Faculty Vote No Confidence in CCC Chancellor
Faculty at Harold Washington College drafted the following document. Faculty at Truman and other City Colleges are drafting similar declarations that will be posted here upon release.
A Declaration of No Confidence in City Colleges of Chicago Chancellor Wayne D. Watson
On Behalf of the Fulltime Faculty of the City Colleges of Chicago
Respectfully Submitted to the Board of Trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago by the Faculty Council of the City Colleges of Chicago (FCCCC)
As the chief executive officer of the City Colleges of Chicago, the Chancellor is accountable to a large constituency: the students, for whom he must ensure a quality affordable education; the employees, for whom he must maintain a productive and welcoming working environment; the families and friends of these students and employees, for whom he must uphold a proud and respectable institutional image; and the citizenry at large, for whom he must guarantee economic and communal stewardship of the institution with the utmost of transparency and integrity.
The behavior recently exhibited by the present Chancellor, Wayne D. Watson, compromises all the aforementioned obligations and clearly indicates he is not up to the challenges required of his position. His divisive tactics have resulted in irresponsible—and possibly irreversible—harm to employee morale, undermined his ability to effectively lead this District, and ultimately compromised his professional integrity.
As evidence, we provide a short list of the charges against him.
City Colleges of Chicago Chancellor Wayne D. Watson has:
1. Weakened student trust and confidence in the City Colleges of Chicago and his office by aggressively pursuing and encouraging a policy of retribution against the student body at all seven campuses.
2. Tarnished the reputation of the City Colleges of Chicago by forcing a labor dispute at a time when labor issues were hardly as severe as those of the memorable past.
3. Diluted our most valuable pool of adjunct faculty, consisting of over 150 professors emeriti, by prohibiting these highly skilled and vastly experienced professors from future employment with City Colleges of Chicago.
4. Misled the general public during the labor action by claiming 70% of classes were running normally while lying to the media by claiming negotiations centered about load and by pretending that the Union, rather than the Board, cut off talks and/or refused more meetings.
5. Failed to fulfill the obligation of his office by refusing to personally negotiate labor disputes, thereby squandering district funds on, and relegating his own obligation to arguably disinterested parties.
6. Needlessly placed subordinates and their families at risk by canceling their health insurance.
For all these reasons it is therefore right and fitting that the fulltime Faculty of Harold Washington College do hereby formally document and submit this Declaration of No Confidence in the present Chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago, Wayne D. Watson, and do further petition the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Illinois Community College District 508, as well as the Mayor of the great City of Chicago, to remove and seek suitable replacement of said Chancellor for this heretofore fine and respectable academic institution.
Reprisals Rule
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
Rally Against Reprisals
The Local 1600 '04 strike ended, but a fight to reinstate and protect Truman teachers against disciplinary action continues this Thursday, November 18, with a rally outside the building (sigh, again!) on 1145 West Wilson at 4:30pm.
Read an open letter from a Truman College student to the entire community, and download a rally flyer here.
From a Truman College student...
The CCC administration has upped reprisals against students and teachers in the wake of our fight during the three week strike of Local 1600. Action is needed from people immediately to prevent a victory for rank and file teachers and students from turning into bitter anger throughout the student body and CCC faculty. The reason for these reprisals is payback for an administration that feels they lost the strike!
On Thursday at Truman College there will be a Rally Against Reprisals. Everyone needs to get the word out about this rally at their respective colleges. A flyer called "reprisals.doc" has been added to this post. Please download one (below), make as many copies for your students or class mates, and get these flyers out! We need as many people as possible who supported the strike and were affected by the strike at Truman on Thursday, including all of you paying the price for your solidarity. The timing of the Rally will coincide with the disciplinary hearings of two Truman adult educators, Earl Silbar and Ron Johnson.
In addition to the direct reprisals, there is also going to be a nursing fee hike of $900/year. Chicago City College administration is blaming this on the pay increases of striking nursing teachers. "Nursing student fees have been raised as a result of the increase in pay for nursing clinical teachers," was the quote today from Angela Starks, CCC Executive Director-Nursing Department. This is taking place immediately after the administration wrote themselves a 3% raise!
There is much at stake in our work for the next year. If teachers and students look back on the strike as fighting back the most horrible of administration demands through mobilization, solidarity and direct action, then greater teacher/student power will be built for all of our other issues in the future (contract negotiations, tuition hikes, free speech on campus). These schools are not the private property of City Hall and the administration. They are the property of the people and are now increasingly under attack. For the sake of cross-union strength, student morale and the future of these public institutions, we need to stand up to the reprisals against striking teachers and all of their supporters.
Please let us know what you are doing on your campus to build for Thursday. Also let us know of any reprisals going on in your campus. Let’s keep people in touch and in power over the next year. Thanks for the effort.
Sincerely,
Cliff Willmeng
Truman Solidarity Committee
(773) 968-7797
iwwhammer@ameritech.net
Back in Class!
"Rudy, you're just like school in the summertime ... NO CLASS!" -- Fat Albert
Thank you all for checking out the site and contributing your thoughts, etc. I never imagined that when I set up this site it would become an actual blog that would link me virtually to students during the last three weeks. But it's good to be back in real time.
I know we'll have some catching up to do, and I plan on being as flexible as possible in getting back on track. Let's talk in class about how it's going to work.
It's good to be back!
Day 18: The Strike Empires Back
[Photo Detail: CCC Board Meeting 11-4-04:
My cat Sneezer seizes the microphone from Chairman James Tyree and Chancellor Wayne Watson – Sneezer managed to meow in Union support before CPD rushed and took down the cat.]
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
"Your life insurance has been cancelled by admin .... so, you know ... don't die."
--Advice from the picket line
Friday, November 5, 2004
Much has come to pass since the last report, as I expected to wake Wednesday in a city over-run by flesh-eating zombies under epic carnage raining down from the heavens in scumbuckets filled with dirtbags of excreta, viscera, and sickly-smelling handywipes.
And such has – in a figuratively, magically sick way – pretty much come to pass.
“We’ve got BUSH…we’ve GOT Bush…”
--Revenge of the Nerds
OK, it’s not all bad news. Bits of TV coverage from Wednesday’s Millennium Park Candlelight Vigil and Thursday morning’s picket of the CCC Board meeting seemed fair, if sparse. And hired PR hands are smoothing over the rough edges of the Union’s info insurrection, with regular e-mail blasts and ads in local radio (WBBM AM, WLS AM, WSCR, WMVP, WPMX, WAKE, WBEZ) and print.
But a rally at CCC Board Chair Tyree’s office this morning and campus pickets today have been pulled back – it sounds like conciliatory negotiations might be afoot, as the strike takes a Friday off.
Nonetheless, reports describe a really contentious Board meeting yesterday morning that provoked confrontations over public access and the arrest of a student. Details about the scuffle between a Malcolm X student and security, with subsequent arrest, are spotty, but the Union claims its lawyers are on the job to defend the student who was trying to get into the meeting despite arbitrary Board restrictions.
The Union also called on Tyree and Watson to be present at negotiations scheduled for Friday, but the two shrugged off the invite, opting as usual to send Board lawyers to the table. (These lawyers, by the way, make more per hour than tuition for a City College class or two.)
For a taste of the Board meeting, I’ve pasted below an especially eloquent address given yesterday by a Harold Washington teacher.
