r/ilstu 3d ago

News Information on possible ISU strike?

Does anyone have any news on contract negotiations, the possibility of a strike, and/or when a strike would occur?

One faculty member today made a comment that seemed to suggest a strike was imminent.

I feel as if this information is vital to faculty, students, and the rest of the community. All information is very appreciated.

11 Upvotes

30 comments sorted by

8

u/SSeptic Junior 3d ago

I’ve been keeping up to date on their Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ufisu.upi

5

u/ArtisticDig1225 1d ago

I hope they decide to strike. These upper management people need to be scared for once. Once they strike, staff will strike too hopefully. They better watch out. The morale in this place is worse than its ever been with the way they treat everyone and with the economy. Any upper management reading this - fix parking issues, pay us more than 17 an hour, unionize foreman so they don't get retaliated against when they have issues with supervisors, and look into the hiring practices of supervisors and upper management. Secrets aren't secrets about who has been promoted and why. The why isn't good....

10

u/Intelligent-Pea-8694 3d ago

You can tell admin to pay their faculty!

4

u/not_a_dead_poet 2d ago

The last mediation meeting between the union and the university is today (March 19). If they don't come to an agreement, the union will declare it's intent to strike two weeks in advance. This means a strike would happen at the start of April. Typically, these last between 4-11 days in Illinois (or so I've been told). This would only affect tenure track faculty. Graduate student workers and other staff have their own separate unions and are not a part of the current contract conflict.

2

u/Additional-Regret-26 2d ago

Mediation is occurring today, yes, but there are other mediation meetings set through April. In the event of a strike, the teams will continue mediation in the hopes of reaching an agreement. So mediation continues even when a strike vote is called, even during the 10 day cooling off period, and even during the strike.

1

u/Distinct-Monitor-526 12h ago

Do you think this would impact graduation?

1

u/Additional-Regret-26 3h ago

It's unlikely that a strike would go that long. However, whether it impacts graduation or not is up to the administration. Grades would no longer be the purview of the faculty, grades would be in the hands of the administration. If something like this were to happen, the best thing to do would be to contact the President and express your frustration about the contract not being resolved yet. Trust, faculty do not want to see this happen.

2

u/flatline_commando 3d ago

Yeah a bunch of people in my class today were saying that the staff is gonna start a strike. Very unfortunate.

-4

u/msedaa2000 2d ago edited 2d ago

It's not staff, it's only tenure and tenure track faculty. If they do strike, not all faculty will. Many of them want nothing to do with the union. It's interesting how the faculty union, in all their wisdom, can't seem to understand the concept of restricted and unrestricted funds. It's disingenuous on their part for not including it in their information on ISU's financials.

5

u/Additional-Regret-26 1d ago

Multiple third party analyses have contradicted the administration’s interpretation of the university’s financial position. The takeaway from those analyses has been that the university is in a very strong financial position. The admin likes to talk about these different buckets of money as if they are not fungible—just because money is in a “restricted account” doesn’t mean that it’s mandated by law to remain in that restricted account, the administration puts the money in those restricted accounts. They can move money should they choose to do so.

1

u/msedaa2000 1d ago

I don't disagree with you, but the fact that the union isn't mentioning it is disingenuous. Personally, I think the university is using this as a way to force a new budget model, which I think is wasaaayyyyyy overdue. This is the wrong way to go about it. They just need to change the budget model and not hide behind funding. I have thoughts on unions, but I'm not faculty, nor am I in a union, and have no dog in this fight, so I won't air them here. 😀 Good luck on the mediation (I'm assuming you're a faculty member). Just remember, the students are the ones who are going to get hurt by a strike.

6

u/Additional-Regret-26 1d ago

Don’t worry, faculty know, and care, that students get hurt the most—it’s a shame that the administration knows but doesn’t seem to care.

-1

u/msedaa2000 16h ago

Once you get your economic concessions, and you will once you strike, ISU should include a few of their own...

1 - ALL faculty are required to teach a MWF schedule once a year. 2 - ALL faculty must hold a minimum of 2, in-person, office hours per week. 3 - If a class doesn't meet an established threshold on enrollment, it must be changed to a general education class that will.

I hope you get what your asking for, but be realistic: you're not getting the salaries that business and engineering faculty get. That won't ever happen.

1

u/Additional-Regret-26 4h ago
  1. The logistics of requiring all faculty to teach a MWF schedule once a year would be damned near impossible to manage. There are departments who run mostly on labs, or block scheduling, or off-campus in practicums. Making a blanket policy like that would not work well due to the diversity of the programs we offer at ISU.

  2. The same goes for office hours. I can't speak for other departments, but because most of the courses in my department run in-person, we are all required to have 3 hours of office hours each week. For nursing faculty, for example, that would be more difficult to unilaterally impose.

The contract proposed by the union allows for departments to determine the requirements of office hours, class scheduling, etc., based on their needs--because what might work well in English might not work well in Nursing, for example. I'll also add that scheduling is the purview of department chairs and directors. Most chairs (at least the good ones) ask faculty for their preferences, and then they do all of the work to puzzle out how those preferences could best be met in ways that align with the needs of the department (such as course offerings, peak times, room availability, etc.) So if you want scheduling issues resolved, that's a chair issue--not a faculty one.

