SPRINGFIELD — Tenured and tenure-track faculty members at the University of Illinois Springfield campus began a strike Friday morning after nearly a year of unsuccessful negotiations with university officials.
Discussions between the school and the University Professionals of Illinois, the union that represents professors from seven of Illinois’ 12 public university campuses, have stalled over salaries and workplace protections.
The latest contract offer from the university is headlined by a one-time 1% pay raise. University of Illinois Springfield United Faculty President Dathan Powell said that offer doesn’t match inflation and falls well short of the union’s demands.
“Our university likes to tout that we provided to Illinois almost a million dollars in economic increases last year,” said Powell, a university theater professor and director. “The university needs to come to the table with serious compensation packages that recognize that return on investment.”
Beyond pay, Powell said the university’s efforts to remove parking fee caps and the right for faculty members to have their own office space have been major sticking points in negotiations.
While the university and the union have long battled over parking fees, office space and salaries, a new frontier in contract negotiations has emerged surrounding artificial intelligence.
Specifically, professors are looking for protections against having to use AI in their classrooms and greater scrutiny on how the university can use AI to judge their work. So far, Powell said the university has rejected all proposals around AI.
English professor Stephanie Hedge, who helped write the union’s proposals addressing AI, said the technology is adding to their labor burden and that teachers deserve to have a voice in how that technology is used.
“To say that we are unwilling to even have a conversation about artificial intelligence in the contract is totally backwards,” Hedge said. “We don’t want to shut down artificial intelligence use. We want to make sure that we are part of the conversation about how that happens at our institution.”
University officials said in a statement that they are “disappointed” in the union’s decision to strike, but that they remain committed to reaching an agreement.
“The University of Illinois Springfield respects the right of the UPI Local 4100 tenured and tenure-track faculty to choose a work stoppage, but is disappointed that union members have chosen this course of action,” the administration said. “The University continues to work toward a fair and fiscally responsible contract that serves the entire university community and hopes to reach a timely agreement with the Union.”
Since July, the two sides have held 18 bargaining sessions, nine with an independent federal mediator. In March, union members voted unanimously to authorize a strike if a contract agreement could not be reached.
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While the strike continues and with finals week approaching in early May, the university’s tenured and tenure-track union professors will not assign homework, grade quizzes or look at final projects. University officials said students in classes taught by striking professors should adhere to their class rubrics and check their emails for updates.
As university officials weigh how to respond to the professors’ strike, simultaneous negotiations with the UPI chapter representing the university’s support staff, which includes janitors, office administrators and culinary workers, will also be underway. Negotiations with support staff members have been ongoing for nearly a year and center mainly around pay.
While union custodial worker Allan Bettis said they have not announced a strike, the university is not leaving them with many other options.
“The ball’s really in their court,” Bettis said. “We’ve offered them ways to keep things balanced as far as the budget goes, but still give us what we’re looking for and they just simply won’t do it, which, to me, says they just don’t respect us at all.”
This most recent strike is the latest instance of university officials and the unions representing the school’s workers butting heads over contracts in recent years. The professors union filed an intent to strike one day before an agreement was reached in 2022, and a five-day strike took place after 20 months of stalled negotiations in 2017.
“If the chancellor wants to hire another highly paid administrator, she can do that. If they want to invest in all their pet projects, they can do that,” Powell said. “We want them to invest in our students and our faculty and our staff. We are the ones who are here for our students on the front line in the classroom.”