Loyola University Updates

Monday, November 3 –

Recap #19

Dear Colleagues,

In this update, you can:

• Read the opening statement for our bargaining  session on November 3 written by union member Laura Goldstein with the Faculty Forward LUC Bargaining team 
• Read about our union’s counterproposals on Compensation, Layoffs, Professional Development Funds, and Parental Leave for part-time faculty that were presented on November 3.
• Find out what next steps you may take to get informed about and involved in our Faculty Forward LUC union, including attending our next bargaining session on Monday, November 17, from 9:00 a.m.  to 1:00 p.m. CST (with the union caucus starting at 8:00) in Cuneo 417.

In our bargaining session on Monday, November 3, the 25th session since negotiations began in February, Faculty Forward LUC presented the university with four counterproposals: Compensation, Layoffs, Professional Development Funds, and Parental Leave for part-time faculty. 

English Department Steward, Bargaining Committee member and Senior Lecturer Laura Goldstein began the session by sharing an opening statement. As management neither had any counterproposals to present nor statements to give, the union then moved on to presenting our four new counterproposals.

In our newest Compensation counterproposal, we made large movements towards management’s current position. We significantly scaled back our baseline of 35% to a 25% increase over the current minimum salary floors. That 25% is an important number, though, because it guarantees our members a true and meaningful raise of 8% on top of the 17%  needed to adjust our pay for the increase in inflation since our last contract was signed four years ago. Since our yearly salary increases have barely tracked with inflation, we have really not received a raise in the past four years. We are asking for a small amount of the dollars we produce for the University. We have earned this, as we teach the majority of students in CAS and, through the Core Curriculum, students across the University. 

Management has claimed that university faculty have seen an average raise increase of 15% since 2021. But they did not share nor present data to support this figure. Overall, we have found management’s data to be cherry-picked and misleading. To better provide security to our members, we also reinstated a proposal for a 4.6% annual salary increase. This would be in addition to any merit pool increases, which have proven to be both unpredictable and insufficient to keep up with the costs of living in Chicago. 

While we are preparing for a hopeful future, we have responded to the university’s concerns that student admission rates will decrease in the coming years. To that end, we added a modifier to our counterproposal that would reduce these yearly raises from 4.6% to 2.3% if and when enrollment were to drop by 10% or more in a given year. If enrollment did not drop an additional 10% the following year, the annual increase would return to 4.6%.

Our Layoffs counterproposal demands transparency regarding when and how layoffs would happen. First, we proposed a clear, measurable trigger for possible layoffs: a 20% reduction in enrollment and/or funding between academic years. We let management know that we welcome their counter concerning other triggers, but emphasized that we do need to have specific language in regard to what could cause layoffs. 

Second, because this article applies only to unionized faculty, we also ask that the union be consulted and given timely notice when layoffs may occur and that the administration act transparently by providing data when justifying a layoff. Faculty Forward LUC addressed the nature of the academic job market by proposing that the administration announce layoffs at the end of the fiscal year on June 30, with the end of employment occurring on July 1 of the following year, giving our members a year to look for work. 

Third, we also reinstated our call for severance in the event of a layoff as well as the retirement benefits enumerated in the current Faculty Handbook. Like Compensation, this counterproposal makes significant movement towards management’s positions in their Layoffs proposal, while still holding firm on our positions which seek to keep our members informed and protected should layoffs occur. Management has completed more 88 to line 85 permanent position conversions than the now expired contract required. But, they want to be accountable for zero line conversions in the new contract no matter how future enrollment  affects Loyola.

Lastly, Faculty Forward LUC presented our latest Parental Leave counterproposal for part-time faculty with the University’s latest counterproposal on the Professional Development Fund as a package for tentative agreement. In this Professional Development counterproposal, we accepted the university’s numbers of a $55,000 fund serving up to $1250 per person with a reinstatement of management’s language to escalate the fund pool by 5% if the $55,000 is used entirely within a fiscal year. We hope that management will tentatively agree (TA) on both of these counterproposals as a package deal soon so as to help us make strides towards reaching a fair agreement.

