A Presentation by SIUE Faculty Association-IEA/NEA Leadership SIUE Faculty Senate sponsored All Faculty meeting Morris University Conference Center-SIUE Sept 20, 2016 Dr. Kim Archer Associate Professor Department of Music Interim co-Chair, SIUE Faculty Association-IEA/NEA Thank you for the introduction, Jeff, and thank you, colleagues, for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Kim Archer. I’m in the Music Depar tment (like our new Chancellor), an Associate Professor, and the interim co-Chair of the SIUE Faculty Association. I’ll let the ot her interim officers introduce themselves. You are always welcome to direct questions to the interim leaders you see here. BTW, I mention the term “interim” because we are only placeholder s until the members ratify bylaws and elect permanent officers. More on this in a few minutes. The Faculty Association also has a website with an extensive FAQ that is being updated regularly: that’s siuefa.org. Even more important, we hope that all faculty – members or not – will attend the open Q&A session at our first General Membership Meeting. More on that in a few minutes. There are several points I want to address with you today. First, this campaign was about faculty’s common goal: to hold our governor and the Illinois legislature accountable for their fiscal decimation of higher education and their shameful treatment of the young people of Illinois that we serve – our students. Second, we are in a crisis. We want to ensure that when good administrators must make hard choices that affect educational quality, faculty will have an equal voice. In fact, in this way we want to strengthen the relationship between faculty and administrators by joining together to help keep SIUE strong and vital. Third, our health insurance is a major concern. Last year we paid premiums but couldn’t use our services. Now the state is calling to double – not just raise, but double – our premiums. Couple that with not so much as a cost-of- living increase in three years, and we’re talking about a massive salary cut – which hits our untenured colleagues with young families the hardest. AFSCME – the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees – which represents our professional staff at SIUE, has been fighting the governor on this for some time. In other words, just to be clear, your department’s secretary is fighting your healthcare battle for you. We faculty need to step up, as well. Speaking for myself , when I saw a union flyer in my mailbox last March, I thought “This couldn’t hurt and it might just help.” Still, I researched the IEA myself, with an open mind . I learned that last spring, all tenure track faculties at Illinois public universities were unionized except us, Northern Illinois, Illinois State, and Urbana-Champaign. (By the way, NIU organized over the summer.) Then, I read about faculty unions at Eastern, Western, and Carbondale rejecting broad cuts and furloughs, and instead, through their solidarity, they bargained for more creative solutions that saved jobs, saved programs, and protected their students’ quality of education.
This raises one misunderstood notion we would like to put to rest right now – the idea of a union creating an adversarial environment. We have a new chancellor. Dr. Pembrook alerted us last Friday in his “first impressions” installment that we will have a permanent Provost by the end of this year. Many of our Schools have new deans. Now there is a new faculty union, too, but the union is us and we are the union. We, whether in the union, the Faculty Senate, the CAS Congress, or any other organization are the embodiment of SIUE’s tradition – its cherished culture – of cooperation and shared governance. We all know that is what makes SIUE a great place to be, and worth fighting to protect. In fact, one essential role of the union is to uphold the Faculty Senate’s policies and recommendations – our traditional voice of shared governance – through a legally binding contract. This coalition of advocacy is far more powerful than either of our organizations can be by themselves. We have handouts for you today. Read that letter from Bailey Young at EIU, who is a longtime member of both the union and the senate. Read the letter from last year’s Faculty Senate president at Carbondale, which includes actual contract language spelling out the role and duties of each organization. In short, the Faculty Senate is and will remain the authority on academic policy and curriculum for the faculty. A faculty union does not subtract in any way from the virtues of shared governance, but it does add an extra dimension by giving the faculty more power regarding wages, course loads, class sizes, and other w orking conditions. Equally important, through the Illinois Education Association’s legal expertise, the Faculty Association can access detailed budgetary information – the kind of data we need to work with the administration as true partners. Let's face it, this will prove particularly crucial when it comes to bargaining over salaries and other bread-and-butter issues. All we want is the contractual power to know what the administration knows and thus participate in tough decisions as equals. Next is the timeline of how we got to this point and where we will go from here. Beginning in spring 2016, faculty organizers staffed information tables in the lobby of the MUC, right outside Auntie Anne’s and Starbucks. We also staffed info tables in Peck Hall, we distributed multiple flyers to all faculty mailboxes, we sponsored open information sessions, we hosted weekly lunches, and then, literally, we went door-to-door. Of more than 400 faculty, there were fewer than 12 who declined to meet. We did it on our own time, for no pay, no course release – not even for service credit . We did it because we believe, with full intellect and heart, that this is in the best interests of our students, campus, colleagues, and profession. By the end of August we collected a clear majority – a strong majority – of faculty interest cards, and on September 2 nd , we petitioned the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board for union certification. We expect to learn in the next week or two that an official Order of Certification shall be issued. The interim officers will soon be able to set a date for the first General Membership Meeting. At this meeting, the first hour will be open to all faculty, members or not, for a Q&A session. After this, we will take a break and those who have not yet joined will have an opportunity to do so. Then members will discuss and ratify our Association bylaws. Once bylaws are ratified, we will have procedures for members to nominate and elect permanent officers. If you are interested in helping with preparations for bargaining or helping in other ways, you can contact any of us for more information. We expect to begin negotiations early in the spring semester. There are two more misconceptions I would like to clear up while I have the floor, and perhaps this will alleviate some questions. First, since earlier attempts at faculty unionization were done through an election, why not this time? In 2003 … that was 13 years ago … the State of Illinois passed legislation –informally called ‘card check’
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