Summer pay stumbling block in COD contract talks

Pay for full-time faculty members who teach summer courses at College of DuPage appears to be one of the stumbling blocks in stalled contract talks.

The 295-member union has been working without a contract since its previous agreement expired in August. The two sides will meet with a federal mediator April 6 to try to make headway on negotiations that began a year ago.

Faculty Association President Glenn Hansen said summer pay always has been a hot topic during negotiations and, as a result, it’s been reduced over time from 33 percent of an instructor’s nine-month teaching salary to 23 percent.

“In the 20 years I’ve been at the college in the negotiations we’ve gone through, summer pay is always it,” Hansen said.

College officials want to reduce summer pay to “a more reasonable level, but at an amount which is still a premium above what is paid to a part-time faculty member,” according to a news release.

Hansen said the college is proposing that full-time faculty be paid 1.5 times the part-time credit hour rate, which is about $934.

On Tuesday, Hansen said the union is agreeable to other concessions proposed by administrators, including:

타 Paying 20 percent of health insurance premiums instead of the current 10 percent.

타 Eliminating full tuition waivers for employees and eligible dependents, who would have to pay one-third the cost.

타 Eliminating so-called supplemental retirements, in which employees can earn additional compensation up to 100 percent of their salary after they retire.

타 Reducing the number of faculty who take full-year or one-semester sabbaticals from as many as 15 to five.

The college says it has proposed salary increases of 2.85 percent, 3.15 percent, 3.55 percent and 4.15 percent over the course of the proposed contract.

But Hansen disputes those numbers, saying there likely wouldn’t be any increase in the first year because it could be over by the time the agreement is ratified and there would be no retroactive pay increase. He also said the increases proposed in the other years may be less than 1 percent.

“While it sounds like what everybody is being offered — which in this economy is a sizable pay increase — it’s not really being offered,” Hansen said. “Our negotiations team shared info with the faculty and broke it down to what it would really mean. There’s a lot of play happening in the numbers.”

Hansen said college officials want faculty to accept workload increases of up to 50 percent for those who teach online classes or lab or studio classes. That could mean Hansen would be required to double the amount of instruction hours in one of his photography lab courses, for example.

In a news release on Monday, COD officials said they’re trying to align faculty pay more closely to the type of instruction being provided.

“The college does not believe the demands on an instructor overseeing a self-directed activity class, such as a drawing studio lab, are equal to the demands on an instructor teaching traditional lecture courses,” the news release said.