With the recent faculty strike at Harper College in Palatine, the chances of an NIU professor strike appears to be low.

Although faculty strikes gained media attention in October, situations vary among institutions of higher education.

Many guidelines for faculty compensation are governed by state statute because NIU is a public university. There is less flexibility in determining salaries and health insurance plans.

Two main types of full-time faculty teach at NIU – tenure/ tenure-track and instructors.

Tenure and tenure-track faculty participate in a system of shared governance with the university administration through the Faculty Senate and the University Council, but are not represented by a union.

The senate is advisory, while the University Council has the power to modify the constitution of the university, said Sue Willis, president of the Faculty Senate and executive secretary of the University Council.

NIU faculty have voted in the past on whether to be represented by a union, but they have not chosen to do so, said Steven Cunningham, associate vice president of administration and human resources.

There have been some faculty strikes at community colleges in Illinois, but none at public universities within the last decade, Cunningham said.

Despite this, faculty are threatening to strike at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Cunningham said.

“It’s not unusual for strikes to be discussed, but it’s much more rare for the people involved to actually go through with them,” he said.

Illinois universities have various systems for faculty representation. At SIU, a majority of the full-time faculty are represented by a faculty association.

Strikes are associated with a collective bargaining organization such as the faculty association at SIU, not when the faculty are self-governing as they are here, Cunningham said.

The situation is different for full-time instructors at NIU.

They are required to belong to the union the University Professionals of Illinois, and are non-self-governing, said Friedmann Stuebing, a full-time instructor in the department of foreign languages.

Stuebing was very surprised to hear of this policy when he first started teaching full-time at NIU, he said.

Stuebing said he believes wage negotiations are an ongoing theme for UPI.

The union has a five-year agreement with the administration that expires in 2006.

There is a no-strike clause in the instructors’ contract, so instructors cannot strike until contract negotiations open again, Cunningham said.