At the meeting, Board members also threatened to cancel classes that are on hold because of the strike, and students tell me the summer semester is also in danger of cancellation. Obviously, the dirty tactics continue, as one Truman humanities adjunct had her paycheck-deposit reversed by admin for unspecified reasons, this after a dean barged into her class with threats against supporting the strike.
I don’t suppose anyone out there needs extra help around the yard for a few bucks? “Do you have a vacancy for a backscrubber?”
POST-SCRIPT: "Dirty little duchy of decadence" has now become my favorite term of reference for the downtown CCC Board bunker.
--B
Address to the City Colleges Board
Peggy Shapiro, Harold Washington College
Distinguished Professor 2004
"Chancellor Watson, Chairman Tyree, Board, and Colleagues:
The last time I was here it was to receive an award as Distinguished Professor and the time before to demonstrate some outstanding developments in my FL/ESL Department at HWC. Since then I have received $3.22 worth of mail from the same administration that once honored me now telling me that I was under-worked, overpaid and greedy. So obviously I have some questions, and since you appear to have all the answers, let me ask you.
The administration boasts that 70% of classes are covered by adjuncts. These adjuncts are educators who can earn a maximum of $8,000 a year with no benefits, who are rarely independently wealthy, who need to teach at 3-4 institutions in order to pay their rent, and who usually don’t have the time to stick around to advise students, develop curriculum, or participate in committees, and who usually move on in a short time for a real job or at least a real salary. Paying so little for educators? What are you so proud of?
You say that we have a financial crisis, and it certainly seems so. Since Chancellor Watson took office, my department has suffered over 66% decrease in its budget and our college lost all its counselors. We buy many of our supplies with discount coupons and out of our own pockets, often because we get better deals retail than we do through "Board-approved" vendors. With such enormous cuts in services for students, how can we afford to pay our chancellor a salary higher than that of the Mayor of Chicago or the governor of Illinois?
You want to increase my health insurance premiums almost 400%. ($834-$2,818) and increase my deductions another $2,000 a year. If we are forced to increase health insurance premiums, shouldn’t the process begin from the top down? How can you justify totally free health insurance for top administrators and their families for life since this is not Enron but a public sector job? Isn’t there a value to moral leadership?
I am not speaking theoretically. I just hired a talented young teacher at a salary of $38,000. With our residency requirement, he needed to move into the city and now pays higher rent, but he doesn’t get the housing allowance that you get. We also require that he spend $5,000 a year for additional graduate courses. Now with your proposed increase in his class size and almost 10% of his gross salary going to medical insurance, how can I keep him? And if he leaves how can I hire the best and the brightest to replace him?
When I started at the City Colleges, the Central administration was housed on one floor of what is now Harold Washington College. Now you occupy 14 floors of prime real estate across from the Sears Tower and according to your directory, employ 286 people. Most of your Central Administration departments are duplicated by the same, not more efficient, departments at the local colleges and your other responsibilities are outsourced for multi-million dollar contracts with American Express and Sync Solutions. Central Administration is a place where no education takes place, yet it gorges itself on a larger share of the budget than any of the colleges.
My final question is how can you justify paying part-time professionals $7-9 dollars an hour, paying our nursing faculty for only one of every two hours they teach, increasing class sizes, and raising health insurance premiums to an unbearable burden? If this costly building and its seven-million dollar administrative payroll were to disappear, who would notice? In other words, we must make the choice: a bloated administration or quality education? I CHOOSE EDUCATION. What do you choose?"
Day 11: Civics Class Held at City Hall
“…Students Are Urged to Go to Class on Schedule”
– City Colleges of Chicago web site
[Class comes to the Mayor's Office 10/28/04]
“You have the right to put a paper crown on your head and pretend you’re the ruler of '__________' (your make-believe kingdom here).”
– BURGER KING BILL of RIGHTS
[outside City Hall 10/28/04]
It’s taken me a while to clear my ears of yesterday’s shrill echoes downtown. By 11am at least a few hundred teachers, students, and others started a raucous picket on LaSalle Street from end to end of the block. The line became a stop-start slouch but was kept going by intensely zealous strikers zipping up and down the sidewalk to inflict an almost frantic urgency on those marching in the Loop’s caverns.
The war continued, via flyers, displays, screeching PAs, window-length posterboard, mailouts, broadsides, picket-folk-song rhymes straining credulity like a loud suit, and screaming-bold-all-caps-typefaced slogans, chants to choke an Animal Farm horse, clip-art woodprint-faux fists and solidarity vanguards, cheap newsprint inking fingerprints, wall-of-text exhortations issued from machines badly in need of toner.
An especially rowdy yet sincerely plaintive group of maybe 50 students stood directly outside the Mayor’s door on the fifth floor of City Hall and pounded on marble from behind a plush cordon and nervous guard. I hear they stayed through late afternoon despite threats of arrest, and ABC7 News at 5pm had video of a busy street picket and students upstairs. Some students seemed maybe too ready for an arrest or confrontation, and one from Truman asked me to calm them down, but in the end everyone was gone by 4:30.
Despite the Channel 7 report of possible impending negotiations and Mayoral intercession, skepticism about yesterday seems confirmed by the silence at this morning’s picket through tonight’s fitful sleep, a suspicion that no matter what happened downtown, we’re bound to stay on strike longer, still, with rumors of cancelled summer classes and adjunct firings over non-attendance circulating, bad press hanging from every tree.
The Union reports today that negotiations won’t resume until Monday at 10am, but CCCTU President Perry Buckley says: "Our negotiating team is prepared to meet at any time before Monday if the Board has a substantially improved offer. If the Board has such an offer, we have told them to give it to us in writing beforehand so we can decide whether it is worthwhile to meet earlier" (Union release).
Hold on to Halloween and wait for Day of the Dead. Will negotiators pack Jack-o-Lanterns or Mexican candy skulls?
A few students have asked me now what the Union’s PR strategy is, and I am not exactly tired but more like defeated at having also asked more than once to no effect. Short answer: I don’t think there is a strategy much farther than what comes out of the bullhorn bell.
And as I left the downtown picket, sputtering static and appeals to solidarity coated a film of hope over hard gray angles, concrete absorbing all commotion in roaring, lurching distortion pushing people along into the subway.
“You have the right to laugh until soda explodes from your nose. You have the right to stand up and fight for what you believe in. You have the right to do nothing.”
Day 9 Strike Report
Negotiations fail today, as the Board refuses compromise...
No more negotiations until Monday...
The strike goes on for at least another week...
The picket line reminds me at times of the front in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, his narrative of fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War. What seemed romantic at a distance – the sentimentality of volunteering to combat fascism with the international brigades – proved firsthand to be a protracted, pitiful struggle along the trenchlines.
Orwell’s experience of a somewhat poorly disciplined and ill-equipped people’s militia brought him down to earth on the front, where neither fascist nor Republican forces could hope to shoot each other, with rifles likely to jam or explode, from across ravines too distant for anything but verbal warfare. And so, from vermin-infested trenches smelling of human excrement and trash, Orwell spent his time enduring physical extremes of cold, every now and then yelling over a megaphone to taunt the fascists with a litany of epithets.
The strike office is starting to get a little stinky.
So we might not be fighting a fascist axis of Franco and Mussolini, but senior faculty tell me that this strike is getting pretty dirty. And smelly.
