Thanks to pressure from the union and the community over the weekend, it appears Northeastern Illinois University will avoid becoming the fourth Illinois university to have a faculty strike. This morning, UPI Local 4100 at NEIU stated that "NEIUPI's Barg Team & the NEIU Admin have reached a TENTATIVE AGREEMENT. THERE will be NO strike!" Thus, staff will not walk off the job beginning tomorrow. As was the case with other UPI contracts, we probably won't see the details of this agreement until it's voted on, but it's a safe assumption that it includes a pay increase (UPI was asking for a "6% increase in compensation within one year for all members") and that it probably includes increased paid leave which was another big union demand.
As noted in the last post, NEIU has a wide array of current and ongoing problems such as a rocky transition between campus presidencies and significant financial debt. Presumably the university thought it was not in a position to seriously handle the disruption of a strike given those additional challenges.
