Collective bargaining would give SIUC faculty a common voice and strength when negotiating salaries and benefits, the guest speaker for the Illinois Education Association-National Education Association annual meeting says.

Hazel Loucks, Higher Education Director of the IEA-NEA, said Monday that SIUC faculty asked for a 3.3-percent salary increase for fiscal year 1995, which was the lowest request she had seen out of all Illinois universities.

The Board of Higher Education gives whatever is asked (by University leaders), Loucks said. If you ask for the lowest salary, you’ll get that salary.

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Loucks said the current welfare for SIUC faculty depends on the SIU Board of Trustees, the body which requests salary levels for faculty from the state. She said collective bargaining would give faculty the resources they need to have a stronger say in salary requests.

Jim Sullivan, president of the SIUC chapter of the IEA-NEA, said the only way SIUC faculty can change policies and get higher salaries is by getting legal status through IEA-NEA. He said without the legal status, faculty serve only an advisory role to the adminstration.

If we have collective bargaining, faculty would carve out the policies, Sullivan said.

Sullivan said there are signals in the air that the SIUC faculty are ready to push for an election for collective bargaining at the University.

The overriding question is:Are faculty prepared to take on a more definitive role in the administration, or are they content as an advisory constituency? Sullivan said.

Sullivan said there was a 1988 election for collective bargaining among SIUC, but it failed because there were two other faculty associations on the ballot which diluted the vote.

Loucks said 32 percent of the faculty were interested in collective bargaining two years ago, but the organization prefers 60 percent or more before paying for another election.

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Less than 15 faculty members attended the meeting, but Loucks said she knew why. Loucks said when she was a young faculty member at SIUC, she and her co-workers received pitiful salaries, but there was nothing they could do about it.

A lot of the younger faculty would be interested, but they’re not going to be here because they are scared to be here, Loucks said.

Aslam Kassamali, a professor in the College of Engineering, said most of the people in his college were interested in collective bargaining, but none showed up for Monday’s meeting.

It just shows how really scared they are, Kassamali said.

Kassamali said increasing faculty salary could benefit the University as a whole, and not just faculty, by attracting and retaining quality instructors.