From the Rumor File: I’ve heard from at least one social sciences teacher that a student had her CTA U-Pass cancelled by admin. Full-time students receive a pass for unlimited access to public transit, but it sounds like admin is demoting full-time students to part-time if they have any teachers on strike, retroactively disqualifying them for a valuable transit pass. I hope someone out there in the blogosphere can help me verify this one, because I have no idea what admin is thinking if they’re punishing students in this way over the strike. FLASH: I just stepped out for dinner and ran into a student who looked into the U-Pass deal. He describes it as an honest administrative error in eliminating students from the U-Pass roll if they dropped classes, i.e. any U-Pass cancellation has nothing to do with the strike.
If there’s ever another strike, I should declare myself a journalist non-combatant and spend my time covering events, because there’s so much nonsense to sift through on the picket line.
For example, at the end of my shift today a student came running by with flyers announcing the arrest of a Wright College student for passing out student-authorized info about the strike. Dated 10/25/04, the flyer reads: “He was simply exercising his first amendment right to free speech. … If you want the administration’s violence to end, if you want your education to get back to normal, please refuse to attend classes during this strike.”
On another note, I’m tired of receiving these district-authored memos that the Chancellor is probably forcing City College Presidents to mail out, further using school resources and money inappropriately to wage psychological warfare against faculty with xeroxed screeds alleging shameful behavior on our part. I’m tired also of mailing these notes back to Truman. Maybe someone can help me turn them into origami scabs that admin might hang from campus trees like twisted Christmas ornaments.
Time to take down the Halloween deco and forget about a holiday break this season, because admin wants to see who blinks first before they finally surrender a fight they cannot win.
FLASH: Union files unfair labor practice against CCC administration. From a CCCTU bulletin: “Chancellor Wayne Watson yesterday approached professionals on several picket lines and made threats and promises to our members. He is attempting to negotiate directly with picketing strikers [which is illegal]. … [The Union] also cites college presidents and other administrators for accosting members on the line with propaganda and an offer of negotiations.” And so the writ has been wrote, with a legal filing against Watson et al.
I wonder if I should use Orwell’s tactics in the trenches, alternating curses over the megaphone with promises of better food on our side of the line for fascist deserters. I’m not sure, though, if a diet of donuts and coffee would be a safer bet than Truman cafeteria food. Lots more aerobic exercise out here, though, folks.
FLASH –
NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE: THE STRIKE CONTINUES
My instant messenger just alerted me to the following info from Union Chapter Chair Anthony Johnston.
Along with all other proposals, the Union suggested a split class load for all faculty that would be a compromise on the 15-credit-hour/week demand, offering a 15/12 load over the two semesters of a school year. Anthony reports, “After a 5 hour wait, the Board came back and countered that those teaching the 12-12 would be delayed two years before they would start to teach 15-15, and the salary increases for everyone (not just the 12-12 faculty) would be 3.2 for the first year and not the 4.2% that was on the table. They rejected all of our other proposals outright (including health insurance, nurses’ clinical credits, union release time for professionals, part-time professional salaries, etc.).”
And with that, the picket line is bound to feel and smell afoul tomorrow, as negotiations once again cease until Monday and the strike continues for what might be another week.
Rally at City Hall: Thursday, Oct. 28, 11am – Buses leave Truman on Wilson Avenue at 10am.
Since the media are sticking to the Board order of the day, I’d like to end this post with excerpts from various letters to the Sun-Times editor, in response to yesterday's "Back to Work" editorial. I’m glad for this web space at least to crank out our side, if with a much smaller megaphone than admin has at its disposal.
Letter from Wright College Faculty
Dear Editors:
The media's job should be to question and analyze the statements and policies of those who have the power to affect our lives. Instead, much of the media has chosen to blindly accept the outlandish claims of the City Colleges of Chicago Administration, and in the process some in the media have endorsed a corrupt bureaucracy while blaming rank and file labor. The statistics the CCC give are simply not true.
The CCC has stated that average teacher salaries are $80,000. A starting salary for a full-time teacher is often below $40,000. Only after nearly 30 years of service might a teacher earn $80,000, and by that time he or she would be at or near retirement.
… Many CCC administrators, on the other hand, make over $150,000 and receive free family health insurance for life. The teachers and professionals in CCCTU Local 1600 are being asked to more than quadruple their contribution to health insurance costs, costs that would far exceed any raises that we have been offered. In the end, according to the administration's demands, we would lose salary while teaching more courses and with more students in each class. We at City Colleges teach far more students per class than instructors at the other community colleges in Illinois. The CCC Administration says our average class size is twenty-one. This is simply not true. By contract, 35-39 students are enrolled in the majority of our classes.
Finally, the message of the CCC administration is that we do not care about students. We are insulted and outraged. We have dedicated our lives to guiding students to be well prepared citizens. But there is another story here. The real work of the CCC happens at the individual campuses, yet nearly one-third of the total CCC budget is used for Central Administration, clearly an obscene waste of public funding. If the central administration at 226 W. Jackson disappeared tomorrow, it would never be missed. The City Colleges is a public educational institution, yet our administrators' salaries and lifestyles reflect those of Enron executives. In other words, the administration, in its efforts to balance its budget on teachers' backs, has proposed measures that HARM students.
We ask the people of Chicago: Do you want your children in an over-stuffed classroom with a teacher who is forced to work under such unproductive conditions? … Critics of the teachers should redirect their anger at the sixty bureaucrats in the CCC Central Administration whose total pay is over $16,000,000 and who are undermining the integrity of the educational process. They are the ones who harm students.
Letter from Foreign Language/ESL Department Chair Peggy Shapiro, Harold Washington College
… First of all, the administration demands include increasing class size even though the City Colleges of Chicago already have the largest class sizes in the State of Illinois. Students are now sitting shoulder to shoulder during classes, sometimes in classrooms with too few seats. Where other colleges have caps of 25 students to a class, we have 39. We can't afford to increase it. Just imagine teaching a speech class in which students get just one minute to speak. Larger classes are very unfair to our students, many of whom need more individual attention than students from more privileged backgrounds.
I realize that "every government agency " is "strapped for cash." I now run my department for less than one third of what it cost to run it five years ago. The professors have become amazingly creative at saving money. We don't complain about buying our supplies on sales and with coupons and frequently at our own expense. In the past years, we have accepted increased work and increased deductions because we are committed to educating our students.
… If your editorial staff had looked into some of the economic realities of the Chicago City Colleges, they would have discovered an incredibly top-heavy system, which has one administrator for every two educators. That's like having a school with forty teachers and twenty principals or a newspaper with fifty reporters and twenty five editors. Look at other State of Illinois colleges and you will find ratios closer to 1:15. The shortage of funds may well be attributable to the fact that of every $100 in payroll $33.33 goes to administration. This figure does not include benefits such as free lifetime health insurance for top administrators and their families, limousines, and $500 a month travel expense allowances.
With a little more research, you would also have found other outrageous Board demands made during negotiations. For example, Central Administration wants administrators, not faculty, to be in charge of new hires. Of course, that move would make my job as department chair easier as I would not have to pour over dozens of resumes, conduct in-depth interviews, and observe mini-lessons before recommending candidates to the college president for hire. On the other hand, I doubt that most administrators have the credentials in every discipline (French, Chemistry, Art, Calculus, Literature) to hire candidates with the best credentials and most creative teaching skills. Such hiring is a recipe for patronage scandals and educational disaster.