After we finished presenting our four counterproposals, Management said they would respond to our economic proposals as a package before leaving for caucus at 10:12 a.m. (Last week, our union presented the rest of the economic package, including Workload and Appointments and Reappointments.) At 11:23 a.m., Management contacted us to say they had no more counterproposals nor responses for us, and the session ended. We look forward to hearing Management’s responses and counterproposals at our next bargaining session Monday, November 17, 9am-1pm in Cuneo 417.

So what comes next? 

Our next scheduled bargaining dates, times and locations are as follows:

• Monday, November  17: 9 a.m.* to 1 p.m. CST in Cuneo 417
• Tuesday, November 25: 12 p.m.* to 4 p.m. CST in Cuneo 417 

*We will begin caucusing at 8AM for 9AM starts and 11AM for 12PM starts.

Talking to your colleagues – be they staff, NTTs, tenure-track or tenured faculty – and students about our union and our contract negotiations is important. They have a stake in a fair contract, too, and deserve to be informed about what management is doing, and what they can do to help us reach a fair contract that serves our whole LUC co-learning community. Please sign our petition and share the separate petition we have created for community allies with your students and tenure-stream allies (and alumni, staff, clergy, and anyone invested in the future of Loyola) so they may sign it, too. You may find additional resources to help you and the whole of our LUC community learn about our union and how to best support it at our Faculty Forward LUC website. 

In Solidarity,

The Loyola Chicago Faculty Forward Bargaining Team

Friday, October 24 –
Recap #18
Dear Colleagues,

In this update, you can:

• Learn about our student-faculty protest on October 28;
• Read our assessment of where management is coming from;
• Read about management’s counterproposals on Compensation, Workload, Layoffs and Appointments & Reappointments;
• Read our counterproposals on Professional Development and Terms of Appointment
• Find some ways to get involved in supporting negotiations going forward.
• Find links to a recent op-ed by union member Julie Chamberlin, two petitions that support our bargaining goals, and Wednesday’s article from The Loyola Phoenix on the state of negotiations.

This Tuesday, October 28 at 11am, come to the south entrance of Cuneo Hall (the one nearest Mundelein) for a student-faculty solidarity rally for a fair union contract. Let’s raise our collective voice and send a message to management that we deserve fair pay, sustainable workloads, and job security. We will then bring that energy into the bargaining room, where we will present union counterproposals on member priorities around those very issues. Bargaining will take place 12-4pm in Cuneo 417.

We would like to make clear that the LUC administration bargaining team is bargaining with Faculty Forward LUC, which is comprised of and led by full- and part-time non-tenure track faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences and is affiliated with SEIU Local 73. LUC management is not bargaining with SEIU Local 73 as they claimed in their own recap of the 10/10 bargaining session. As members of Faculty Forward, we are SEIU Local 73. 

We had a productive yet frustrating bargaining session on Tuesday. LUC management’s bargaining team presented counterproposals on Layoffs, Appointments & Reappointments, Workload, and Compensation. Faculty Forward LUC presented counterproposals on Professional Development and Term of Appointment. Overall, management did make some movement towards us, though it was mostly symbolic.

Based on what management has said across the table, we believe that much of what is driving their positions is fear about the uncertain present and future of higher education. As members of the university community, we share many of these same concerns, but we still remain very far apart on the best way to address these issues. 

We think the best way forward is for the University to invest in the faculty, so we, in turn, can invest in our students, boosting student retention and thereby the stability of the school. The administration seems to believe that they need to be able to act without accountability, doing whatever they see fit. They have clearly forgotten that they are supposed to be administering Loyola on behalf of all the faculty, students, and staff here, rather than simply ensuring the organization continues to exist regardless of the consequences for the people who make up that organization.

The Layoff clause is a perfect example of these differing visions. When management first presented a Layoff clause, it had very little specificity beyond 14 days notice. When asked about specific conditions for what could trigger a layoff, timing in regard to the academic year, severance and insurance, they replied; “We look forward to your counterproposal”. We did the work for management and counterproposed a sensible approach to university layoffs. On Tuesday, they countered our response by striking nearly all our language, though there was movement to 45 days on notification and agreement not to lay off unionized faculty in the middle of the semester. 

