Labor News (UPDATE): Black Hawk College Union Members Overwhelmingly Approve Vote to Strike

UPDATE: 

The Black Hawk College strike was averted after an agreement was reached between the Union and the board. Educators will have improved pay, health care, and fairer overtime loads.

Source: Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Black Hawk College is a community college in Illinois with campuses in the cities of Moline and Galva. AFT colleagues in the Illinois Federation of Teachers (Local 1836) voted on 9 March 2018 to strike as negotiations between the union and administration have stalled. The union has not had a contract since the summer 2017. On March 9, it filed an intent-to-strike notice with BHC, paving the way for the union to strike after a 10-day waiting period that expired Monday.

Union member Professor Galen Leonhardy argues:

Whether our board members force us to strike or recognize the vulgarity of their recent rationalizations, I refuse to take yet another pay reduction, refuse to pay even more for health care, and refuse to support a board that wants to decrease by thousands and thousands of dollars, junior faculty members’ retirements.  

I refuse to have faith in and support a board that has spent millions adding buildings on campus while enrollments fell, new buildings, one of which remains essentially hollow, a place of learning without learners.  

I am done with authoritarian board members hiring and subsequently empowering authoritarian administrators who have fixated on chilling academic freedom while failing to fulfill their own basic responsibilities.

Our union leaders are doing a super job of helping members hold onto our health care, achieve a basic cost of living increase, prevent the board members from diminishing junior faculty members’ retirements, and keep the board members from cutting the salaries of our senior faculty members.  

Our union leaders have negotiated for more than a year with board members, with elected officials who have very limited backgrounds in education, folks who were willing to pay a lawyer astronomical amounts (over $100,000) just to prevent faculty and professional/technical employees from having even a cost of living raise.  Yet those same board members have given raises to our administrators (who appear to pay for their raises by laying off faculty members).

Thanks to the union, we have a wonderful health care and insurance plan. Had we trusted that our administrators would take care of us, we would never have had the quality of health care we currently enjoy.   If I get sick or have an accident, I will be taken care of.  I have a child who needed hospitalization, and the insurance covered almost all of the expenses.  Our family members get to attend the first two years of college for almost nothing.  I have a fair wage and a great retirement plan. And I have To thank the union for all of those things that help me to feel glad that I have the job I have.

Obviously, I am proud to be a union member, grateful to those past faculty members who put their jobs on the line to create the union, and honored to continue that legacy for future faculty members.

For an update on the negotiations:

http://qconline.com/news/bhc-union-exchange-contract-proposals/article_26cb88a9-5b50-5490-b135-b427fe0aac31.html