A heated contract negotiation between Eastern and one of its unions has sparked a wave of subpoenas from a federal investigation reaching all the way to the executive director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education and House Speaker Michael Madigan.

The subpoenas request information regarding a year-long contract negotiation between a union representing 10 Steam Plant employees as well as a meeting that took place between Madigan, the union and then Eastern President Carol Surles.

At a press conference Tuesday afternoon Madigan denied any wrongdoing in the situation, and Eastern and the IBHE have said they are complying with the subpoenas, but would not comment any further on the issue.

Eastern began negotiating with Chicago-based International Union of Operating Engineers Local 399 in June of 2000 after the previous contract expired, but a settlement could not be reached until Sept. of 2001. For the interim the union was working with no contract.

During the Spring of 2001, Madigan said he stepped in and hosted a meeting at the request of the union to get both sides together to talk about the failing negotiations. He said he holds meetings like this often, and that in his “judgment” he did nothing illegal.

“It was a very cordial meeting, a very courteous meeting” he said.

Madigan says the union, which is a significant contributor to his campaigns, was requesting a wage increase to meet the state’s defined prevailing wage; however, Eastern would not meet those terms.

Madigan characterized the university’s refusal to provide a prevailing wage as “not the type of situation that I personally find to be healthy for labor relations anywhere in the state of Illinois.”

He also said his chief of staff held a meeting with union and university officials to discuss the negotiations a “relatively short period of time” before his meeting.

Loretta Durbin, wife of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and a paid lobbyist for the university, “may have been” at the meeting too, Madigan told reporters. And he said it would have been “natural” for him to have talked to her about the union negotiations at points besides the formal meeting.

Madigan denied that Eastern’s funding was used as leverage to settle the contract dispute or that the union’s endorsement of his daughter’s campaign for state attorney general played any role in his decision to hold the meeting.

To support his statement, he noted that Eastern received a substantial increase in state appropriations for that fiscal year, and “jumped” ahead of other universities to secure funds for the $43 million Doudna Fine Arts Center expansion and renovation project.

Furthermore, Eastern didn’t settle the contract for several months after the meetings, and still refused to grant the union the prevailing wage that was requested.

The Illinois Department of Labor says the state’s defined prevailing wage for operating engineers is $29.79 per hour. The final four-year contract gives the highest paid operating engineers at Eastern $26.19 per hour for 2002 and $29.15 per hour by 2004.

Vicki Woodard, university spokesperson, said the wages agreed to in the four-year contract average out to about a 5 to 8 percent annual pay increase. In total, the increase, which was retroactive to Aug. 1, 2000 and covers the union until July 31, 2004, equals a $136,000 hike over the span of the agreement.

Eastern’s Board of Trustees unanimously approved the measure at its Oct. 15 meeting.

“The request to (Surles) was if she would just take a look at the situation and try to work with the union,” Madigan said about what he asked of Surles at the meeting. “I just presumed (Surles) said she’d look at the situation and try to work with the union.”

Madigan noted that the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, which is just 45 miles to the north of Eastern, pays the prevailing wage to its union engineers.

“Eastern does not (pay a prevailing wage),” he said. “Same jobs.”

While Eastern and Madigan have been subpoenaed for documents only, IBHE officials have been requested to testify before a grand jury on the subject. A date had been set for Keith Sanders, IBHE executive director, and Ross Hodel, the board’s legislative liaison, to stand before the grand jury earlier this month, but that date was canceled and a new one has yet to be issued.

In a prepared statement, Sanders said the board is cooperating with the subpoenas.

“As far as we know, no one in higher education is under federal investigation,” he said in the statement.

Don Sevener, a board spokesman, would not comment on the possibility of the IBHE’s involvement with Eastern’s contract negotiations.

Eastern has also refused any comment on the meeting, subpoenas or negotiations, besides an account of when the engineer’s contract expired and when the contract was reached.

In addition, Sharon Paul, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of Illinois, which is where the subpoenas were issued from, said she could not “confirm or deny” the issuance of subpoenas or existence of an investigation because of the district’s policy.

She said information will likely become public only when and if charges are filed.

Officials from the IUOE’s Chicago office could not be reached Tuesday, and one of the local union stewards, Raymond Starwalt, refused to comment.

In an interview after the press conference, Madigan’s spokesman, Steve Brown, said under Surles’ administration, Eastern had a reputation for being against unions.

“(Eastern’s) management at that time, I don’t know if that is the case today, had a well known anti-union policy,” Brown said.

David Radavich, who led Eastern’s chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois during a grueling 6-month “salary opener” in the summer of 2000, agreed with Brown’s assessment.

“Normally a salary opener is just three or four days long,” Radavich, an English professor, said. “During negotiations we did not see a willingness to participate in collaborative decision making.”

Radavich also said he doesn’t think it is unusual for state legislators to step in and “express concern” about contract negotiations or other issues at state universities.

The subpoenas issued to the IBHE and Eastern that requested documents asked for any written information relating to the contract or compensation of stationary engineers; any actions or proposed actions taken by a state agent in regards to the contract negotiations; any actions or proposed actions taken by a state agent concerning Eastern’s budget that are “related” to the engineers contract negotiations; any written information pertaining to the IDOL’s prevailing wage release and any written material related to the application of the prevailing wage and communications about it with those outside of IDOL.

The documents requested are from Jan. 1, 2001 to the present date.