While we appreciate the acknowledgment of the difficulties that laying people off in the middle of the semester would cause, their position still does not deal with the realities of the academic job market–that new jobs open up only annually and that you must begin your search for a new position a year ahead of time. They also continue to want unacceptably vague conditions for layoffs that would allow them to do so without accountability.

Management made very little movement towards us on Appointments and Reappointments and struck most of our language here as well. They had agreed, in principle, to continue with the successful program of consolidating part-time positions into full-time ones, creating more pathways to full-time employment, a welcome point of consensus. Management does not, however, want the accountability of committing to a specific, measurable number of consolidations. 

One of the biggest wins in our first contract was a guarantee that unionized members looking to advance in their careers would be granted on-campus, final-round interviews for other jobs covered by the union contract. Management has backed off on their efforts to fully rescind this right, but they still want to considerably weaken it by changing the language to simply some interview at some point in the process. 

Management made some movement towards us on Workload, too. Their proposed cap for part-time faculty is now 864 hours per calendar year and there is a provision for part-time faculty to teach an additional course assignment, when needed. However, their proposal of a single course release, approximately every four years at the discretion of the university, does not adequately offset the crushing workload of a 4/4 schedule. They did not seem to hear us at all in regard to problems with compensation for the extra workload for course coordinators or with their proposed changes for credit counting for labs. They claim they are looking only at market data and not “facts on the ground”. A sad admission on their part, to be sure.

Management returned to their scorched earth stance on Compensation, making absolutely no movement from their last proposal, despite the fact that we made movement towards them in our latest counter-proposal. Here too, they are happy to only use cherry-picked market data for their analysis rather than the hard facts of the skyrocketing rates of cost of living in Chicago and the real-life experiences their faculty have shared with them.

Management’s common theme of “market” numbers don’t address OUR circumstances on this campus. All this has real consequences for our members..

After management’s presentation, Faculty Forward LUC presented our newest counterproposals on Professional Development Funds ($1750 per member with a $200,000 pool) and Term of Appointment (a three-year contract). On Professional Development, they seem absolutely baffled by the idea that we think our members should receive enough funds to be able to regularly travel to at least one professional conference per year. Management has been asking for a six-year contract. We made it clear that if they want a longer contract, they will need to make major concessions on our core areas of concern.

So what comes next? 

• Attend the student-faculty solidarity rally for a fair contract, October 28, 11am, Cuneo Hall south entrance.
• Sign the member petition in support of a fair contract: https://act.seiu.org/a/loyolaff

All scheduled bargaining dates, times, and locations:

We will begin caucusing at 8AM for 9AM starts and 11AM for 12PM starts.

TUES OCT 28 – 12 – 4 – Reserved Cuneo 417 

MON NOV 3 – 9 – 1- Reserved Cuneo 417 

NOV 17 – 9 – 1 – Reserved Cuneo 417

TUES NOV 25 – 12 – 4 – Reserved Cuneo 417 

Talking to your colleagues –  be they staff, NTTs, tenure-track or tenured faculty – and students is important. They have a stake in a fair contract, too, and deserve to be informed about what management is doing, and what they can do to help us reach a fair contract that serves our whole LUC co-learning community. 

If you have not yet done so, please read the opinion piece by Faculty Forward LUC member Julie Chamberlin, published in The Loyola Phoenix. It is a powerful open letter to the administration’s bargaining team explaining why our union’s bold proposals are, in fact, quite reasonable. The Phoenix also did a story titled “Non-Tenure Track Teachers Grow Frustrated with Administration” that features interviews with four additional union members about these proposals and the overall state of negotiations. Finally, please sign our petition and share the separate petition we have created for community allies with your students and tenure-stream allies (and alumni, staff, clergy, and anyone invested in the future of Loyola) so they may sign it, too. 

In Solidarity,

The Loyola Chicago Faculty Forward Bargaining Team

Tuesday, September 23 –

Recap #17

Dear Colleagues,

What role does our employer play in our economic (in)security? 

