Usually, money and health insurance are the stumbling blocks to a contract settlement. This year, the negotiating team for 216 full-time faculty at William Rainey Harper College in Illinois faced a management team attempting to restrict academic freedom. For the Cook County College Teachers Union/AFT, that issue was non-negotiable and brought the college to the brink of a strike this month.

"The board had wanted the right to determine who will teach, when, what and how," says Perry Buckley, CCCTU president and chief negotiator of the contract at the Harper chapter. "We said we'd spend forever in the picket line" to fight these board power plays, "and we'll have every colleague in the state with us."

To settle the last contract, in 2002, Harper faculty mounted a 12-day strike—the first in the union's 30-year history. This time around, faculty stood ready to do it again.

In the end, not only did the union preserve the protections faculty already had, the board gave them more. The four-year contract, which runs from Aug. 15, 2006, to Aug. 14, 2010, has language guaranteeing the board powers and duties granted by public law, "except as limited by the written provisions" of the agreement. In addition, the contract affirms the faculty's right to participate in shared governance and to "choose their own teaching strategies and course content."

The contract gives salary increases of 4.3 percent per year and retains significant pay increases for promotions. Retirement issues were also a tough point in the bargaining, and the union was able to retain an early retirement incentive through 2010 and assure retiree health insurance coverage under the state plan.

Other features of the contract: Faculty maintain their role in the promotions process; they set office hours; they earn extra for developing distance learning classes and they participate more fully in the department chair selection process. Release time for union officers and faculty senators is guaranteed. The contract sets up committees to look at domestic partner benefits; intellectual property rights; and welfare benefits such as orthodontics, hearing and eye care benefits.

Buckley says that faculty were unfaltering in their efforts to secure a fair contract, dressing in red to show solidarity and showing up for rallies. It paid off: Four years to the day after the Harper faculty took to the picket lines for the strike of 2002, they assembled to learn the details of their new settlement. "The ovation was overwhelming," says Buckley. [Barbara McKenna, Perry Buckley]

October 12, 2006