I want to make the dream come true. To do so, I need to be able to hire the best and the brightest and keep them once they are here. The Board demands may well deprive me of the ability to hire or hold on to fine educators. How can I keep the talented young teacher whom I just hired at a salary of $38,000 if we require that he spend $5,000 a year for additional graduate courses, pay close to $3,000 in health insurance premiums, and increase his class size at the same time?
I understand my students' dreams; I wish you would as well.
Letter from Anthony Johnston, Coordinator of Truman Tutoring Services and Chair, Cook County College Teachers Union (Local 1600)
Dear Sun-Times Editors:
Your editorial against the City Colleges striking employees (“Back to Work,” October 26) is a misrepresentation of the issues being negotiated. This is understandable since your information is taken almost verbatim from the City College Board's press releases with obviously no intent to verify if it is correct. Salary and course load are only two of many issues that are being negotiated.
For example, our nursing faculty are working clinical classes where they provide hands-on training in essential skills such as checking vital signs and administering IVs. For this work they are paid one hour for every two hours work they do. … This policy drives away many qualified teachers who rightly want to be paid for every hour of work they do. The Board refuses to accede to our basic and ethical demand that our teachers get paid for every hour they work.
Most of our part-time professionals who are tutors, lab and computer technicians, and child care workers make $7-$10 an hour. These are people with Bachelor Degrees and many years of experience. These are people who believe in the American dream that you refer to in your editorial. They earned their degrees in higher education, many from the City Colleges. Unfortunately, their dreams aren't realized because the latest Board pay proposals for these workers is $0.25 increase in hourly pay for the first year and $0.35 for the second year.
Among faculty salaries across the state, the City Colleges is the third highest. Given that Chicago's cost-of-living is certainly the highest in the state, these salaries are not excessive. In fact, faculty salaries make up just 12% of the total City College budget.
On Sunday, our union's negotiating team had every intention of staying at the table until we reached a settlement. Unfortunately, the Board had no such intention. They walked out of those negotiations because they would not negotiate any issue but course load. This is no way to bargain in good faith. Let's get a thorough look at both sides' proposals so the public can be informed about this vital school system in Chicago.
Day 8 Strike Report
We're still picketing...
...and this teacher looks how I feel...
Now I officially feel bad about striking. Why? My dad must have read my site and mailed me some money to help with rent. Since bills are coming due and my health benefits will soon be cancelled, I suppose I should hold onto this check, but somehow I can't bring myself to cash it just yet.
Now, for those of you who do NOT know my dad, believe you me: My own dad would NEVER help me with cash if he thought I was striking for an $80,000 salary and only 12 hours of work per week. Receiving this check, to me, is an undeniable endorsement of the justness of the strike, but I keep hoping to hear from more students, as the local press has crucified the Union with its editorials that seem to just repeat the admin line without any more depth of research or insight.
Consider the Sun-Times claim that "a City College professor earns close to $80,000" -- this is exactly the kind of factoid without context or qualification that the Board wants our media to repeat acritically, because repeated enough it amounts to a total distortion of the issues at hand. I have yet to see this factoid put in a real context of how many teachers at the City Colleges earn anywhere near that amount, and the further details of the professional development (a PhD, which takes years) and seniority (decades of commitment) it might take to reach that level.
Remember: The Chancellor gets a considerable yearly salary, has mortgage and car payments taken care of, and has health benefits for life for himself and dependents. I'd like to see the Sun-Times write a fair editorial that seeks to justify disparities between downtown administrators and teachers, especially since downtown administrators essentially flow from political appointments and exist only because teachers do the actual work of educating.
Moreover, why does the Board/district office downtown have a greater budget than most of the City Colleges themselves? Where are the investigative reporters when you need them? Is there any reporter out there who can just take a look at the downtown office and any of the City Colleges to ask a simple question of "does this add up?"
It's also disingenuous to see the Sun-Times opine about the "American dream" and how City Colleges are a doorway for immigrants. Let's follow their editorials and coverage for a few weeks to see how pro-education and pro-immigrant they really are. They call the City Colleges a "dream factory" but obviously, just like the Board, seem to lack any true knowledge of what it's like to teach in this system.
I fail to understand how anyone who would claim to care about education would think to fault the teachers first, rather than look to bolster our position as frontline contributors to democracy. One online writer posted a comment to this site suggesting that the students sue City College teachers for breach of contract. It surely is unfair to break a contract, but this suggestion totally ignores the justice of a prior contract, one that the Union has been trying to negotiate with the Board since last spring.
Finally, the Sun-Times editorial cites "every government agency strapped for cash," which is a legitimate concern only if you consider education just one more area for a bit of appropriation. As Benjamin Barber states in a look at the significance of education for revolutionary democracy, "Colleges and universities had to be committed above all to the constituting of citizens."
This is something I've been arguing about at Truman for some time now, especially in refutation of the idea that students are customers. I despise that model of education as a vending machine of credits. Rather, "democracy, citizenship, and education [form] the triangle on which the freedom of America depended." But "today we have witnessed the professionalization, the bureaucratization, the privatization, the commercialization, and the individualization of education" (Barber).
In sum, it's a sorry state of affairs when we see teachers as vending machines and students as consumers, the equivalent of a diabetic, obese kid pulling yet another Snickers bar out of the vendor for a snack.
Lastly, I promise you, my friends, that with my education and bearing I could have been anything and applied myself to any trade or career, including that of patronage and political appointment, but I chose instead to be a writer and a teacher, to engage those two cornerstones of democracy: journalism and education.
Maybe you can tell me why, because I'm starting to think I should've looked into the basketball program at Stanford -- yes, I always wanted to be an NBA coach, too, so maybe there's still hope if the strike is crushed.
ENDNOTE:
Student Rally at City Hall (121 N. LaSalle Street), this Thursday, October 28, 2004: You have a voice in this whole matter, and I urge you to exercise it.
A bus will pick up Truman students on Wilson Avenue for the downtown rally at 10am.
Day 7: The Strike Continues
Monday, October 25, 2004
HEADLINES:
Bargaining goes to the dogs -- no negotiations till Wednesday
Students start talking tuition refund
Board responds to student: "Thank you for your uninformed concern"
I can only say that every teacher I’ve talked to wants this finished, and so a sense of disappointment was palpable today at the picket line over failed negotiations. Of those striking, many wondered if the Board really intended to bargain on Sunday, because Union reps went with suitcases ready for an all-nighter. But it looks like Wednesday will have to do, even though progressively frustrated students are starting to talk about a tuition refund.
Many of those students joined the picket today, and there was a gathering organized by reps from various Truman student groups to “express a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the Board of Trustees for its failure to manage the situation in the students’ interest” (flyer). The student rally went on to threaten a tuition refund:
“If there is not an immediate resolution to this matter, the students, as customers, will demand a per diem refund of tuition paid as compensation for the hardship this has and will continue to cause” (flyer).
Most of the students dropping by today joined in picketing, surprised that the strike continues without any foreseeable end. I understand the uncertainty can be unnerving, just as surely as I know my own rent and bills will start to pile up fast if this doesn’t end soon.
The student-rally flyer suggests that both Union and Board counted on student suffering to help in the battle of interests. From my own first-hand participation in the Union, I must contend that this is simply not true. I feel nothing but regret that this must impact negatively on student learning and life. But such was never the point or intent.
