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The faculty union at the University of Illinois at Chicago won another victory Friday, with a ruling by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board rejecting a request by the university to stay an order certifying the union. The union is the result of a major organizing drive conducted by the American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers, which have hoped that the effort at UIC would pave the way for more faculty unions at doctoral institutions. The university has challenged the right of the union to form, as currently planned, because both tenure-track faculty members and adjunct professors would be in the same unit. The university maintains that this violates state law, but the state labor board in September rejected that argument, and certified the union. The university vowed to go to court to block the union, and requested a stay.
Union officials noted that the board's decision rejecting the stay suggested that the university will lose in court. "We find that granting a stay in this case would be contrary to the public policy that supports a duty to bargain," the board said in its ruling. It added that "we find that there is not a reasonable likelihood that the employer will succeed on the merits."
After this item was originally published, the university released a statement saying that an Illinois appeals court has agreed to an expedited review of the university's appeal, and that the court would soon be asked for a stay.
