CHICAGO – A resolution with unanimous support from City Councilors across Chicago calling on City Colleges to provide adjunct faculty equal pay for equal work was introduced at yesterday’s City Council meeting by Ald. Sue Sadlowski Garza. The resolution seeks to close the pay equity gap between adjunct faculty members at City Colleges and their full-time colleagues. The resolution had 47 sponsors.
“Adjunct professors and full-time professors teach the same courses in the same classrooms with the same students, but adjuncts only receive half the pay. This resolution highlights that tremendous and shameful disparity. Chicago is one of the largest cities in the wealthiest country the world has ever known, and yet there are adjunct faculty at City Colleges who need to go to the food bank just to feed their families every night. We have to work two or three additional jobs outside of City Colleges just to survive. 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 City Colleges Contingent Labor Organizing Committee (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 College 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 can bring dignity back to higher education as a profession.”
Attachment: CCCLOC Equal Pay Resolution 2021
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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.
