The following analysis was submitted by Craig and coworkers. We reproduce it below in its entirety in a spirit of solidarity and with the hope that it will help clarify the state of affairs at the CCC and within the organizations that represent most of its employees. May this spark another round of discussion that will help us chart a way forward to rescue the CCC from the mouth of sharks.
PEARL
IS THE NEW LOCAL
1600 CONTRACT A GOOD DEAL?
A COMPARATIVE
ANALYSIS
As a concerned group of loyal union members, over the past
few months we have learned a great deal about the recently signed CCC
contracts. After the vote, we realized that we had cast our ballots (some in
favor; some against the contract) based upon very limited and contradictory
information. For that reason we decided to find out what the truth was.
We learned from Dr. Bruno’s contract meeting at Morton
College that good contract negotiation results are a reflection of fact-finding
and tough collective bargaining. Our research unearthed many concerning issues
that sadly we were unaware of. Our research concluded that Local 1600 union
president Perry Buckley was either unaware of the issues below, or unconcerned
by them, or both.
President Buckley signed agreements for both the Faculty
and Professional City Colleges contracts nearly one year in advance of their
expiration. (Both contracts
expire in July of 2013).
Just weeks before signing the
contracts, Mr. Buckley retired and secured his own benefits from CCC: an
impressive annual retirement salary (Pension + Union Salary combined of more
than $300,000.00 annually) and a generous sick day payout (sick days amounting
to more than $200,000.00).
Below we will compare three contractual results, and where
applicable, include administrators.
These contractual agreements were all completed around the same time as
follows:
Local 1708 June
7, 2012
Local 1600 August
23, 2012
Local 1 CTU October
2, 2012
Much appreciation to all those who assisted in helping
us gather and interpret the information we present below.
LOCAL 1708
VS. LOCAL 1600:
Local 1600’s sister union at
City Colleges of Chicago is Local 1708, a union of Clerical workers. Local 1708’s last contract ended in
June of 2010. Their union leaders
then held out in firm negotiations against the City Colleges’ district lawyers
for 24 months. In comparison,
Mr. Buckley held out for… almost one day.
In the end, Local 1708’s contract had Higher Raises, No Merit Pay, No
loss of Earned Sick Days, and No Wellness program.
CITY COLLEGES CITY
COLLEGES
Clerical Union 1708 Faculty
& Professional Union 1600
RAISES COMPARED:
RAISES FOR 1708 MEMBERS VS. RAISES
FOR 1600 MEMBERS
2011 3.5% 2014 2.5 %
2012 3.0 2015 2.5
2013 3.5 2016 2.5
2014 3.5 2017 2.5
2015 3.5 2018 2.5
LOCAL 1600 RAISES: 2.5%— These raises are just above the rate of inflation. The US inflation rate for 2012 stands at an average of 2.12%. The 2.5% “raise” is, for all intents and purposes, a wage freeze. When you add in the loss of sick day payouts and step increases, all members have now experienced a tremendous and career-long wage cut.
2011 3.5% 2014 2.5 %
2012 3.0 2015 2.5
2013 3.5 2016 2.5
2014 3.5 2017 2.5
2015 3.5 2018 2.5
LOCAL 1600 RAISES: 2.5%— These raises are just above the rate of inflation. The US inflation rate for 2012 stands at an average of 2.12%. The 2.5% “raise” is, for all intents and purposes, a wage freeze. When you add in the loss of sick day payouts and step increases, all members have now experienced a tremendous and career-long wage cut.
US Inflation Calculator:
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/
MERIT/SUCCESS
PAY:
Merit pay is an effort by
educational reformers to pay teachers based on student performance. Teachers would be paid according to
factors such as student grades, test scores, graduation rates and related
outcomes. Cheating and social promotion are rife in K-12 systems where this is
the standard of compensation.
CTU Local 1: REJECTED
MERIT / SUCCESS PAY
Local 1708: REJECTED
MERIT / SUCCESS PAY
CCC Administrators: DO
NOT HAVE MERIT / SUCCESS PAY
Local 1600: ACCEPTED
MERIT / SUCCESS PAY
The Chicago Tribune
celebrated Mr. Buckley’s acceptance of Merit Pay in:
“Revealed: The Chicago Teachers’ Pact”,
September 5, 2012
The Merit Pay he accepted was semantically transformed
into “Student Success Pay”. This
means we might
be paid a few extra dollars if we inflate our grades substantially enough so that
some of the District’s “student success” standards are met. Such
student success standards are highly unattainable. Among them are:
* Students who transfer within 3 years (must reach 25%
from current 14%)
* Students employed in the occupational area of their training
(must reach 90%)
*Median earnings of CCC grads in the area of their
training must reach a minimum of $43,398 (Note: Full- time working U.S. COLLEGE graduates ages
21-24 with a B.A. degree earned an average of $34,965 in 2011)
See figure J:
Economic Policy Institute: “The Class of 2012”
Mr. Buckley also agreed to “Draft an MOU for a Joint CCC-union committee to address all
issues related to Student Success Pay, including ‘Discuss additional ways to
measure individual merit, such
as assessments that go across the departments.’”
