College, Olive-Harvey College, Richard J. Daley College and Wilbur Wright College. For more details and to send messages of support, visit the CCCTU Web site. [Barbara McKenna, Bob Blackwood, Norm Swenson, Perry Buckley, Chicago Tribune]

October 28, 2004