At Illinois State University, organizers for a non-tenure track faculty union hope to hold elections for officials in April, despite the status of an unfair labor claim.

The Illinois Education Association filed the labor practice with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board against ISU in mid-February, charging the university interfered with efforts to organize a union.

The charge consists of two parts, one deals with the university’s promises to non-tenured faculty and the other with a refusal to hire a university employee without reason, according to a Non-tenure Tenure Track Faculty Association IEA/NEA press release.

The opportunities promised include establishing a grievance procedure and a handbook, equivalent to a contract. The efforts made by university President Victor Boschini are seen as a way to convince faculty a union is not necessary, the press release said.

The university’s action in the current stage of the union’s development is illegal, said Gretchen Knapp, the non-tenured faculty member the university is refusing to rehire.

Knapp said the administration was warned about state legal issues.

“According to the Illinois Educational Labor statute, it says you can’t interfere with an election,” she said. “That was pointed out to administration behind the scenes and they just decided to ignore the red flags.”

The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act, established in 1984, gives public educational employees the right to organize, select labor representation and bargain with employers.

Act two

For this spring semester, Knapp said “I was told my services were no longer needed.”

Interim Provost Al Bowman did not return phone calls. He previously said Knapp does not work in spring semesters.

Knapp said that is not accurate, and the trouble began after she was the only one to testify for non-tenured faculty at a hearing in Springfield about a year ago.

“I want to get my job back. The provost is claiming I am an interim employee,” she said. But Knapp said the real reason she was not rehired is “because I am clearly a labor organizer.”

“If you’re really visible, it’s not like the university can say, ‘we didn’t know she was a labor activist.'”

After she was told her services were not needed, Knapp started working with university grants and is supposed to be the coordinator for one grant that came through.

She said those working on a grant are exempt from a hiring freeze at ISU.

“When (Bowman) says she doesn’t work in the spring … that her employment is dependent on student enrollment. … no, she’s working on a grant,” said Faculty Association spokeswoman Sharon MacDonald.

MacDonald and Knapp both said non-tenure track faculty now make up 40 percent of the instructors at the university.

The next step

“(A union) is is the only way we can have rights. We have people who don’t even know they’re eligible for health insurance,” Knapp said. “We have people who have been here 30 years temporary contract … we have faculty who are retiring into poverty.”

Results from an administration law judge on hearings for union membership are expected early next week, MacDonald said.

Such hearings are held through the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board, to whom the labor charge was filed, said David Radavich, Eastern’s faculty union chapter president of the University Professionals of Illinois.

“It can set a precedent,” he said. “They have a lot of unrest (at ISU).”

Radavich said the information offered close to university elections was an ISU administrative ploy. He said there is more incentive to unionize now with the current status of the state economy.

ISU’s administration is trying to exclude membership from certain areas such as in civil service, she said.

Civil service, academic professionals, lab school and restricted non-tenure track faculty are those in question during the hearings, who account for 40 of the possible 400 available for membership.

While not all non-tenured faculty support forming a union, now more than ever, the formation is possible, MacDonald said.

“The university has now become so dependent on non-tenure track faculty that this is possible … if they end up firing us, ISU’s student population is going to decline by a third,” she said.

After the hearing results next week, elections can be held 30 days following, so they will be scheduled for April.

The next step is getting people to join and bargaining for a union contract possibly by the end of this year, she said.

The Non-Tenure Track Advisory committee was formed in August for those not wishing to unionize. The group now has 15 members.

MacDonald said tenure-track faculty have started plans this week toward forming a union. While non-tenured faculty are contracted every semester or annually, a union will help make the contract multi-year within several years of forming a union, she said.

“I think we’re going to be thoroughly unionized in the next couple of years,” she said. “We do have people in the administration who are supporting us … they realize a union is going to make ISU a better place.”