We know that economic anxiety is driving the moment. The bottom line is that NTT faculty bear a crushing workload and do ever-increasing service for the University, yet struggle to afford to live in Chicago because our wages are not keeping up with inflation. Bargaining for a fair and decent contract is exactly what we are doing to shift these unfair conditions.

In our latest bargaining session, management brushed off our members’ concerns about the increasing, burnout-level workloads of full-time NTT faculty. Instead, we were encouraged to “lean in” and make use of counseling services provided by the university. At the same time, they explained their rejection of our proposal on part-time workloads – which would increase flexibility for part-time faculty – because it would increase the administration’s workload. Management was also unable to address several of our concerns at all, such as when we brought up the issue of ongoing abuse of temporary, full-time, one-year positions. 

Unwilling and/or unable to explain their rationale behind their counterproposals, we were told time and time again to just make a counterproposal of our own as opposed to engaging in a dialogue about what they had presented to us. Even though they have flatly rejected many of our proposals and counterproposals in the past, we continue to try to work with management so we can make progress towards reaching a fair agreement. Thus, per their request, our union presented our counter-proposal on Faculty Evaluations to management in our last bargaining session. We look forward to their response to our counterproposal in our next negotiation meeting on Monday, September 29th.

It appears that management has rejected many of our ideas without thinking them through, choosing instead to simply take a scorched-earth approach towards our positions without considering their impacts on our members, TT and Tenured faculty and our students. This mentality puts the lie to management’s claim that their so-called “comprehensive package” of economic proposals is fair and that everyone – administrators, staff, TT/T faculty, and unionized and non-unionized NTT faculty – are equally valued for our contributions to Loyola’s success. How can they claim they value us without seeming to comprehend that we are all an integral part of a co-learning, co-educating ecosystem? Our teaching loads impact the workloads of tenure-track and tenured faculty. Our compensation impacts our students, as our living conditions impact their learning conditions. How can management claim to value us while presenting inequitable counterproposals that don’t practice Loyola’s own social justice values?

Faculty Forward LUC’s Bargaining Team committees on Compensation, Workload, and Appointments and Reappointments are writing our counterproposals on those articles of our contract now. While we do that, we need our members to show up in the ways they best can so that we can win a fair contract together. You can: 

• Sign the member petition in support of bargaining goals.
• Join us Saturday and Sunday by participating in some outreach to our students and their families about the fight for a fair contract during LUC’s Family Weekend. Join in the effort to enlighten our LUC family by signing up for a shift here. (Word on the street is that the union action will feature a solidarity performance by our dance students that is not to be missed!) Sign up for a shift to find out more!
• Plan to attend part or all of our September 29th bargaining session, whether you sign up to do so ahead of time or not. 
• Talk to your fellow faculty members (whether they are part- or full-time; NTT, TT or Tenured; unionized faculty or not) about our union contract negotiations. 
• Consider writing a blog for our website. 
• Come up with your own creative ways to support yourself, your colleagues, your students and your university through our Faculty Forward LUC union!

Our next bargaining session will be on Monday, September 29 at the embedded link or at the dial-in numbers +17193594580,, 83649816197# US +16694449171,, 83649816197# US. We encourage people to come for as much or as little time as you can. If you plan to attend, please fill out this spreadsheet letting us know you will be at our bargaining session. (We won’t turn you away if you haven’t RSVPed, though; we’d just like to know you plan to join us if possible!)

In Solidarity,

The Loyola Chicago Faculty Forward Bargaining Team

---

Previous bargaining session notes:
Aug 18- Sept 15 Sessions.pdf

May 27 – June 16 Sessions.pdf

Tuesday-May-20-Session.pdf

Monday-May-12-Session.pdf

Tuesday-April-28-Session.pdf

Tuesday-April-22-Session.pdf

Wednesday-April-16-Session.pdf

Thursday-March-27-Session.pdf

Monday-March-10-Session.pdf

Monday-March-4-Session.pdf

Friday-February-21-Session.pdf