At the end of this note, I’ve copied a letter from Dr. Michael Swisher in humanities to his philosophy students. I think it’s exemplary of how I’ve seen my colleagues talk about the strike to students. I myself did not take class time to drill the Union position, and I even sent an e-mail that urged students to take apart the situation as they would any critical assignment.
Compare this to how one Board member, Rev. Albert D. Tyson III, responded to an e-mail from first-year Truman student Russel Forster. In his e-mail, Forster was adamant but sincere:
“Students like me are looking to you for reasoned and respectful leadership from the Administration right now. If we don't see that leadership, and see more of the stonewalling and finger-pointing that has been the Administration's approach so far, we will have to turn our disgust into action ... I hope the next round of negotiations brings out the best and fairest qualities in the Administration rather than the unpleasant, unprofessional, bullying qualities we've seen so far.”
Here’s what a Truman student received in response from CCC Board member Rev. Tyson: “Thank you for your uninformed concern.”
As a Truman teacher, I’ve argued for respecting students by challenging them with reasoned discourse and the highest expectations. That’s why I found Rev. Tyson’s note so typically patronizing a response from those who think students should be treated like customers. At least, consider the following letter from Truman Professor Swisher to his philosophy students:
October 22, 2004
Dear Philosophy Students:
I am sure that many of you are confused, a little frightened, or even angry about the ongoing strike. I know that you have heard conflicting reports about why we are striking and what may or may not happen to students when it is all over. I write you this letter in the hope that in the few weeks that you have now known me in class, I have made an impression of honesty and forth-rightness. I also hope that you have noticed that I keep coming back to the ideals of Socrates for not only intellectual but also personal reasons. I want you to remember that I could have used class time to drum into you our side of the issues and to demonize the administration as they are doing to me (and I do take their slanderous attacks on the faculty personally). I did speak about the possible strike in general terms of what may or may not happen, but I never used my control over a captive audience to try to persuade you.
Unfortunately, the administration is not so principled and they are winning the battle in the media. This should be of no surprise to anyone. There is an army of administrators, lawyers, and public relations professionals at the beck and call of the chancellor. They will be fired if they do not carry out his wishes. They have spent tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers’ fees ($250 an hour), postage, printing costs and many other things to get their distorted and disingenuous message out. Your tuition is being used to help pay these costs. Our union has only a very small number of paid professionals at its disposal. All of these costs are borne entirely by the union members, mainly through union dues, but also by personal outlays, which we gladly make to help our cause.
As to the issues, there has been such wild misinformation disseminated that I can only call them lies due to the fact that they are grossly exaggerated half-truths which imply something very false. Let me make one thing very clear to you: We are not striking so that a small group of senior professors can keep their comfortable jobs. We are not striking so that we won’t have to work more. ... If this were the only issue, we would have settled a long time ago. The chancellor has been very successful in drumming this falsehood into the heads of the media. It is easier to report simple mantras than to go out and do real investigative reporting.
Another gross misrepresentation is class size. Do not believe the numbers put out by the administration. They claim that the average class size is 21.4. I ask you, how many students are in the classes you take? I have never had a class smaller than 35 students in my 11 years at Truman College. My evening classes have 39 students. I am sure you would love to sign up for such small classes just as I would love to teach them. The truth is, you will not find them. Another big issue concerns the nursing faculty. Truman College has one of the best nursing programs in the state of Illinois. Clinical assignments are crucial to the training of nurses. Our nursing instructors receive one hour of credit for every two hours they work in the hospitals and clinics. And believe me, they put in a lot of time. This means they get paid for only half of their work. We want to rectify this.
Hourly workers such as tutors and mentors receive the same kind of pay you would expect to find at Walmart, often as low as $7 an hour. They get no benefits. Security personnel (yes, they are in our union but are forbidden to strike by state law) receive on average about $5 per hour less than their counterparts at other city and county facilities. I could go on about other serious issues that the administration does not want you to know about but I hope you are getting the idea.
Believe me, no one wants this over quickly more than I and my colleagues do. Being on strike is tiring and humiliating. I love to teach and I love Truman College. It is my college and it is your college.
Finally, let me say thank you to those of you who have been out on the picket line with us. It really does help our morale, and more importantly it makes an impression on the administration.
Sincerely,
Michael Swisher, PhD
CCC Board Walks Out?
The Union negotiating team didn't have a chance to put on the pyjamas, because the City Colleges Board left the negotiating table.
I really hoped to put good news on the site today, but the Board is intent on running the Colleges into the ground, right when students are about to start demanding a tuition refund.
Here's the news from Union Chapter Chair Anthony Johnston:
"Our negotiating team came to the table this afternoon with the intention of bargaining in good faith and staying until a tentative contract was reached. We believed the Board also had this wish. Now it is clear that Board wanted no such thing and is holding our contract hostage and causing students even more delays through stone walling and delay tactics. We sent our proposals through the mediator and their response was a blank page. They only appeared today because they were pressured into it by our publicity and student sentiment.
The Board was not willing to listen to any of our proposals. Despite what you may have read from the Board propaganda, their latest proposals only offer faculty 3% and they are offering professionals 2%. The Part-Time Professionals and Security is even worse at 1%. On health insurance we are still far apart.
This is clearly an attempt to bust our union and impose their own terms. We will not be busted. The past few days have shown the real face not only of the district office, but of administration at all levels. They are intimidating us, students, and other educational workers who support us."
So, it looks like I have to run back to the picket line -- see you there!
Back to the Bargaining Table
Saturday, October 23, 2004
DAY 5 of the CITY COLLEGES STRIKE
Negotiations Start Again Tomorrow!
Some of the best news yet from CCCTU President Perry Buckley tells that federally mediated negotiations start again tomorrow at 1pm, and Buckley says “When we go into negotiations, we are not coming out without a tentative agreement, even if I have to use civil disobedience and stage a sit-in at the lawyer’s office” (Local 1600 Update 10/23/04).
I heard Buckley interviewed by the local media (WGN, FOX, CLTV, and maybe four more broadcasters and print journalists) today at a combo press conference and student rally at Malcolm X College. He emphasized the Union’s commitment to a resolution by stating that he’ll take a change of clothes, sleeping bag, and supplies for an extended stay to bring a fair conclusion to this strike.
But today started off with a 7:30am Truman picket greeting for various students taking the ACT or attending class. I’ve heard from Local 1600 news that “Truman’s pickets are larger, more vocal, and more energized” than at other campuses, and this morning was exemplary, with a feeling of second-wind-catching and relief at the prospect of re-opened negotiations, even though a light drizzle kept us chilly and damp.
I leaped a ride with some nice women from the cosmetology department at 9 or so for Malcolm X, and it was good to see other faculty, as well as what seemed to me a more energized, organized, and fearless student body at MXC. It’s sad to hear, also, that a Valedictorian of MXC has been blacklisted and threatened with arrest by admin, as his interview will attest on local TV today at 5pm.
I still see Truman students cross pickets with bewilderment and fear, but there need be no dread of reprisal. If there’s any doubt about who’s doing any kind of harassment in this matter, consider the following excerpt from a Local 1600 news update (10/23/04) for Truman College:
“Students in adjunct classes are being called (by both administration and the teachers) [and told] that they will fail if they continue to support our strike. They are threatening to fire adjuncts who support our strike. And as if that weren’t enough, the administration is going to cut off our health insurance as of Oct. 31. … During the day [on Friday], [Truman President] Dr. Boyd and others in administration tried to pass out the Board’s proposals. … Their desperation is palpable. From Dr. Boyd trying pathetically to woo faculty on the line to Wayne Watson getting in [English faculty] Bill Settles’ face at Kennedy-King, jabbing his finger in his chest and saying, “This has gone on too long!” The student support and the labor solidarity that they see amongst 1600, other unions, adjuncts, and workers has them scared, and rightly so.”
