NEWS & EVENTS (BenOrtiz.com)

The City Colleges of Chicago Local 1600 Strike lives on in the heart of disciplinary darkness. Follow continuing administrative misadventures here with the following reports:

1. FEATURE STORY from Labor's Militant Voice writer and Truman student Cliff Willmeng (12/04)

2. ADULT EDUCATOR DISCIPLINARY ACTION STATEMENT from Truman teacher Earl Silbar (12/1/04)

3. PRESENTATION to the CITY COLLEGES BOARD by Anthony Johnston, Local 1600 Chapter Chair for Truman (12/2/04)

[ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF Cliff Willmeng]

1. FEATURE STORY: The following piece, written by Truman student Cliff Willmeng, appeared in Labor's Militant Voice. In my opinion, this is one of the best pieces I've seen on the strike, for its scope, writing quality, and accuracy. --b

[Photo Detail: Cliff tangles with a security guard over free speech at the CCC Board Meeting on 11/4/04.]

Labor Unrest 101

Striking teachers from Local 1600 and students from Chicago City Colleges have returned to class after a three-week struggle to turn back the most ambitious administration attacks to working conditions, health care, and class size in perhaps twenty-seven years. During a rapidly escalating battle between labor and management that played out on picket lines, in City Hall, City College offices, and in the halls of the colleges themselves, a fighting teacher/student solidarity proved to be the critical turning point, not only in bringing the administration to the table, but bringing them to the table with offers.

The battle had already begun by the time the first picket signs were hoisted onto the shoulders of teachers and strike supporters. Administration officials took to plastering the halls of colleges with posters telling students they “MUST ATTEND CLASS,” knowing one of the key components to strike strategy was the uninterrupted continuation of classes. Scrolling, electronic signs pressured students and part-time faculty into crossing picket lines, as representatives from the Student Government Association went onto the Chicago nightly news to announce classes would not be affected. Because Local 1600 hadn’t made an effort to mobilize student’ opinion and action to the side of the teachers, college officials were doing so on behalf of the administration.

In the days leading up to the strike, however, students had been organizing themselves at all seven City Colleges. Flyers were passed out at one college in favor of the teachers, while petitions circulated at another. At Truman College, flyers speaking out against administration demands on teachers and for a full support of the picket lines were placed alongside of administration posters. After these students saw their flyers being torn down by Truman President Marguerite Boyd, a confrontation followed that forced administration to take down posters and replace them with new signs that made no statements about mandatory student attendance. It was not to be the last showdown in the weeks that followed.

The demands made by City College officials could be seen as nothing short of draconian. Workloads were to go from 12 credit hours a semester to a mandated 15, requiring many of the teachers to instruct either one or two additional classes for free. Banked vacation time was also attacked along with the limits on class size. In an effort to eliminate affordable health care, administration officials demanded teachers pay a percentage of premiums rather than their standard monthly fee. If successful, it would have amounted to an increase in insurance costs for teachers potentially reaching 400%.

With nowhere else to go, teachers took to picket lines with support from many part-time teachers, adult educators, and the newly formed student Strike Solidarity Committee. Most classes ground to a halt, but several stayed running because the three unions in the City College system were not under one contract. Even so, the numbers on the picket lines were in the hundreds. Many students came to class on that day only to learn for the first time what a picket line is, and what is expected of people with business behind them.

Throughout the initial days of the strike, City College appointees of Mayor Richard Daley refused to budge at all. Backed by the will to bring the first public sector union in Chicago to its knees, CCC officials went on the offensive. Health care insurance was cut off for striking teaches, sending a wave of fear into a faculty that included people with cancer treatments and late-term pregnancies. Arrests and intimidation of students took place at picket lines and at a meeting of the City College Board. Part-time teachers were fired for supporting the embattled Local 1600, and deans were dispatched to physically ensure classes were continuing amidst a desert of student attendance.

By the end of the second week, friend of business Mayor Daley started to publicly ridicule the teachers with ignorant comments in the Chicago Sun-Times about workloads. "I wish I could work 15 hours per week,'' Daley said, referring only to professors' classroom time. "It would be a great job.''

A strong student and teacher unity was growing, however, that did not respect City Hall insults or perceived invincibility. On Thursday, October 28, a rally was called, and more than 600 students and teachers poured from Local 1600 busses onto City Hall, setting up a picket line stretching a block long. Around 60 students charged onto the 5th floor Mayor’s office and occupied the area for over six hours demanding the Mayor’s presence. The chanting and noise of the students was so loud that it could be heard clearly all the way down to the first floor. Elevator shafts sounded with the calls for a real contract, and meetings were held in which students pressed for their own demands: NO REPRISALS AGAINST STUDENTS ON STRIKE - NO TUITION HIKES! By 4:40 PM, students were told that they must either leave or face arrest. The only thing that moved them from the spot, however, was a false rumor that the administration had been forced back to the negotiation table because of their actions.

