Chicago higher ed faculty end three-week strike
Healthcare costs, workload were key issues

The 1,300 faculty and professional staff and the 65,000 students of the City Colleges of Chicago returned to class Nov. 8, after three weeks out on the picket line. The drama brought to a close more than 16 months of negotiations between the Cook County College Teachers Union, which represents faculty and professionals at the seven colleges in the system, and lawyers hired by the CCC administration.

After the union and administration declared impasse, federal mediation commenced and employees went on strike Oct. 19. CCCTU president Perry Buckley addressed a public meeting of the CCC board of trustees on Nov. 4 and demanded to sit opposite decision-makers at the bargaining table. Within 10 hours of face-to-face negotiations between the union's chief negotiators and the CCC chancellor and board chair, the two sides had reached a tentative agreement.The new contract was ratified at a Nov. 7 meeting, at which 95 percent of union members present voted to approve it.

The four-year contract provides 4 percent salary increases each year and keeps family health insurance cost increases to $750 a year. It also provides that nursing instructors are paid for every hour they spend teaching, both in class and in clinics. Most important, the agreement resolves the primary sticking point in negotiations, which led to the strike. The administration demanded that full-time faculty increase their workload from 12 classroom hours a semester to 15 hours. Because class sizes have been increasing over the past few years in the cash-strapped system, says Buckley, the union maintained that faculty workload already was stretched and educational quality compromised. The settlement postpones that discussion until the next contract negotiations.

Students played an important role in reaching settlement. The student government association voted to support the faculty, and most students didn't cross the picket lines, despite the fact that part-time faculty who were represented by a different union were required by their contract to continue teaching.

The settlement covers four separate agreements for the 550 full-time faculty, 200 full-time and 150 part-time nonteaching professionals and 500 campus police officers.

Professional development funds axed

AFT affiliates in New York are seething in the wake of a state budget decision that could force paraprofessionals who work as teaching assistants to choose between large personal debts or forgoing the coursework they need to stay in the profession.

The problem stems from recent budget vetoes by Gov. George Pataki that slashed funding for the AFL-CIO’s Workforce Development Institute (WDI) from about $4.2 million to $668,000. WDI reimburses half the tuition costs incurred by teaching assistants who participate in “Introduction to Education for Paraeducators,” offered through the New York State United Teachers Education and Learning Trust. The program offers teaching assistants an affordable way of undertaking professional coursework—not a small consideration in New York, where regulations went into effect in 2004 requiring teaching assistants to earn 18 undergraduate credits to keep their positions.

If the vetoes are not overridden by the state Assembly, seven state centers operated by WDI will close, and “in some cases this will mean the difference between whether a member can take a class or not,” warns NYSUT second vice president Maria Neira, who is also an AFT vice president.

A bid to override the vetoes fell just one vote short in a special Assembly session held in September. But the fight to restore funding could resurface late this year when the full Legislature is scheduled to reconvene.

The AFL-CIO is encouraging labor groups in New York to contact their state lawmakers, letting them know the value of the offerings axed by the governor and asking them to override his veto.

AFT's new face in the Great Lakes region

When the position of deputy director in the AFT Great Lakes region needed to be filled, the union didn’t need to look far to find a qualified candidate. AFT national representative Cathleen McCann was appointed to the post this past July.

Being part of the effort to bring “unrepresented people into the labor movement and increasing the activism of already represented workers is most rewarding,” McCann says about her job. Organized labor is at a crucial crossroads, and the ability of the AFT and its members to improve education and public services and to tackle tough issues like healthcare reform, depends on the active involvement of AFT members and other unionists, she says.

As a deputy regional director, McCann will play a key role in working with locals and state federations to determine how the national union can best assist them. This includes coordinating the use of AFT resources for organizing and other union-building activities.

McCann brings a diversity of AFT experience to the job. Since 1992, she has worked in a variety of capacities at both the state and national levels. But possibly the best training McCann received was from watching her father, Tone McCann, former president of the AFT’s Shenendehowa (N.Y.) Teachers Association, as she was growing up in Clifton Park, N.Y. “I was a small soldier in the wars for basic rights and respect that took place in upstate New York in the 1970s,” McCann recalls.

The Great Lakes Region includes Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin.