For more than 35 years now, the Campus Faculty Association (CFA) has been working in the interests of faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The past year or so has been a particularly difficult time for our campus – the admissions scandal and related problems, severe budget cuts in the units with more to come, the threat of a strike by graduate employees, and now the prospect of "furloughs" (that is, pay cuts) coming in the spring semester. The union has been working on this issue through established governance bodies, publicity, and also by beginning to map out a strategy for faculty in the event of such furloughs.
This blog is intended to be a space where faculty let us know their thinking regarding this particular issue and their ideas for how to respond. In order to prepare for this threat, we ask CFA members not only to share their own thoughts about it – both on this blog and on the UI site – but also to pass the blogsite URL on to colleagues who might also take part in this discussion. We all hope the financial crisis will not come to this drastic measure, but it is wise to plan. Please discuss the issue of furloughs with colleagues and encourage them to take part in this planning.
– Jim Barrett, History
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A few quick thoughts I want to share:
ReplyDelete-The GEO strike would be a good opportunity for us to engage in "preemptive furloughs" as an action
-We should consider a petition of some sort
-The Faculty Senate or Union Caucus of the Senate should try to bargain with the university to prevent furloughs, or if we cannot prevent them, set the conditions for them
-Some faculty have also brought up the idea of a graded system, so that those faculty with the lowest salaries are not as hard hit
Other thoughts?
I think its quite important that we learn from what is happening in CA. We cannot allow furloughs to occur on days that we are not teaching. We must also insist that they adjust tenure requirements accordingly.
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, can someone tell me if I can hyperlink another blog to this? I tried. There is an article in the Chronicle about how coaches salaries have gone up despite the crisis. Isn't the football coach here making some outrageous sum?
Feel free to send me the link at kathryn dot clancy at gmail dot com and I will put it up for you!
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