The administration still refused to drop their demands on the teachers, and the strike was building in tension and time. Working-class students, often single mothers, could not afford to have their semester lost, and striking teachers were looking at expensive COBRA plans to keep their families insured. The fight reached a climax on Thursday, November 4, when a public City College board meeting refused to allow teachers and students to address the administration. A crowd, disillusioned with petitioning a hostile Board and furious at the growing attacks on teachers and students, had noisily gathered outside of the elevator lobby. When security guards stopped reading the names of people allowed admittance to the meeting, patience wore out completely, and the crowd surged forward.

Ropes containing the crowd were cast to the side as people moved into the elevator lobby. Several guards grabbed one student organizer, and others rushed in for support. Small fights broke out as security fought to restrain teachers and students charging onto the elevators heading to the Board’s meeting space. People began pulling off security personnel who were piling on top of the student organizer, while other security guards struck their walkie-talkies onto the heads of students. Elevators in the main lobby were immediately shut down to protect the building from the mass of people fighting to get to CCC officials. Within minutes one security guard was bleeding from the head, apparently from a missed swing by another guard. A Tribune photographer later described the atmosphere as so intense that her knees had literally begun to shake while she snapped pictures.

During this time a woman who had already made it onto the third floor “fainted”, forcing paramedics to the scene. While the Chicago Fire Department shut down Jackson Street with no less than one engine, paramedics headed up the stairs with a stretcher. When they arrived on the third floor and began to administer help to the woman, she suddenly woke and instructed them not to help her. “I have no health care insurance!” she told them.

When Chicago Police finally forced teachers and students from the building, people were neither tired nor intimidated. Trustee board Chairman James Tyree (a key player in CCC administration) had an investment banking office at Mesirow Financial just up the street. Teachers and students began to prepare on the spot for an action at the Chairman’s personal office. Before it could take place, however, Local 1600 officials had “cancelled” the action as negotiations were back under way and the union had decided that they wanted more diplomacy than strike escalation by then.

Within 48 hours, the Chicago City College administration had changed its position on class size and extra class load for the teachers. They also doubled the pay for clinical teaching in the nursing department, created a deal for part-time professionals, and eliminated publishing requirements for faculty. On the darker side, health care costs still increased, and the yearly pay raise was settled at around 3%. It was not a breakthrough contract but without any doubt one that fell far short of administration ambitions. The contract was approved by 95% of the striking faculty that Sunday.

CCC officals understood the contract as a loss before the ink was dry. Pushing into the strike with enormous demands, they were turned around by a building wave of teacher/student solidarity that was prepared to throw aside polite appeals to Mayor Daley and take the fight back to City College officials. Speaking about the confrontation at the City College Board meeting, Trustee Chairman James Tyree was quoted as saying, “We never want to see that again.” In a long era of labor fighting with two hands tied behind its back, Chicago City College teachers and their students managed to loosen the binds in a way that needs to be recognized.

For this same reason, reprisals against teachers and students were quick to begin. Ten days after the contract was signed, students were being punished academically, part-time teachers had been fired, nursing student fees were jacked up $900/year, and disciplinary charges were being levied on supporting adult educators. CCC had also dispatched Chicago Police to arrest a Malcolm X teacher from his home for being at the City College Board meeting the day of the protest. In a clear policy of payback, City College officials are now trying to hammer the same people that forced them to turn backwards during the strike.

In the time to come, the teachers and students of Chicago City Colleges will not be able to relax with their victory. As a result, however, new student/worker organizing may have been created that can take a larger and more profound offensive in the embattled pubic schools of Chicago, without the limits of union fragmentation or conservative political boundaries. In an era of Renaissance 2010 and the militarization of Senn High School, this fighting form of organizing could potentially lead the way to reclaiming our schools and our city back from City Hall and big business. LMV salutes the hard-fought efforts of the teachers and students that made it possible.

–By Cliff Willmeng

• • • • • • • • • •

2. ADULT EDUCATOR DISCIPLINARY ACTION STATEMENT

Now I'll take those Tums, thanks (disciplinary decision)
By Earl Silbar, Truman Adult Education teacher

I was charged with two violations for my support of the recent strikers.

1. "...encouraging (adult educators and coordinators) to interrupt the business of the College in support of the strike."

2. On the days which I took off (after notifying the College of my absence), I was "... observed at the College picketing and/or speaking with Adult Educators."

Dr. Boyd's disciplinary letter is here. The good news: she didn't fire me. The other side: she "recommended":

1. that a letter of reprimand be put in my file, and
2. that I be laid off for three days without pay.

These are the first two steps towards termination under our union contract. Of course, after the Board votes to accept her "recommendation", we will fight this. I will join others to protest the reprisals against all of us, especially Dr. Boyd's action of replacing part-time credit teachers for honoring the picket line.

