Students Notified of Possible MCC Faculty Strike

Here’s the email that was sent out:

The McHenry County College Commons could be empty if the faculty strike.

The McHenry County College Commons could have fewer folks if the faculty strike.

Friday, April 4, 2014

On behalf of the Assistant Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs…

Dear MCC Students and Families:

On March 17, 2014, the MCC Faculty Association (MCCFA) filed an Intent to Strike Notice which allows them to stop teaching and working at McHenry County College. The earliest date for a strike could have been March 27, 2014 or any time after that date.

Negotiations continue as of the date of this letter, as some issues remain unsettled. We are hopeful that a settlement can be reached with the MCCFA and a strike avoided.

In the event that a work stoppage occurs by the MCCFA full-time faculty, the College will continue operations with the least amount of disruption. Some credit classes may be suspended; status on these classes and other relevant information will be available on the College website at www.mchenry.edu. In the event that a work stoppage occurs, you will receive further details.

You may hear various statements being made about the status of the negotiations and the parties’ positions. If you have questions in that regard, please contact me directly.

We hope that a strike by the MCCFA full-time faculty does not occur, and we will do our very best to reach a reasonable negotiated settlement.

Sincerely,

Juletta Patrick
Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs


Comments

Students Notified of Possible MCC Faculty Strike — 9 Comments

  1. Dear Students – get your backsides to your Springfield Reps. offices and tell them that you want this strike**** stopped forever.

    Get it banned/outlawed so that neither you nor parents for children in lower grades have to have it held over you and them.

    You and We pay for schools and education and allowing for strikes is ridiculous for these jobs.

    Try striking yourselves and see what it gets you.

    You are penalized on either side.

    This is bullying plain and simple and holding students lives hostage.

    It’s not like educators are working in sweatshops without benefits.

    Stop being friends with educators and treat them as the employees they are.

    They should get themselves to work.

    They, too, can quit and get jobs elsewhere if they don’t like it where they are.

  2. Dear Students,

    Should your instructors receive pay and benefit cuts, and work for less money and less benefits, despite the fact that many have master’s and doctorate degrees.

    Remember this, the outcome of this strike is your inheritance and your future in the labor market.

    You will leave this college and go onto jobs where you will find employer’s cutting your wages and benefits down to subsistence.

    Whether you are a nurse or an auto-mechanic, or fireman, you will be impacted.

    Part of our slowed economic growth in the recession is the result of wages that have stagnated since the 1970’s.

    This has been in part due to cheap Chinese labor and outsourcing of both blue and white collar jobs made possible by politicians being paid by large corporations(we call it campaign donations) to pass policies to crush organized labor in order to maximize profits.

    Ask yourself if your parents were better off than you, making more money for their contributions in the work force. Now ask yourself in the days of outsourcing and the war on organized labor, if your future will be as good as your parents.

    If you join the “union bad” rhetoric, you are tying the noose around your own neck.

    You will inherit the future of the lifetime minimum wage career without benefits.

    Your children will inherent your future.

  3. don:

    Should your instructors receive pay and benefit cuts, and work for less money and less benefits, despite the fact that many have master’s and doctorate degrees.

    – should anyone?

    I think it is time for educators to pony up, just like the rest of us.

    Remember this, the outcome of this strike is your inheritance and your future in the labor market.

    – true, they should not inherit MORE debt from increase taxes (that is where the salaries come from)

    You will leave this college and go onto jobs where you will find employer’s cutting your wages and benefits down to subsistence.

    – true story, it’s happening everywhere.

    Whether you are a nurse or an auto-mechanic, or fireman, you will be impacted.

    – by rising costs of the teachers salaries.

    Part of our slowed economic growth in the recession is the result of wages that have stagnated since the 1970′s.

    – of which I suspect is when don picketed his college against ‘the man’

    This has been in part due to cheap Chinese labor and outsourcing of both blue and white collar jobs made possible by politicians being paid by large corporations(we call it campaign donations) to pass policies to crush organized labor in order to maximize profits.

    – organized labor makes huge contributions to BOTH political parties.

    Ask yourself if your parents were better off than you, making more money for their contributions in the work force. Now ask yourself in the days of outsourcing and the war on organized labor, if your future will be as good as your parents.

    – my parents ARE better off than me because at this stage in their live, they have earned that!

    Yes, through proper planning and voting against wage increases that the public cannot afford, I expect my later life to be as good (note this does not say BETTER).

    If you join the “union bad” rhetoric, you are tying the noose around your own neck.

    You will inherit the future of the lifetime minimum wage career without benefits.

    – I believe your “unions” are trying to raise that wage as well.

    Your children will inherent your future.

    – As will yours.

  4. MCC might be a wonderful thing, but We Can’t Afford It.

    Sell it to Apollo or ITT Tech, let them operate within an affordable budget, or shut it down and sell the land to pay down debt.

    There is no future for ‘the children’ if ‘the parents’ are foreclosed, or their property values sink in reverse correlation to tax rates and debt, or are simply so burdened by taxes that the stressors at home overshadow benefits of any studies at college.

    Property taxes in McHenry County exceed 3% of home values.

    The national average is just over 1%.

    Other states and counties in America have found ways to afford what they are spending, or spend what they can afford.

    Why are there no COST/BENEFIT analyses offered when budget increases (or increased borrowing limits) are proposed?

  5. I’m so sick of union employees holding everyone hostage while teaching it is wrong to bully.

    The irony of such arrogance.

  6. As a student I refuse to go to a springfield rep about teachers going on strike.

    It is their constitutional right.

    If you think about it strikes, sit in, and other non violent protests are what got us our freedom in this country.

    These instructors are not doing this to harm the students, they are doing the best they can with the circumstances that they are in.

    These instructors truly care for the students well being here at MCC, if they didnt they would have left MCC to work at a college that pays them much more.

    MCC well underpays the instructors full time as well as adjuct.

    The contract has been negotiated for the past 19 months and as we all know the board of trustees must approve the contract.

    It is impossible to do this when the board does not show up to the negotiations meetings.

    This is only one of the issues that is keeping this contract from going into effect.

    I support our teachers because they support us.

  7. Actually, the right to strike is not a constitutional right.

    State legislation allows strikes of some public employees.

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