The union representing faculty and staff at City Colleges of Chicago is set to strike on Oct. 19 after months of unsuccessful negotiations for a new contract.
The Cook County College Teachers Union Local 1600 announced the strike date at a picketing event outside Harold Washington College Thursday afternoon, just over two months after its contract with the schools expired.
Roughly 50 demonstrators stood in the rain in matching red shirts and called for a fair contract with the school system ahead of the City College’s Office of the Board of Trustees meeting that afternoon.
While the rain may have rendered their handmade signs soggy, the union appeared unbothered outside the college as they chanted “Get up, get down, Chicago is a union town,” and “What do we want? Fair contract! When do we want it? Now!”
The union has been negotiating with City Colleges since February but has made little progress, union President Tony Johnston told the Tribune ahead of the announcement. Late last month, 96% or 1,388 of the union’s eligible faculty and staff voted to authorize a strike against City Colleges of Chicago, with 91% of members voting. Contracts for faculty and professional staff expired on July 15.
“Hopefully, I think we’ve got enough time to get a deal before that strike date, but it will call for the City Colleges to come with a much more ‘bargaining in earnest’ approach to negotiations,” Johnston said.
Specifically, staff and faculty union members are seeking a contract that protects against artificial intelligence, reduces student barriers to education, provides free foundational and noncredit courses, and has smaller class sizes. Beyond that, the union wants to protect what Johnston described as the “master’s incentive,” which gives faculty and staff with master’s degrees a $750 annual boost to their salaries.
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“This is something that helps the institution,” Johnston said. “It helps our students when we have a workforce that has master’s degrees, skills, and content knowledge that only is better for our students.”
The union is also seeking wage increases that “reflect current economic conditions,” according to a Sept. 24 Illinois Federation of Teachers news release. Johnston told the Tribune Wednesday the union has not received a proposal that improves on the current contract and that “what is currently on the table from the City Colleges would amount to a pay cut somewhere in the realm of 2% to 3%.”
While the union has tried to shift its salary and contract proposals, it needs to emerge with an agreement that can prepare members against inflation spikes, he said.
“There’s a certain point when they just keep rejecting proposals that we get to a point where if we try to loosen up our proposals, we’re just negotiating against ourselves,” Johnston said.
Gerald Muñoz, a professional grant writer at City Colleges and a graduate of the school system, has two main concerns: AI protections and a living wage that keeps pace with rising costs. AI is already emerging in the grant writing field and across classrooms, Muñoz said.
“As someone who went here, it’s the individuals who made all the difference,” Muñoz said. “It’s that very human experience. I can’t imagine that getting traded off in any way.”
City Colleges serves over 73,000 students a year through its network of seven campuses and five satellite sites, according to its website. In a statement to the Tribune, the school system said it “remains committed to finalizing agreements with faculty and professional staff as we continue to support students in achieving their educational and career goals.”
The strike date announcement comes nearly four years after the union was in a similar position while negotiating its previous contract with City Colleges. In fall 2022, the union also voted to strike and came close to an official walkout before reaching a last-minute deal with the administration in late October. This year, a strike could involve 565 faculty members and 891 professional staff, the union said.
Still, Johnston said the decision to set a strike date was not made lightly.
“Both our faculty and professionals very much want to continue teaching and working with our students; they are not wanting to go out on strike, but they also can’t accept a contract that will actually turn into a pay cut,” Johnston said. “ … We need something that moves us forward, not backward.”