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NEWS & LETTERS, November 2004Chicago colleges union-busting fails
Chicago--After three weeks of walking strike picket
lines at all campuses of City Colleges of Chicago, the multi-campus system of
community colleges in Chicago, full-time teachers got a contract minus the
poison pill provisions that forced them to walk out. While on strike, picketers
at Malcolm X College sounded off on the issues: "They demanded that we
increase our course load from 12 hours a week to 15--at no increase in pay. Of
course we won’t work for free, but I really don’t want to talk about. They
put that demand in just to guarantee that we would reject it, because they want
to break the union. "It is the same thing with the salary increases they
are offering. If we wanted to start kicking in more for health care than our
total pay increase, we wouldn’t need a union to do it. "The college heads have been counting on keeping
classes open without us. They have been bragging repeatedly that 70% of the
teachers are part-timers--the so-called "adjunct" faculty--who are not
in the union. They are counting on all those part-timers to cross, and they have
actually ordered students to come to class. "We don’t have any statistics on how many classes
are actually being held, we are just teachers. But from what we can see looking
in through the windows from the picket line, not many classrooms are in use.
Those classrooms that do have a teacher in them have just one or two students,
or at most a handful." Even the college administration had to recognize the
support the strike was receiving from students and part-time faculty alike.
Students not only stayed out of classrooms in droves, but demonstrated before
the college board demanding a settlement with the teachers. The lame response
was, why aren’t you protesting against the union too. So many part-time teachers refused to cross the picket
lines that the administration tried to play hardball once more by threatening to
hire replacement workers for the adjunct faculty that had not been crossing the
lines. They admitted the effectiveness of the strike by stating that, without a
settlement, they would have to cancel the rest of the semester and refund
students’ tuition. The tentative settlement eliminates, among other
provisions, the demand for increasing course load from 12 to 15 hours. It brings
to an end this attempt in a union town by an institution controlled by Mayor
Daley to crush a union. --Bob McGuire |
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