March 14, 2012
Dear President Hogan, BOT Chair Kennedy, and Other Trustees:
You have said that henceforth the U of I faculty will have a voice in decisions affecting them.
You can credibly demonstrate your sincerity, and begin to restore the trust of both U of I faculty and Illinois citizens, by withdrawing your court case challenging the UIC faculty’s democratically elected and legally certified union.
Here is why:
* A supermajority of eligible UIC faculty voted to unionize in one integrated bargaining unit, including majorities of both tenure-system and nontenure-system faculty.
* The faculty’s will is unmistakable: The more than 600 faculty voting for unionization in a single bargaining unit far exceeds the number of faculty who have signed petitions demanding that the President be replaced.
* It is not the role of the university administration to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on arguing about law. Both the Illinois Attorney General and the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board contend that one unit is legal. You are in the bizarre position of spending taxpayer and tuition money allocated for education to argue about law. The Attorney General –whose job it is to litigate to ensure state laws are followed and respected – is spending even more taxpayer money to argue against you.
* Many top state elected officials, most recently U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, have asked you to work in collaboration with your faculty for the betterment of UIC.
* In terms of organizational efficiency and effectiveness, no competent management would ever prefer more collective bargaining units to fewer. Your professional labor relations staff at UIC will tell you the same thing if they are willing to give their honest opinion.
* The only ones benefiting from extended litigation are your outside attorneys. And should you be unlucky enough to win, you will be paying the price in the higher labor costs and lower morale that inevitably result from multiple units that should have been combined.
We sign this as individuals elected by the UIC faculty (or appointed by those elected) to represent the faculty’s collective interests through the UIC United Faculty for the betterment of UIC.
Sincerely,
| Joseph Persky | Professor, Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Scott McFarland | Lecturer, English, Humanities |
| Milos Zefran | Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| Mary Brown | Clinical Associate Professor, Finance, Business Administration |
| Judith Gardiner | Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies, Humanities |
| Geraldine Gorman | Clinical Assistant Professor, Health Systems Science, Nursing |
| Giamila Fantuzzi | Associate Professor, Kinesiology and Nutrition, Applied Health Science |
| Lennard Davis | Distinguished Professor, Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Eugene Fregetto | Clinical Associate Professor, Managerial Studies, Business Administration |
| Joshua Radinsky | Associate Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, Education |
| Carrol Smith | Clinical Assistant Professor, Health Systems Science, Nursing |
| Victoria Persky | Professor, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Public Health |
| Patricia O’Brien | Associate Professor, Social Work |
| Steven Forman | Professor, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Natural Sciences |
| Bonnie Saunders | Clinical Associate Professor, Math, Natural Sciences |
| Stephen Engelmann | Associate Professor, Political Science, Social & Behavioral Sciences |
| Gayatri Reddy | Associate Professor, Anthropology, Social & Behavioral Sciences |
| Jennifer Ashton | Associate Professor, English, Humanities |
| Joseph Tabbi | Professor, English, Humanities |
| John D’Emillio | Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies, Humanities |
| Robert Johnston | Associate Professor, History, Humanities |
| John Shuler | Associate Professor, Library |
| Walter Michaels | Professor, English, Humanities |
| Darold Barnum | Professor, Management, Business Administration |
| Leon Fink | Distinguished Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago |
Campus Faculty Association 