The picket starts up again at Truman tomorrow at 8:45am. Today I’m drying off, trying not to catch cold, and picking up again with Philip Roth’s latest novel in the bathtub. The title is great:
THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA
--B
The Union Is Winning!
[photo courtesy of CCCTU.com]
HEADLINES:
"City Colleges students urged not to attend classes during strike" --Chicago Sun-Times, 10/22/04
"All seven of the City Colleges of Chicago are open" --City Colleges of Chicago Web Page
"Why are you telling the news and everybody that the school is open when I come to classes and there's nobody?!?" --A student confronting Chancellor Wayne Watson (qtd. on Telemundo news)
MEDIA COVERAGE:
The Sun-Times article mentioned above had some solid information, as excerpted here:
BY DAVE NEWBART Staff Reporter -- City Colleges campuses where faculty are on strike are a "war zone'' and students ought to defy the chancellor and steer clear of classes, the president of the student government said Thursday. Student leader William Steward had called a rally at 1900 W. Harrison that he originally said was not to support either the administration or the faculty in the three-day-old strike but was meant to put student concerns first. But the scene quickly hit the boiling point as students in support of striking faculty at Malcolm X College crossed the Eisenhower Expy. and began demanding the student government officially back the teachers. ... Steward criticized campus administration for claiming things were normal at the schools and urging students to cross picket lines when many classes had been canceled or were virtually empty. ... "We were told things would go per normal,'' he said. "It's not normal to go to class with two to three students.'' ... Steward's declaration was a blow to the administration's attempts to keep the schools open during the strike by 750 faculty and staff. ... Steward, who before the rally -- which attracted at least 100 people -- had declined to take an official position in the strike, later said his government was now officially behind the faculty. "The students have spoken,'' he said. "Ninety percent of students support the faculty.'' ...
----------
As far as the administration's claim that we're stalling negotiations, the Chicago Tribune also ran a piece today that had a prominently placed quote from Cook County College Teachers Union (CCCTU) President Perry Buckley, regarding a proposed return to the negotiating table for this Wednesday:
"The alternate [federal] mediator is willing to come in earlier; and we have said that we are willing to meet earlier."
As noted in the Sun-Times article above, the Colleges Student Government Association (SGA) stands in support of the teachers. Here's a quote from a Truman SGA flyer:
"[SGA] and the student leaders of the organizations of Truman campus are calling on all students to demand an immediate refund of tuition paid for each day of school afected by this instance of gross mismanagement. ... School must begin in a normal mode by Monday, October 25, or the students will mobilize to protect their own interests."
RALLY TOMORROW:
9:30am, Malcolm X College, 1900 W. Van Buren
The mayor will be there...
IN CONCLUSION:
The pickets today at Truman were thin, but I heaved a sigh of relief over all of the above developments. We are winning. The damage has been done for and by administration, as they continue to dig a grave with abjectly disgraceful tactics. I just hope they don't pull students and everyone else into the hole with them.
I'm still trying to keep a high opinion of Truman's President, even though I received a divisive, misleading letter from her office today in the mail. I'm sure the district office downtown ghost-wrote it for her. I'm mailing it
From the Picket Line Pt. 3
Thursday, October 21, 2004
CITY COLLEGES of CHICAGO STRIKE: Day III
[photo courtesy of Lee Sustar]
Before the strike, President Boyd of Truman College requested a meeting with non-tenured faculty, of which I count myself along with the various people who had been brought on after a long hiring freeze of full-time faculty. She stressed that there would be no reprisals against anyone on strike, but she recommended a “low profile” for new faculty. It was such collegial advice that, looking back on it now from the picket line, I recognize it as just another tactic to keep the blood from flowing out of Truman with a strike.
There is no way to keep a “low profile” on the picket line. And I reject, I roundly repudiate the disingenuous letter sent from the President to Union members suggesting that we are “striking to support the interests of a few of [Local 1600] members.”
If full-time faculty get rolled by admin on this strike, there will be no end to the unreasonable, disrespectful demands of all Truman workers, and students surely will be the primary subjects to suffer in their quest for quality, affordable education.
Two students today reaffirmed that they have better teachers at Truman than Columbia College or Loyola, precisely because as student-centered schools the City Colleges are and should remain committed to students first, not bureaucrats.
Nonetheless, I have a high opinion of President Boyd and do not envy her position right now, hemmed in on one side by the Chancellor leaning on her and all the students becoming progressively hostile about this situation. [My guess is that she didn't even write the letter, but rather the Chancellor is a skilled ventriloquist.] And I’m sure she’s gotta be really lonely in that empty building right now, peeking out from behind those postboarded windows that make Truman look more and more like an abandoned storefront evangelical church with newspaper covering the glass.
Whatever “low profile” I had was blown today when, on the picket line from 7:30am to 3pm (the picket line is now on shifts), I WAS INTERVIEWED BY TELEMUNDO!!! See me interviewed in Spanish (whaaa?) by the local Telemundo affiliate today at 5pm and again at 10pm. I was happy to have one of my students there from Mexico who was also interviewed.
Funny, but they picked me for the interview over my colleague Ana King because they thought I looked a bit more Latino, which comes as some surprise after being called honkey, sell-out, negrito, Pakistani, “The Man”, and countless other such names by my fans over the years.
So, see me on Chicago’s Telemundo station at 5pm and/or 10pm.
I respect my Union family, especially senior faculty in my department who brought me to Truman to begin with and thereby brought me along into this fight for the lot of us.
Thank you STUDENTS for coming out to walk with your teachers today!
OTHER NEWS!
Remember, “there will be no reprisals by the Union or the Board against the Board or the Union, Union members, students, clerks, or any other person as a result of participation or non-participation by any of the above in a strike by Local 1600” (Contract Article XIV). Actually, I’m repeating this line to convince myself that it was OK to exercise my free speech on Telemundo today.
Also, The City Colleges Student Government Association (SGA) has taken a stand in support of teachers!!! Here’s the scoop from an SGA flyer issued after a vote to stand in favor of teachers: “Students at the seven City Colleges are rallying to make our voices heard. We are meeting at 12:00[pm] in the park at 1900 W. Harrison, across from Malcolm X College. We want our teachers to get what they deserve, and we want to get our students back into class. … Bring friends, family, and members of the community with you. Support your teachers!”
You might have missed the event today, but there will be another such rally at Malcolm X this Saturday morning (I believe at 10am) TO GREET MAYOR DALEY ON HIS VISIT TO CAMPUS!
I hope to see you there or, alternately, at any one of the City Colleges picket lines, as the pickets are on shifts but will continue through tonight and on into the weekend, because the building might be open but the school is closed.
--B
From the Truman College Picket Line
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
CITY COLLEGES of CHICAGO STRIKE: Day II
“…the eternal fate of the noble and enlightened: to be brutally crushed by the armed and dumb.”
