By George N. Schmidt

More than two months after the official end of the three-week strike of the Cook Country College Teachers Union (CCCTU), Chicago’s city colleges were still in turmoil because of the insistence of colleges administrators, all appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley, to retaliate against those who supported the strike.

The strike by the CCCTU (Local 1600 of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union of the 36,000-member Chicago Teachers Union) was contentious from the beginning. The City Colleges administration, represented by the controversial law firm of Franczek Sullivan PC (the same firm that represented the Chicago Board of Education at a cost of more than $1 million in last year’s negotiations) began harassing strikers and their supporters from the beginning of the strike October 17 and has continued to do so since the strike ended November 7.

During the strike itself, the City Colleges administration attempted to use Chicago Police to harass picket lines at the various campuses, all of which were picketed and shut down. The harassment was part of a media campaign by City Colleges Chancellor Wayne Watson and Colleges Board Chairman James Tyree to divide the full-time professors who struck from students, community, and others working in the college system. Media claims included statements by Tyree, Watson and others that college teachers were “featherbedding” because of their course loads and that they earned in excess of $80,000 per year.

A major part of the campaign against the strike was the claim that classes were being held across the city despite the strike. In order to make that claim credible, however, the colleges administration had to convince students to attend class and part-time professors (called “adjunct” staff) to teach those classes. In both cases, thanks to strong leadership among the students and part-time professors, the attempt at divide-and-conquer failed.

Student support for the strike was widespread and came in many ways, some of them (see phto below) unusual in their form. In general, however, it consisted of active picket line duty and a number of rallies. Malcolm X student leader Filipe Finley (above in peaked cap to the right of CCCTU President Perry Buckley) helped organize the October 23 rally at Malcolm X early in the strike. Later, City Colleges officials attempted to expel Finely from school, despite the fact that he had been featured in school brochures advertising the college. Substance photo by George and Dan Schmidt.

“This fight is... about people,” Perry J. Buckley, President of the Cook County College Teachers Union said in his report to the membership in the union’s January 2005 newsletter, the College Union Voice. Quoting Cesar Chavez (“The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is about people...”) Buckley went on to praise everyone who made the strike a solid success.

“After a 701 - 23 strike authorization vote, the CCC Board chose to ignore the people behind that vote,” Buckley wrote. “On the first day of the strike, when only five of 755 members crossed the picket line, the Board again ignored the people who marched on the lines. After three weeks and only two additional members had crossed, then and only then, the Board faced the reality that they had underestimated the ‘people’ who make up Local 1600 in the City Colleges. In the end, in a nine-hour session, the CCC Board gave up every concession they had held fast to for over six months...”

At the beginning of the strike, the Franczek Sullivan law firm representing the City Colleges administration (and the Daley administration) demanded major concessions from the union, concessions that union members told Substance repeatedly on the pickets lines were designed to break the union and undermine 40 years of contract victories going back to the 1960s.

“...[T]he City Colleges’ ‘hired gun’ lawyers at Franczek & Sullivan had thrown down the gauntlet of a contract that would have gutted over 40 years of gains by our union,” the College Union Voice reported in its January 2005 edition. “Their original proposals included: insurance premiums based on a percentage of unspecified costs; dramatically increased deductibles and co-pays; a freeze on salaries for four years; placing librarians on a 12-month schedule; elimination of accumulated sick pay and early retirement enhancement, and new demands of course work and a form of ‘publish or perish’ in a totally revamped post-tenure evaluation...”

According to the union, the overwhelmingly successful strike rolled back every one of the administration demands. On October 20, the strike began with only three of 755 union members crossing the picket lines. Despite attempts by City Colleges officials to claim that classes were in session and intimidation against part-time instructors, fewer than five percent of classes were able to meet across the city. On October 20, City Colleges Board Chair James Tyree claimed that 70 percent of classes were being held and that students, teachers and other employees were crossing the picket lines.

Malolm X student leader Filipe Findley, above speaking with reporters during the October 23 student rally in support of striking professors, was threatened with expulsion by City Colleges administration for his leadership in supporting strikers. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

By October 26, press reports on the situation were beginning to reflect the reality, and the City Colleges administration became more desperate. At one point, City Colleges Chancellor Wayne Watson came to the picket line at Wright College and tried to talk with pickets while union president Perry Buckley was addressing the strikers a few yards away. The union filed an unfair labor practice charge against the chancellor for this incident.

Harassment continued. A Wright student was arrested for passing out strike literature inside the building. Adjunct (part-time) faculty were told they would be fired for honoring the picket lines. ON October 28, 500 students and other supporters rallied on outside the fifth floor offices of Mayor Richard M. Daley at Chicago’s City Hall. Despite claims by City Colleges spokesmen that classes are being conducted by part-time staff, the facts begin to become clear thanks to reports from students and the part-timers themselves. On October 28, one of Watson’s top lieutenants, Daley College President Sylvia Ramos, admits that 40 part-time faculty have refused to cross the picket lines.

Harassment of student supporters of the strike increases. Student transit passes are cancelled for students who support the strike, while at as least one campus the campus administration tries to replace the elected student government president with one appointed by the administration.

At a tumultuous November 4 meeting of the Chicago City Colleges Board, security attempts to block the entrance to the boardroom from students and faculty. In the resulting confrontation, one student is arrested. The media disinformation campaign continues.