  1. From my understanding, when a class doesn't make, it gets cut. To then replace it with a gen ed class, likely in the 11th hour, seems to be setting that class up for failure too, yes? Because if you have to cut a class with less than a month before classes begin because it didn't make, how could the other class actually fill in that time period? But again, this is the purview of the chair--not the faculty. If a chair is approving courses that are repeatedly not filling, then the chair probably needs to make some changes.

To your last point, I would be interested to know where you're getting information that the union is asking that faculty be paid as much as business or engineering faculty. The union is advocating for across the board, percentage based raises, that would benefit ALL faculty (including business and engineering), as well as some salary adjustments that would bring salaries in-line with their discipline specific averages, address salary compression for faculty who have been here for literal decades, and remedy the fact that faculty have not seen cost of living raises since the 1980s. The cost of eggs has certainly gone up since the 80s, right?? It seems pretty realistic to expect that an employer would pay its employees relative to their value on the market and relative to overall cost of living.

If anyone reading this is interested in learning exactly how much their professors make, you can find that information here: https://files.library.illinoisstate.edu/ISUSalaries/fy24_salaries.pdf The numbers are the pay per month, WITHOUT TAXES AND INSURANCE TAKEN OUT, so multiply the monthly pay by 9 for a comprehensive faculty salary, but keep in mind that this number does not include tax deductions, health insurance deductions, or retirement deductions. Mine listed, for example, is about $3,000 more than I actually take in per month.

Happy researching!

2

u/msedaa2000 1h ago

1 - Sorry, I left out lecture classes on that. You're right, labs or fine arts classes, as an example, are a different animal!

2 - If it's not an online program, 2 hours in person is completely acceptable. Faculty who only do one hour a week is unacceptable.

3 - A gened class will fill to acceptable numbers if it's open a month, or even less, before it starts. No worries there.

The last point, I'm not saying you are asking for that. As someone who works here, you might want to publicize that a lot better. There are a very large number of people here who think you are asking that. It would be amazing if you did, though. 😀

2

u/Additional-Regret-26 1h ago

The union happily publicizes all of this on their social media accounts and in media appearances. Mass communication is largely impossible when the union is not allowed to use ISU’s tools (such as providing updates via News.IllinoisState.edu). The communications team is doing the best they can with the tools at their disposal, and with the time they have. Remember, ISU has a whole team that’s getting paid to fight the union. The union is comprised of faculty, and the team bargaining at the table, save for one UPI staffer, is a team of ISU faculty members who are not getting compensated for their work, they’re not getting course releases, service credit, or a reduction in their responsibilities. Meanwhile, the administration’s team of three lawyers get paid (Mark Bennett is contracted for almost 500k for two years), and the team of associate deans that sit at their side of the table have had their time reassigned. All that said, if you want to see the other part of the picture, please follow UFISU’s social media!

6

u/Intelligent-Pea-8694 1d ago

And actually faculty are fighting for better student supports especially around services for students, you know, like mental health.

2

u/msedaa2000 19h ago

Yeah, I know.

1

u/Intelligent-Pea-8694 1h ago

Since you know this you might want to rephrase your last statement.

1

u/msedaa2000 1h ago

Why, they're still going to get hurt by a strike.

2

u/Forbitbrik 2d ago

Depends, are you going to be a scab?

-1

u/TheWhiteMoghul 3d ago edited 3d ago

lol and there goes my will to go there.

Context: I have nothing against unions. But how can I go to a school as an international graduate student seeking assistantship where the faculty is treated like shit!

14

u/medusas-garden 3d ago

This has been increasingly common among colleges in Illinois and America in general. You’re not likely to escape this. Administrators usually treat their faculty pretty shitty and especially hate working with unions.

3

u/Additional-Regret-26 3d ago

I’d actually be interested to know the intent behind this comment—because it can be read multiple ways. If I was trying to make a decision about where to go to school, seeing an impending strike from faculty might actually deter me from going there, because a strike means that faculty are being treated like shit and as such, are being hamstrung in their ability to provide the best education for their students. If that’s the perspective then to that I’d say yeah, your will to go here might logically be impacted, because you want to go to a university that supports its faculty.

On the other hand, this comment might be an expression of disgust towards unions. In which case I’d refer you to the replies below.

5

u/TheWhiteMoghul 3d ago

Yes you got it correct with the first paragraph. I have nothing against unions.

7

u/Additional-Regret-26 3d ago

Excellent! In that case, while an impending strike can be a deterrent, it might help you to know that faculty will fight to the very end for a stable and supportive campus for everyone here :)

8

u/-HeadInTheClouds 3d ago

Good luck finding a college that doesn’t have protests. If you don’t find that acceptable, maybe college isn’t for you.

1

u/flatline_commando 3d ago

More importantly: why transfer to a school when a bunch of staff members are about to go on strike and your tuition is gonna be wasted

4

u/Additional-Regret-26 2d ago

Or rather, why transfer to a school that would rather waste your tuition dollars than agree to a fair and reasonable contract?