Faculty strike at University of Illinois Springfield continues into second week

SPRINGFIELD — A strike by faculty members at the University of Illinois Springfield has entered its second week as the union and administration remained divided over salary increases.

The two sides have been unable to reach an agreement over salary increases despite the help of a federal mediator and eight bargaining sessions having taken place between tenured and tenure-track faculty since the strike began on April 3.

“From our perspective, the university is not dealing with us in good faith when it comes to the demands around compensation,” union president Dathan Powell, an associate theater professor at UIS, told Capitol News Illinois. “We can see the salaries that our highest paid administrators are getting and what we’re asking for is well within the reason of what inflationary costs are demand of people who are paid a lot less.”

The UIS United Faculty union is seeking a 2.6% increase in the current fiscal year and 6% over the next two years, according to the university’s bargaining update. UIS has offered three options for increases, two of which begin with 1% raises that could increase under the University of Illinois system’s University Salary Program.

Read more: University of Illinois Springfield faculty go on strike

The university said it believes sticking with the program is more financially feasible and told students in an email last month that the institution was running a $19 million deficit. Powell countered that union contracts at UIS and the other U of I universities show UIS can offer raises that are better than what is set annually by the Board of Trustees for the program. He added the union is also seeking to guarantee raises will be higher than 1%.

“The current median salary for bargaining unit members with a nine-month contract (approximately 20 workdays per month) is approximately $86,000, not including summer stipends or service-in-excess agreements, which can substantially increase an individual’s earnings,” the university said in an email to students on Sunday. “Approximately 1/3 of the faculty members in this union earn over $100,000 annually.”

Powell responded that the union is fighting for the interests of its members who fall below those numbers.

“They are struggling right now in this economy,” Powell said. “And if we want to keep them here because they are high quality teachers and attract new teachers down the road who bring the same energy, they have to be paid a wage that they can afford to raise their families.”

Some progress made

Not all faculty members in the union are participating in the strike. Some professors are covered under a different collective bargaining agreement, meaning classes are continuing for many students.

More negotiations were scheduled for Monday afternoon.

The two sides have reached a tentative agreement on parking and professional development. It would keep a cap on parking fees in place and allow faculty members to roll over funds to future years that are made available to them each year to attend conferences.

Union members also brought their picket to the Statehouse last week to meet with legislators.

“We just let them know that there is a failure of the leadership on our campus to prioritize the teaching and learning the faculty and students here engage in,” Powell said. “They were really receptive to what we had to say.”

UIS accounts for 2% of all of the university system’s spending in the current fiscal year, according to the system’s budget documents. The university also receives only 3% of state funds allocated to the system.

A staff union at UIS is also negotiating a new contract and has authorized a strike but have so far not instituted a work stoppage.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.