--America: The Book, A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction
…such, at least, were my worries last night when I fell into a dogmatic slumber, replete with the acrid drool of sleep apnea and the caffeine horrors. You know we’re a teachers’ union because we are doddering wackademics whose bones ache after a mere 12 hours of the picket line. And so, with sorely afflicted eyelids and chickenlegs, I scraped this carcass out of bed a’morn at six and marched, shouted, pop-locked up and down the block in front of Truman College.
On strike with Local 1600 today: Truman faculty, part-timers, students, adjuncts, adult ed teachers, friendlies from the hotel across the street, Northeastern Illinois University students, an elderly couple who broke into a shimmy with our salsa, and one puppy dog.
Even the security guards got a piece when we cranked some Beyonce with our rigged-up streetside discotheque. In all, it felt better today. Even if it still sucked being out there. Yes, it sucked something awful.
Why? Because this strike has gone on for another day of the administration sucker-punching us with their misinformation, ordering students to report to class so they can break the strike; yes, they continue feeding a truly sorry local press lies that are repeated just about verbatim by lazy reporters sometime after the lead story that bleeds like The Passion of the Christ. THIS IS A NATIONAL STORY – see an article at the end of this post from The Chronicle of Higher Education…
I shouldn’t be so harsh, though. In addition to taking a clear stand on student attendance all of a sudden, the administration not only secured the exits/entrances but also instituted a Campus Beautification Program that’s sure to stampede the students on back to class, as the front hedges and trees are now covered with vomit-orange rubber-chickenwire. The Campus Beautification Program includes blood-red OPEN signs trumpeting tacky desperation – and they don’t realize how it looks from the street, like they’re boarding up the windows that once let everyone see a school, like they’re walling themselves up into a crypt.
A former student once gave me his honest opinion of Truman College as an institution. He said that Truman just wants student money, that they roll people through there like cattle. ADMINISTRATION: I implore you to help us prove him wrong by not doing your job with such gusto against the strike. As Jon Stewart said on Crossfire:
“Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.”
But among today’s many highlights: Cook County College Teachers’ Union President Perry Buckley visiting campus for a rallying cry; many, many students joining us and bringing noisemakers plus an entire stereo system; nursing students with the Halloween gear; “Rapper’s Delite”; political chit-chat with the bored security guards; mucho horn-honkers; veggie burger; the chair of my department busting loose like a will o’ the wisp on some Rolling Stones; and, unfortunately, more than a few students telling me I was lying, walking away laughing, heaping scorn with angry eyes as they crossed the picket.
“We’re dying in here” (Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon). I tried to keep that thought out of mind. The spirits were better and turnout bigger today, after all. And yet I still feel a deep sense of disgust and dread over how it’s all come to this.
Come out with us tomorrow, if you can. I’ll be there at 7am. Ouch.
--B
And here's the article I mentioned above:
Professors Walk Off Their Jobs in Workload Dispute at City Colleges of Chicago
By SCOTT SMALLWOOD
(c) 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
Full-time professors went on strike on Tuesday at the City Colleges of Chicago, prompting the cancellation of many classes at the seven-college system.
Administrators said that the colleges remained open and that 70 percent of the classes are taught by part-time instructors who are not on strike. But Perry J. Buckley, president of the striking union, scoffed at that number, saying that college officials must have counted every possible class -- "adult ed, yoga, candle making, GED, and ESL."
As he spoke from his cellphone while walking a picket line, Mr. Buckley said he had just met with a student who was told that six of his seven classes would not be held. "Then he went to the one, and no one was there," said Mr. Buckley, an English professor.
The City Colleges and the Cook County College Teachers Union Local 1600, which represents about 500 professors, have been negotiating for 16 months, including 5 months with the help of a federal mediator. The professors' previous contract expired in July.
While the sides have disagreed on several issues, the main sticking point is workload. Administrators want the professors to teach 15 hours per semester, or five courses, as community-college professors around the state do. At the City Colleges, about half of the full-timers teach 12 hours per semester, or four courses.
"This is a fairness issue," James C. Tyree, chairman of the colleges' Board of Trustees said in a written statement. "They should teach the same schedule as everyone else in our system and in the rest of Illinois. It's hard for us to make the case for greater funding from the state when half of our professors teach less than everyone else."
Newly hired professors already teach 15 hours a semester, Mr. Buckley said. "What they're saying is that they want everyone to be overworked," he said.
While some professors at the City Colleges of Chicago do teach fewer classes, they supervise more students than do other community-college instructors because of the large class sizes, Mr. Buckley said. The union is pushing to lower the class-size limits, from 35 to 30.
In the colleges' statement, Wayne Watson, the chancellor, said the institution has been "very flexible on salary and health care, and we've offered to compromise on workload."
Mr. Buckley suggested that the union, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, was digging in for a long strike. "We'll stay out a month if we have to," he said. But he also said that city officials, concerned about the disruption to polling places, would probably pressure the colleges to settle the contract before the November 2 election.
Mr. Buckley acknowledged that it was the union that had walked away from the bargaining table after the two sides had seemed very close to a deal over the weekend. He said he had given the chancellor his home and cellphone numbers.
"I have nothing to say to the man," Mr. Buckley said. "Whenever he's ready to talk, he can call."
Chicago City Colleges ON STRIKE!
From the Picket Line...
Friends, Colleagues, and Especially Students...
A year ago I was out of work and panhandling for ideas -- tired of downtown office jobs, nihilistic about writing, and just about ready to try anything. Even teaching again, if only to pick up one class and scrape out a living.
I didn't expect much, even when I heard back from Truman College, not until I had my first interview for a full-time teaching job (whaa?). Meeting my future colleagues and walking down the many-tongued hallways felt somehow right, even if I didn't completely believe I could do it. And then my second interview, and the rest like a runaway train.
I still don't believe that I found truly the best job in my life, one I feel good about even when I put every last wit to it and find myself reading overtime or picking through school e-mail at the neighborhood pub. That movie School of Rock was eerily inspirational last winter, my first teaching at Truman. I often felt like a fraud, even if I was working harder than I did even in graduate school.
So a year later, and I'm on strike. ON STRIKE! (Say that to yourself like a sports cheer rolled over in your mind maybe ten times over, and then you might have an idea of what this idea actually sounds like on the picket line.)
Right when we have a student newspaper in the building stages at Truman, during my best semester so far, with all of my classes feeling on track and engaged, at the height of thinking this persona called Professor Ortiz had hit a stride.
Students told me in the past few weeks that Truman has better teachers than Columbia College, better even than my alma mater, Loyola.
Yeah, well, so what? … as my friend Marc Smith would say. So what's a picket line like? It sucks. It’s not fun. I spent the whole day trying to convince students, adjuncts, and others that they didn’t have to attend classes, sometimes with picket chants and often in direct conversation or even confrontation. It started with the sun coming up at 6:30am, and it ended well after sundown, 7pm or so, but my voice was blown out by mid-morn. And I ate nothing but a bit of blueberry muffin all day. Call it a minor hunger strike, or maybe solidarity for Ramadan. But I couldn’t bring myself to eat when my time spent teaching was replaced by this disruption that doesn’t seem to have any end in sight.
Regardless, my fellow teachers were in great spirits, and there were so many wonderful students who came by, marched with us, shouted and shuffled as we tried to keep from cramping up. I know now that I will never be able to pass any picket line without walking a bit, talking to the workers, and knowing full well how tough it is to put your job on the line like that. (Oh yeah, there will be no reprisals from administration, but new non-tenured faculty might want to keep a “low profile”. Too late, that was me on CBS2 live at the crack o’ dawn.)
