Columbia College part-time faculty vote to strike

Adjunct faculty members at Columbia College have voted to strike after administrators proposed cutting more than 300 courses at the small liberal arts and arts-focused school located in downtown Chicago.

Leaders of the Columbia College Faculty Union, or CFAC, which represents part-time faculty members at the college, say 88% of voting members authorized a strike before voting closed Wednesday night. Some 81% of members took part. The union’s most recent contract expired in August and members head to the bargaining table Thursday morning.

“It’s really empowering, and it really just demonstrates that we’re ready for this,” said Diana Vallera, an adjunct professor of photography and CFAC’s president. “They went after the most marginalized of faculty, right after a pandemic. And they went after our students right after a pandemic, after everything that we’ve been through.”

CFAC last went on strike in the fall of 2017, walking out for two days.

Vallera said about a third of the union’s approximately 600 members would be impacted by the course cuts either through reduced workload and decreased pay — or increased class sizes without additional pay.

Non-tenured, contract educators make up about 68% of the teaching staff at Columbia College, according to the leadership of CFAC. The school has a long history of hiring working professionals to teach students because they “bring the most contemporary, innovative thinking to the structure and delivery of our curriculum,” according to the school’s website.

Full-time faculty members at the school are barred from unionizing by a 1980 Supreme Court decision.

College leaders have said the course cuts are necessary to make a $2 million dent in a $20 million budget deficit. But Vallera and other union members rebuff these claims, saying other measures should be taken to reign in expenses that do not compromise student learning.

In response, John Holmes, chairman of the Columbia College Board of Trustees wrote in a letter to Vallera, “I must stress in no uncertain terms that the measures you seek to reverse, chief among them changes to some course offerings and to the enrollment of some courses, are the direct result of Board mandates to the college administration.”

Holmes is chief executive officer of AAR CORP, an aviation company, and was elected Columbia College’s board chairman in July. He has served as a trustee since 2012.

“This is a top priority for me as incoming Board chair, and we will not deviate from this direction,” Holmes wrote. “I am concerned that your proposed approach would aggravate, and not ameliorate, the problems we are required to solve.”

Vallera said she hopes the college’s leaders come to bargaining Thursday morning ready to retract the cuts to courses and discuss more protections for adjunct faculty, including health insurance.

“But every indication from that letter from the Board of Trustees is the opposite,” she said.

Lisa Philip covers higher education for WBEZ, in partnership with Open Campus.