CHICAGO – At this morning’s Chicago City Council meeting, Ald. Sue Sadlowski Garza will introduce a resolution that seeks to close the pay equity gap between full-time professors and adjunct faculty members at City Colleges. The resolution now has 24 sponsors.
“This resolution highlights the pay disparity we are currently fighting against at City Colleges of Chicago. Right now, we have adjunct faculty who are working two and three additional jobs to make ends meet. Some of our members need to go to the food bank just to feed their families every night. This is a crisis. We need to be paid a living wage like our full-time counterparts,” City Colleges Contingent Labor Organizing Committee (CCCLOC) President Randy Miller said.
The CCCLOC represents more than 1000 part-time faculty, librarians and vocational lecturers. CCCLOC works with students at all seven City Colleges campuses and four satellite campuses across Chicago.
CCCLOC’s contract expired on June 30 and adjunct faculty are currently working without a contract. During negotiations, City Colleges repeatedly rejected CCCLOC proposals that would provide pay equity with City Colleges’ faculty and staff while also aligning part-time faculty and librarian wages with average salary rates at other Chicago-area community colleges.
Under CCCLOC’s contract proposal, adjuncts would gradually catch up to the average adjunct salaries paid at Chicago-area community colleges by fall 2022. Under management’s proposal, adjuncts would still fall below 2020 average salaries in the year 2025.
“We teach the majority of classes at City Colleges and we are the first point of contact for all students at City Colleges. We care about our students, but if we can’t make our wages competitive, we won’t be able to attract and retain the best professors for our students,” Miller said. “We are simply asking to be paid a living wage, so we can bring dignity back to higher education as a profession.”
Miller will be making a statement during the public comment portion of this morning’s city council meeting. The meeting begins at 10 a.m.
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The 135,000 member Illinois Education Association (IEA-NEA) is the state’s largest education employee’s organization. IEA represents preK-12 teachers outside of the city of Chicago and education support staff, higher education faculty, retired education employees and students preparing to become teachers, statewide.