There was some dirty trickery afoot. Admin sending security guards to intimidate by taking video and photos, maybe out of nostalgia for Chicago’s uniquely hogbutcherish labor history. They also had their hirelings pass out flyers under the ‘el ordering students to go to class, intimidating them and throwing imperious imperatives around like they can teach the classes without us! This is funny in a sick way – Truman has no attendance policy, none at least admin can find, nope, not until the teachers go on strike. And then they called the cops to clear a side entrance, claiming private property. TAKE NOTICE: It takes a strike for Truman to secure its otherwise lax entrances and exits. And then their LED display facing the ‘el tracks, claiming that we’re striking because we don’t want to work as hard as other teachers even though we make an average $80,000/year. (Wow, sign me up for that deal!) My Spanish-speaking friends know this as “mentiras”. My Spanglish-speaking students might call it “bullshiteria” (look it up on my web site).
This is the best job of my life, and I don’t want to strike anymore. But I will, we all will, until there’s a fair resolution. This strike is not frivolous and certainly not fun. Reader, know that we want to get back in the classroom immediately, and you can help by joining us tomorrow on the picket line or writing a letter/e-mail. You can help bring this to a satisfying conclusion that will preserve the integrity of a City Colleges education.
Thank you STUDENTS for not letting administration order you around as if you serve them! Thank you SENIOR FACULTY for building and keeping the Union alive over the years so that we rookies can enjoy what you’ve worked hard to sustain! Thank you ADULT EDUCATORS and ADJUNCTS for joining us on the picket line! And thank you LOCAL 1600 for staying strong to teach me yet another lesson I won’t ever forget at Truman College.
Truman STRIKE Info for Students
The following notice is meant especially for Truman College students...
Dear Students:
Many of you have asked about how a possible strike will affect classes next week. A date has been set for a strike, if negotiations do not come to an agreement: Tuesday, October 19, 2004. Please check with all of your teachers to find out about your schedule, since part-time credit teachers are not an official part of the strike -- though some might be participating.
As of today, classes will go on per usual this Monday. Please check my web site (www.benortiz.com) for a post on late Monday about events, as I am a Local 1600 Union member and will be picketing outside of Truman if a strike is indeed called. In that event, I will not return to teach classes until the strike is resolved, and there will be no subs for my classes.
We've learned a lot in class so far -- in Literature 126, close reading; in News Reporting, what it means to do journalism and keep digging for the truth; in Composition 102, how to research and evaluate sources; in College Newspaper, what it means to know and engage your community.
As a part of what you're learning in class, you might want to read through and follow links for informational pieces you'll find below. First, there are links to the Cook County College Teachers Union web page (www.ccctu.com) and then for the City Colleges of Chicago district page (www.ccc.edu) below for specific articles. You might immediately notice differences in how the events are being recounted, maybe even factual discrepancies. Ask yourself which source you believe and what questions are left unanswered, and then read a recent piece from the Chicago Tribune on the strike. Contrast and compare the PR pieces from the District page with the Tribune journalism and public communications from the Union. Consider also the call to action (excerpted below) on the student flyers in support of Truman teachers. Decide for yourself what you think, and take more action if you like with an e-mail, phone call, letter, or other action of your choice.
Finally: I've also listed who you can contact for more information, plus a sample letter, if you choose to write a letter in support of the strike, as well as an e-mail address for Truman students who are organizing events in support of Truman teachers.
I look forward to continuing classes soon without all of this distraction, as this is my best semester ever, and I am enjoying our time as a Truman community.
Yours,
Benjamin Ortiz
==============
[I haven't had time to build the links, so copy/paste the URLs into your address line to get there, same for e-mails...]
1. FROM THE COOK COUNTY COLLEGE TEACHERS UNION PAGE
(www.ccctu.com)
A Strike? What is going on?? And How Can I Help?
http://www.ccctu.com/announcements/Whatcanyoudotohelp.htm
Community Rallies to City Colleges'
Teachers, Professionals, Security and Others
http://www.ccctu.com/announcements/demusjoinseffort.htm
2. FROM the CCC DISTRICT PAGE (www.ccc.edu)
Contract Negotiation FAQs
http://www.ccc.edu/aboutccc/studentfaq.shtml
PR piece
http://www.ccc.edu/aboutccc/news/negot_10_15_04.shtml
3. CHICAGO TRIBUNE ARTICLE
City Colleges teachers ready to strike
Tribune staff report
October 15, 2004, 11:52 AM CDT
A teachers union today declared an impasse in talks with the City Colleges of Chicago and said its members would walk off the job Tuesday. A strike could affect some 60,000 students.
"Although there was some positive movement, we are still far away in several key areas," Perry Buckley, president of the Cook County College Teachers Union, said in a news release issued this morning.
Union negotiators plan to continue meeting through the weekend with their City Colleges counterparts and a federal mediator, Buckley said, adding, "We will be available around the clock in order to avoid a strike."
The main sticking points remain health-care premiums, salaries, increased workload and certain academic issues, Buckley said.
Today's strike announcement took City College administrators by surprise. They are preparing a response that is expected to be released this afternoon.
Faculty and staff of the City Colleges filed a notice to strike Oct. 6 with the Educational Labor Relations Board, one day after union members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a walkout.
The union and college have been negotiating since May. The previous contract expired July 15.
4. WHO TO WRITE & SAMPLE LETTER
Mayor Richard M. Daley
Office of the Mayor
121 N. LaSalle St. Room 507
Chicago, IL 60602
Fax: 312-744-8045
Dr. Wayne Watson
Office of the Chancellor
226 W. Jackson
Chicago, IL 60606
(312) 553-2510
chancellor@ccc.edu
Dear Dr. Watson:
As a student at Harry S Truman College, I am writing to urge you to do everything in your power to come to an agreement with the teachers, professional employees and security officers of the Cook County College Teachers Union to avoid a strike. A disruption in classes would be terrible for students, faculty and administrators alike. As a student with family and job commitments, time is precious thing. I cannot afford to make up lost class time with longer classes or an extended semester.
Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. I look forward to your reply.
5. INFO from STUDENTS ORGANIZING IN SUPPORT OF
TRUMAN TEACHERS
...from an informational flyer posted at Truman...A rally will be held at Truman college to organize the students starting on Monday, October 18th, and will continue while the strike lasts. ... Please bring signs, noise makers, and warm clothing and good shoes. In addition to the picket lines, a student sponsored demonstration will be held at the Mayor's Office on Wednesday, October 20, if the strike is still continuing. This is our money that is being wasted by the Board of Education by not honoring our teachers. If we force the City of Chicago to hear us, we can stop the strike and classes will resume with OUR teachers. Please meet Wednesday, October 20, 2004, 9am, Mayor Richard Daley's office, 121 N. LaSalle Room 507, Chicago, IL 60602
...from another Truman student flyer
...We as students can not afford to make up lost time with longer classes or an extended semester. We can help end the strike quickly if we support our teachers!!! To not support them would mean the strike WILL LAST LONGER and we will have an extended semester. ...All students are encouraged to come to school as they regularly would, but instead of attending class, stand with your teachers and help them demand respect. For more information [for students who want to join other students in organizing]:
strike_trumancollege2004@yahoo.com