The United Staff of Columbia College Chicago has reached a tentative deal with the college for a new two-year contract that includes a 5% raise each year.
Union members are expected to vote on the contract within the next week.
Under the tentative contract, each union member will receive a $1,000 signing bonus. The minimum salary for staff, or “salary floor,” also increased to $47,000 from $40,000 in the prior contract, which expired on Thursday, Oct. 31.
Craig Sigele, president of the staff union, said the college was “very motivated to come to an agreement,” and that staff are “very organized and very focused to reach an agreement that is beneficial to us and our members, and mindful of the college’s financial situation.”
The staff union represents 26 part-time and 178 full-time employees at the college, including academic advisors and managers, studio engineers, counselors and library staff.
The college laid off 70 staff members on May 30, including therapists, librarians, academic advisors and staff in the tutoring center, to close the college’s financial deficit, which is now at $17 million after the cuts. Among the layoffs, 53 were members of the staff union, the Chronicle previously reported.
The bargaining agreement with the staff union comes after a contentious seven-week strike last year that started Oct. 30 after the college and union that represents part-time faculty failed to reach an agreement. The part-time faculty strike was finally settled on Dec. 17, but not before nearly half of the semester was disrupted.
That strike cost the college $13 million in one-time costs and resulted in a hiring freeze and other measures put in place to reduce the financial deficit.
“This agreement reflects our solidarity with and appreciation for our colleagues on the staff, who play a key role in our students’ success here at Columbia and in their creative careers,” Interim President and CEO, Jerry Tarrer said in an email to faculty and staff on Thursday, Oct. 31.
Sigele said the union bargained over salary benefits, work protections for members, personal time off and work environment. The staff union posted bargaining updates on their website following each session.
“With inflation and with the decrease in the number of staff we have at this college, which is half what it was in 2019, staff have been asked to do a lot more work, so we want them to be recognized for the work they’re doing,” Sigele said.
Staff also received additional vacation time, a longer bereavement policy, layoff protections and increased sick leave.
The previous contract has been in effect since 2018 but was not ratified until 2022, and the union has been bargaining since May 20 for a new contract.
Last semester, the staff union represented 232 full-time and 36 part-time employees. By comparison, in 2017, the union had 664 members of which 316 were full-time and 347 were part-time.
On Wednesday, Oct. 30, just a day before the contract expired, the staff union and college reached an agreement on part-time sick leave. Part-time staff will now get six days of paid sick time dependent upon how many hours the employee works and six days of carry over into the next calendar year.
Allison Geller, negotiation chair for the union and an enrollment operations assistant at the college, said that compared to the last contract agreement, which took four years to negotiate and was a very “long drawn out process,” “both sides have been really pretty committed the entire time to just showing up in good faith.”
“I think we’re all feeling really hopeful about this,” Geller said. “We’re all very proud of the contract that we’ve come up with.”
In October 2021, the union overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. A strike was averted in January 2022, when 98.8% of voting members favored the collective bargaining agreement at the time.
Geller said that the current contract expired at the end of August but it was extended because bargaining was “going so well.”
The Oct. 30 bargaining update also stated that the college offered a proposal to give the union notice of layoffs prior to, as well as provide transition plans to the Union.
“If they want to have quality workers and want to keep their staff, you know, they need to pay them a living wage and pay them a competitive wage and support them. And I think the school is sincerely wanting to do that, and it’s a matter of coming to an agreement of what that looks like,” Sigele said.
For Matthew Rillie, the staff union’s membership chair and coordinator for student support and engagement, this is the second contract they have helped the union bargain.
“We still have work to do, but I think this is a testament that given the right amount of time and given perseverance, a lot can happen,” Rillie said. “I’m very proud to work here and very proud to work here with who I do.”
Copy edited by Vanessa Orozco