With the help of Rev. James Meeks (a state senator), the two sides finally got together again on November 5. ON November 6 a tentative agreement was announced, and on November 7, after three weeks of striking, the union members voted 94.8 percent to 5.2 percent to accept the agreement recommended by the negotiating team. Despite the optimism that greeted the strike’s end, the administration continued its attacks on the union’s members and their supporters.

By January, Watson’s tactics were continuing to attempt divide the community, but were keeping people united, as they had become during the strike. Angry over post-strike moves by administrators, full-time faculty members at the seven campuses voted during the last week of January on a “no confidence” resolution aimed at the Chancellor.

The declaration contended that Watson’s “divisive tactics” weakened student trust and confidence and tarnished the reputation of the school. It was to be presented at the City Colleges board February 3 and asks for Watson’s removal.

As part of the post-strike protest, full-time faculty members resigned their administrative and committee posts. This was in part because of Watson’s decision to fire about 140 emeritus and adjunct faculty members who had honored the picket line. “Emeritus” faulty are retired professors who return to teach a reduced course load; “adjuncts” are part-timers. The majority of both groups had honored the picket lines, despite warnings from administration they would face disciplinary action.

Union activists warned that hundreds of classes would not be staffed when the spring semester began Monday, January 31, although that could not be confirmed at Substance press time. Watson did not return Substance calls. Reports were circulating that the colleges were desperately trying to hire dozens of new staff to teach the classes of those they had fired.

Polly Hoover, president of the City Colleges Faculty Council, told reporters that bad feelings persist — generated by the media tactics used by administration during the strike. The resolution targeting Watson was because of what she called his “systemic damage” to the colleges, according to press reports. “For the Faculty Council, the erosion of academic freedom and academic autonomy has been a big issue,” Hoover, humanities chair at Wright, told a reporter.

When a tentative agreement to end the strike was reached Nov. 6, all parties called for an end to the acrimony and name-calling that marred the walkout. Administration tactics continued as if nothing had changed. In early January, Watson announced that 76 adjunct faculty and 63 retired faculty members who had not crossed the picket line would not be asked to teach during the spring semester, scheduled to begin January 31. He claimed that the adjunct faculty members had violated a specific no-strike clause in their union contract (which is a separate union), while the 63 on the emeritus faculty had violated what he termed an “unwritten contract” with their students to provide them classes. Arrests and prosecutions of students and a teacher— as well as administrative threats against others — continued as well.

Union officials note that Watson’s tactics continue a pattern of illegal actions begun during the strike itself. “The CCC administration, after being made to look quite … ineffectual during and after the strike, is now exacting revenge on the weakest among us despite non-reprisal language in our contract that we feel is some of the strongest in the state,” said Bill Naegele, a retired Marshall High school teacher who now serves as legislative representative for the college teachers union. “Our contract prohibits reprisals against students, teachers, or ‘any other person’ as a result of their support during the strike.”

“The administration has blacklisted all ‘adjunct’ (part-time) instructors as well as ‘professor emeriti’ — retirees who are members of local 1600 and covered by our contract,” Naegele continued. “According to Watson, no one who honored our picket lines is supposed to be hired back. Typically, part-timers are ‘assigned’ by Department Chairs — who are Local 1600 members. We have asked them to process the hiring paper work for our friends and members based who is the ‘most qualified’ to teach the class — in other words, those who honored our picket lines. We have filed for arbitration and some Unfair Labor Practice complaints and think that we have a slam dunk and that at least our members, the retirees, will get paid whether they work or not.”

Different problems are posed by the adjunct faculty. These are covered by a contract negotiated by the Illinois Education Association (IEA). “We still feel that they are covered by our non-reprisal clause and are including them in our arbitration,” Naegele said. “The board’s position is that all of these employees are ‘at will’ employees and that they can abuse them at will and fire them anytime they want.”

The Board also took disciplinary action against two students. One at Wright was arrested and charged with trespassing for exercising his constitutional right to pass out leaflets during the strike. He was also brought up on disciplinary charges and threatened with expulsion. The union provided him with legal counsel and his charges were dismissed both in court and at the college.

Some of the tactics used by the administration have been called “police state” by teachers. One week after the strike, police showed up at the home of Ben Rubin, a professor at Malcolm X, arrested him and put him in handcuffs in front of his wife and one-year-old son. He was charged with assaulting security guards at a demonstration at a public Board meeting where the board tried to keep the public out. The union is providing him with legal counsel and expects to win in court. They also arrested a student from Malcolm X and charged him with assault. The union offered to provide his lawyer but he chose to retain his own.

“One of our big wins in the contract was a concession that nursing faculty would be paid one-for-one for every hour that they worked with students in a hospital setting,” Naegele continued. “They were previously were paid one hour for every two hours worked. The board, after awarding themselves generous raises, then raised the ‘student fees’ for nurses over $2000, to ‘pay for the teachers raises’”..

Naegele pointed out that these are students, most of whom are CPS graduates, who can least afford to go college. They are training to be nurses, where there are good job prospects and where they will serve the people in their neighborhoods, mostly poor and minority. Charging them these exorbitant fees, combined with the Bush cuts, will effectively throw them out of college for lack of funds.

The website for the Cook County College Teachers Union is www.CCCTU.com. Substance is hoping to publish a number of letters and additional information in future issues as this story develops.