We will join students supporting us and will speak against the Board's policy of forcing nursing students to pay an outrageous $450 extra per nursing class!

Thanks again for all your support. Clearly, the administration wants to punish me for my speech and for my completely legitimate and highly legal steps in solidarity. Also clearly, they want to use this reprisal as a fear-message to us all. We all intend to continue this fight and look forward to everyone's support and participation.

As my friends in Decatur always said, "Victory for one, victory for all!"

Earl

P.S. I don't know but assume that Ron Johnson will get a letter put in his file.

• • • • • • • • • •

3. PRESENTATION to the CITY COLLEGES BOARD
December 2, 2004

[Photo Detail: Students rally at City Hall in support of 1600, 10/28/04.]

Good Morning. My name is Anthony Johnston. I coordinate tutoring at Truman College, and I am chapter chair for Local 1600 at that campus. A month ago the Board meeting that took place in this room had a very different atmosphere from the one we find ourselves in at this moment. In that meeting the Board prohibited close to one hundred people from going into a public meeting despite the fact that these people, mostly students and 1600 members, had gone through security’s sign-in procedure. The Board attempted to have speakers present in front of the Board one at a time, instead of in the presence of the other speakers and the general audience, which had been the custom in these meetings. One of the students present today, Jason Johnston, was not allowed to speak even though he was on the speakers’ list. Those attempts to control the meeting created an atmosphere of tension and distrust in the lobby that resulted in skirmishes between security and students and Local 1600 members, with one student being arrested. Mr. Tyree, you yourself stated to a newspaper that, “We never want to see that again,” and we couldn’t agree more.

Unfortunately, acts of reprisals and intimidation taken by local campus administrations and central office administration in the wake of the strike have created the same conditions of anger and mistrust that led to the events of the November 4 Board meeting and are making working conditions on the campus tense and in some cases unbearable. These actions are:

• Six adjuncts at Truman (one of them a professor emeritus) and one at Wright College have been terminated or replaced for honoring the 1600 picket line.
• One IEA adjunct has been terminated and another is facing disciplinary charges for actions relating to the strike.
• Two adult educators are facing disciplinary charges, again for their actions in support of our strike.

All of these cases above violate our “no-reprisals” clause, which protects any person for their participation or non-participation in a 1600 strike. One of the reasons given for the administration’s actions regarding adjuncts at Truman is that bringing back adjuncts who were replaced during the strike would disrupt classes even more. I offered a compromise solution where those replaced would be compensated monetarily; those in classes would stay, guaranteeing no disruption; and teaching assignments next semester would be handled by department chairs, as in past practice. This proposal was taken to the Chancellor and the college presidents, and it was flatly denied. I then asked what compromise was possible, and I was told: “At this time, no compromise is possible."

And it does not stop there:
• A full-time faculty member at Malcom X, Ben Rubin, was arrested at his home in front of his family on charges of battery (allegedly for what occurred in the lobby on November 4), more than a week after the incident and after our strike was settled. To demonstrate how arbitrary and capricious these charges are, I can tell you that I was next to Mr. Rubin the whole time in the lobby and our actions and paths were the same (and if in fact you are using videotape as evidence in these charges, you can easily verify this). I ask you: “Should I be expecting the police to pay me a visit as well? Should anyone else who was in that lobby expect a visit from the police?”
• There are new and excessive Nursing student fees which one central office administrator, when questioned by a student, blamed on the new Local 1600 contract.
• Lastly, 1600 Professionals are now being made to sign in and out. The administration is claiming that new contract language for compensatory and overtime pay warrants this new procedure. That is simply not so. Requesting and reporting this pay can easily be done with forms. In fact, it has been past practice to do so. At least two college campuses were going to use these forms until just recently when the Officers of the District forced all campuses to go to a sign-in and out procedure.

Senator James Meeks, who everyone recognizes was instrumental in getting the strike settled, came to see Local 1600 members when we were voting on the new contract. He asked for “healing”, and he called on both the administration and the union to work together on issues such as education funding and changing the equalization formula. We desperately want to do that. But we cannot with reprisals and intimidation staring at us in the face. I’m sure that when Sen. Meeks was informed of these reprisals, his first comment was, “That is not the spirit of the contract that I mediated."

At banquets and luncheons I used to say with pride that it was a pleasure to be a union representative at Truman College because the administration respected our union for its vital role and students and education were placed first. It saddens and frustrates me that for the present time I can no longer say that. On the first day back from the strike I took part in a “healing ceremony” with our administration in which I pledged to work together with administration so that our common mission in education will be realized.

This morning I call on the Chancellor, the Officers of the District, and the Board to do the same. You must end the reprisals and intimidation for our mission in the City Colleges to go forward. Thank you.

–By Anthony Johnston

Posted by Benjamin at December 3, 2004 10:57 AM