SIUC faculty may avert strike

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Leaders of Southern Illinois University's faculty union decided Tuesday they are going to recommend union members approve the school's latest contract offer, averting a threatened strike.

Members of the governing body who made the decision widely expect their 400 union members to pass the proposal when they vote Thursday and Friday, said union president Morteza Daneshdoost.

The union's 45-member governing body voted by a "generous majority" to recommend union members approve the contract offer, Daneshdoost said, even though union leaders had expressed serious reservations with the plan.

The four-year proposal includes a 7.5 percent pay raise over the final three years but does not address some of the union's most strident noneconomic demands.

Union members had been pressing for more input into hiring and tenured positions at the campus. Daneshdoost said professors took heart in comments chancellor Walter Wendler made in area newspapers assuring union members that he valued their opinions.

"We are trying to build trust, but trust will only come when administrators deliver on their promises," Daneshdoost said.

Wendler has said faculty members already have considerable say into such staffing decisions and he does not believe it necessary to give them more.

But late Tuesday, after the union's announcement, Wendler struck a more conciliatory tone.

"We are going to continue to hold (faculty members) in high esteem and recognize that faculty are the heart of the university," Wendler told reporters after the union meeting.

Not sign of weakness

Daneshdoost cautioned administrators not to consider the affirmative vote as a sign of weakness.

"I'd like to recommend to the board of trustees not to take this as a sign the faculty will sit back," and be passive over the life of the four-year proposal, Daneshdoost said.

The union represents the 688 tenured and tenure-track professors who work on the Carbondale campus. It does not represent faculty at the university's Edwardsville campus or at its medical and law schools, which would be unaffected by a strike.

SIU Carbondale professors earn an average $60,200 annually. Public university professors in Illinois average about $66,000 per year.

The Carbondale campus is the state's fourth-largest, with 22,000 students. A strike here would have been the first at a public four-year university in Illinois.