LOSS OF STEPS
AND COMPRESSION OF LANES:
We at Local 1600 have always
had a contract with lanes and steps that reward greater education and
experience with higher pay. We
advance in lanes by achieving more education. We advance in steps by gaining additional years of service.
Our salaries rise with each step or lane increase. Local 1708’s contract has grades and steps that operate in a similar fashion. CTU Local 1 has a contract with lanes
and steps that resemble our own soon to expire contract.
CTU Local 1: RETAINED
LANE AND STEP INCREASES FOR ALL EMPLOYEES
Local 1708: RETAINED
GRADE AND STEP INCREASES FOR CURRENT
EMPLOYEES
(New hires will no longer move through the steps).
Local 1600: LANES
REDUCED. LOSS OF STEP INCREASES
FOR ALL EMPLOYEES
The eradication of our steps and reduction of lanes was
included in the contract for no reason other than to reduce our salaries
substantially over our careers. The end result was to cut CCC’s payroll
expenses dramatically.
WELLNESS
PROGRAM:
The danger of
employer-required wellness programs is that employees can be penalized for not
meeting the employer’s ideal of “wellness”. This could mean being required to “quit smoking” or “lose
weight” as examples. CTU, in
agreeing to a wellness program, demanded that there be no penalty for smoking,
or for failing to meet any “health outcomes” the city might come up with. CTU agreed only that their members
would submit to an annual physical, and that this information would be kept
confidential. Local 1708 rejected
a wellness program entirely. In
contrast, Mr. Buckley accepted a wellness program, but without
limitations. We are now
essentially subject to the whims of the District Office in this matter.
CTU Local 1: ACCEPTED
WELLNESS PROGRAM BUT WITH SPECIFIC MEMBER-FRIENDLY GUIDELINES AND LIMITATIONS
SEE CTU Contract Article 32 (page 8) http://www.ctunet.com/blog/text/Contract_Highlights_2012_09_18.pdf
Local 1708: REJECTED
WELLNESS PROGRAM
SEE Local 1708 Contract Article IX (M) http://apps.ccc.edu/brpublic/2012/june/31456.pdf
“In the event a Wellness Program is created for another
bargaining unit, said Wellness program will become available to Local 1708.”
(This now means any Local 1708 member can use the
Wellness program Local 1600 has agreed to if a member freely chooses
to participate in it)
Local 1600: ACCEPTED
WELLNESS PROGRAM WITH NO GUIDELINES OR LIMITATIONS WHATSOEVER
SICK DAY
PAYOUTS:
City Colleges Administrators
can keep the sick days that they have already earned and cash them out when
they retire. Local 1708 can keep the sick days that they have earned and cash
them out when they retire. CTU
Local 1 can keep the sick days that they have earned and cash them out when
they retire. Only Local 1600
members must give up all earned sick day cash payouts.
CTU Local 1: KEPT
SICK DAY PAYOUTS
Local 1708: KEPT SICK DAY
PAYOUTS
CCC Administrators: KEPT
SICK DAY PAYOUTS
Local 1600: GAVE
AWAY SICK DAY PAYOUTS
Mr. Buckley gave away ALL Local 1600 Sick Day Payouts
for ALL Professionals and Faculty who cannot retire by July 2014. (We earned this money from decades
of hard work. Upon retirement, each of us cashes out an average of
$100,000.00). CCC has about 1,500 Local 1600 members. The sick day payouts that we lost are
conservatively valued at over $100,000,000.00--One Hundred Million--dollars.
CTU LOCAL 1 MEMBERS KEEP THEIR SICK DAY PAYOUTS:
CTU LOCAL 1 MEMBERS CAN CASH OUT ALL Sick Days earned as of October 2012 into perpetuity.
CTU Local 1 Tentative Agreement (see page 10 Article 37)
Article 37—New CTU Contract Agreement October 2, 2012:
“Old sick day banks are protected and can be used as
they have always been used. They can
be cashed out upon retirement.”
LOCAL 1708 MEMBERS KEEP THEIR SICK DAY PAYOUTS:
LOCAL 1708 MEMBERS CAN CASH OUT ALL Sick Days earned as of July 2014 into perpetuity.
Local 1708 Agreement: http://apps.ccc.edu/brpublic/2012/june/31456.pdf
Article 9 (I) New Local 1708 Contract Agreement June 7,
2012:
“Local 1708 Employees hired before June 7, 2012 may accrue unlimited sick leave, but the payout is capped at the amount accrued as of July 1, 2014”
“Local 1708 Employees hired before June 7, 2012 may accrue unlimited sick leave, but the payout is capped at the amount accrued as of July 1, 2014”
CCC ADMINISTRATORS KEEP THEIR SICK DAY
PAYOUTS:
CCC ADMINISTRATORS CAN CASH OUT UP TO 200 Sick Days earned as of July 2012 into perpetuity.
