The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of SIU at Carbondale. Except during vacations and exam weeks, The Daily Egyptian is published Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and TWThF during the summer semester."

SIUC term faculty consider union

Floyd Olive has taught on yearly contracts as an instructor at SIUC's Center for English as a Second Language for 25 years. Olive, who has his masters' degree, said it was only recently that he was offered a more substantial contract.

"I became disenchanted with what I saw as the nature of the Ph.D.," Olive said, who may retire in four years. "I like to teach and I like Southern Illinois. If you are in a one-employer town, what can you do?"

SIUC term faculty could join a trend of Illinois faculties across the state that has chosen to unionize in the past two years. The University would become the third with a term faculty union if a vote passed. Organizers say forming a union would protect against low wages, poor working conditions and bad job security.

On the heels of term faculty unionization at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, union organizers have fixed their eyes on the next target - SIUC.

SIUE term faculty voted to unionize Wednesday and the Illinois State University term faculty union formed in April 2003.

Jim Clark, Illinois Education Association organizer, said the association is only beginning work to see if there is a similar need at the Carbondale campus.

"We haven't made any decisions about starting a campaign at Carbondale," Clark said. "All we know is that we won at Edwardsville and we think it is a good idea because that is the business that we are in."

The Illinois Board of Higher Education reported in February 2002 that Illinois public universities and colleges followed a nationwide trend to heavily rely on nontenure-track faculty.

In fact, "nontenure-track faculty constituted 62 percent of this total, the same as the national percentage," the report reads. Tenure and tenure-track faculty made up 38 percent. In 1999, nontenure-track faculty at Illinois public universities was 41 percent of all faculty, an increase of 8 percent from 1991.

The Faculty Association is working with the Illinois Education Association to begin talks to unionize.

Lenore Langsdorf, vice president of the Faculty Association, said although the association only represents tenure and tenure-track faculty, term faculty are their colleagues and they should have representation too.

"Do we have the same issues here?" Langsdorf said. "We don't know if the situation is the same here as there. If there's no interest, then we won't do it, but we won't know until we ask questions."

Langsdorf said one reason the number of term faculty has increased is because they tend to be less expensive than tenured faculty.

Shirley Clay Scott, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, said in recent years her college has had to hire more term faculty because the budget has been very tight. Scott said 94 percent of the college's budget is devoted to salaries.

"We don't have many degrees of flexibility in our budget," Scott said.

Scott said many of COLA's 40 term faculty are graduates of the college. Many of which are hired to teach freshman-level English classes.

"While there are courses that these people are full qualified to teach, and they can use this job to enhance their resume, it's really a win-win situation," she said. "It's gratifying enough that they are willing to do that even if it is not a highly-lucrative thing to do."

Robert Jensen, associate provost for academic affairs, said during his time as interim associate provost for academic administration he never had many complaints from term faculty that were not easily fixed.

"On the whole, I think our relationship with our term faculty has been mutually successful," Jensen said. "Unionization comes both with benefits to both sides and with costs . . . I'm not certain the need is there."

Don Rice, the associate provost for academic administration, said during his time as an associate dean in COLA last year, he ran into problems being competitive enough to recruit tenured professors.

When an associate professor would resign or retire, he or she would leave about $49,000 in salary money, but Rice said to fill that position and remain competitive about $54,000 is needed.

"One of the things that is happening is that we are losing faculty and for each individual there is often not enough money to replace them one on one," Rice said. "That means in some instances, you will have to use that money for the one that is not filled and use that to fill some other lines."

Jan Sundberg, an instructor in Food and Nutrition in the College of Agriculture, ran her own business before coming to SIUC to teach six years ago. Sundberg doesn't believe she has ever been mistreated on campus and joining a union doesn't interest her.

Term faculty across campus received a flier promoting unionization.

"It's stuck in a pile somewhere on my desk," Sundberg said. "I tend to be a big risk-taker. I always land on my feet. It's just not for me."

 

 

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