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The non-tenure-track faculty union at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ratified its first contract late last week, after two brief strikes since April over stalled negotiations. Union members’ protests centered on several key issues, including the standardization of multiyear contracts across the university for eligible instructors. The university had stated that it wanted individual academic units to maintain some discretion on contracts, and the parties eventually agreed that after five years, non-tenure-track faculty members will receive “rolling contracts,” or continuous employment, with at least one year’s advance notice of non-reappointment. Longer, multiyear contracts also still may be issued.
The contract also includes a 2.5 percent raise in pay, retroactively for last academic year, and a raise in the minimum full-time salary to $45,000 by 2018, according to information from the American Federation of Teachers- and American Association of University Professors-affiliated union. Notification of reappointment will be issued by May 1 under most circumstances. The agreement includes additional assurances of non-tenure-track faculty participation in governance.
Shawn Gilmore, union president and a lecturer in English, said the contract would “stabilize the working lives of non-tenure-track faculty” and ensure the “long-term support they deserve.” Barb Wilson, interim campus chancellor, and Ed Feser, interim provost, in their own statement said the university is stronger when non-tenure-track faculty members are “integral partners in governance, when their teaching is protected by academic freedom and when they have appropriate predictability and stability in their appointments.” The agreement addresses those priorities, they continued, “without supplanting the roles of the departments and colleges as important stewards of hiring and promotion for our academic programs. It also preserves the flexibility of units to offer multiyear contracts according to their own needs and financial capacity.”