CCC New Board of Trustees Ruling May 3, 2012:
“The number of sick days that can be paid to employees
upon retirement will be capped at the number of days accumulated by July 1,
2012, or upon the date of retirement, whichever number is less, not to exceed 200
days.”
CCC Board Report page 3 http://apps.ccc.edu/brpublic/2012/may/31415.pdf
LOCAL 1600 MEMBERS LOSE ALL SICK DAY PAYOUTS AS OF
JULY 2014:
WE LOCAL 1600 MEMBERS NOW HAVE A ZERO $(0) SICK DAY PAYOUT FOR ALL OF US WHO DO NOT RETIRE BY JULY 2014.
Note: We Local 1600 members went on Strike in 1971 for nearly 30 days to gain the sick day payouts that we have maintained in our contracts for 31 years.
MR. BUCKLEY GAVE AWAY ALL OF OUR SICK DAY PAYOUTS IN
ONE DAY FOR NOTHING IN RETURN.
PROCESS:
About a week before this offer was put to us for a vote, Mr. Buckley came to our colleges for the opening union meetings of Fall semester. At our meetings, he stated emphatically that he would absolutely support a strike rather than accept the contractual changes listed above.
Days later, Mr. Buckley mailed a letter to us dictating
that a vote on a proposed contract must take place immediately. In this letter he forced upon us an
unreasonable and arbitrary timeline of a few days—at the start of the
semester—to vote on this critical contract that would impact the rest of our
careers. We were neither afforded adequate time to assess the
impacts of the proposal, nor to confirm the statements made by Mr. Buckley in
support of the proposal.
Mr. Buckley then came to our colleges campaigning “THIS
IS THE BEST POSSIBLE DEAL THAT YOU WILL EVER GET.” He told us that if we did not agree to it—the
ONLY other alternative would be to lose absolutely everything in our
contracts.
He told us “faculty will lose tenure* if we reject these contracts” and that “CCC
Administrators and Local 1708 had already given up all of their sick day
payouts” and that “all CCC employees now have to participate in the Wellness program.”
* Our Tenure is Guaranteed by Illinois State Law
in the Community college Tenure Act of 1980:
As a result of these and other misrepresentations, we were
led to believe we didn’t have any other choice but to agree to the
contracts. We now know that
this was not the case.
We now also know that the forced timeline was designed exclusively
to compel our submission. We were not told the truth about these contracts. We
were deceived and we voted under threat and out of fear.
EXCLUSION OF
OUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES:
Mr. Buckley completely and deliberately excluded all of our elected representatives from these contract “negotiations”. He shut out City Colleges Vice President Rochelle Dukes, and all seven elected Chapter Chairs.
What was the motivation behind removing all of our elected
union leaders from the process? Why was Mr. Buckley the only Local 1600
representative present when this “deal” was cut?
CO-OPTATION:
Who did Mr. Buckley strike this deal with? He admitted to
us freely that he struck this deal with the Mayor. This deal was supposedly an
attempt to compel CTU President Karen Lewis to concede just as Mr. Buckley
did.
Mr. Buckley told us “this great deal was being offered to
stop CTU from striking.” He said we must decide within 3 days of receiving the
proposal so that the vote would occur before the CTU strike date. CTU
leaders have since stated that the Local 1600 contract was a travesty and
played no role at all in their decision to strike.
In retrospect, we now know the 3-day window was simply
designed to deny us the opportunity to make an informed decision. We could not
make an informed decision on this critical and complicated matter in 3
days. It was even more impossible
when we could not rely on the information presented to us.
The Local 1600 contract offer was handled by Mayor Rahm
Emanuel’s brother-in-law Laurent Pernot “Vice Chancellor of Institutional
Advancement”at 226 W. Jackson.
http://www.ccc.edu/departments/Pages/Institutional-Advancement.aspx (One Chapter Chair who did
support the contract was Daley College’s Todd Lakin whose wife Tania Brewster
is on Laurent Pernot’s staff).
The Mayor’s brother-in-law, Laurent Pernot, presented the
offer to Cheryl Hyman who then gave it to Mr. Buckley who signed it immediately. He did not negotiate for a single change. He did not seek
the consent or agreement of a single elected leader of CCC’s membership.
Why did Mr. Buckley agree to all of this? Why did he work
so hard to sell it to us? We do
not know all of the reasons. What we do know is that he had already secured his
financial future, and would not need to adapt to any of the aftermath
including: the open-ended wellness program, merit/ success pay, eradication of
raises, loss of sick day payouts, and the removal of steps and lanes.
